Commissioners - Regular Meeting

All right. Good evening everyone. Excuse me this time. I'd like to call the order that you like we're team to make the county board of commission meeting and I want to say, thank you to each and every one of you for showing up. The presence is powerful and I just want to say, thank you for that. We've got an action packed agenda. I think, you know. And I think it's time to get started. Ms. Tammy, do you have any announcements?

I do not. Mr. Cade? Actually, Mr. Chairman, I just want to make the public aware that construction has started on the pickleball court. So that section of the red park is actually closed to the public. So you'll see some signs up there. And you should start to see construction on the boardwalk and Sorry, I'll repeat those. Construction has started on the pickleball courts at the red part. So that area is actually closed off. So you see some barricades there and construction should start on the. Uh, we're blocking our director and then the next week or 2. so that area will actually be closed on that end and the parking lot will be accessible from.

Commissioner Breeden.

Welcome. Thanks for coming.

Commissioner Shields. No, I'm fine. Commissioner Antoine.

Hope you all had a good day and be gentle.

Mr. Sherrill. Can you hear me now?

Chairman, at this time, I think it's appropriate to, I know there's agenda items about the redistricting in Macon County as a liaison to the planning board. I don't want to put the cart before the horse, but I think it's appropriate to let the folks here that's concerned about redistricting as one of the frontrunners for redistricting this county tonight on the agenda. I will not be seeking any action and expect any action. That's just my point of view. I think we need to spend some time out in the community for the next several months and talk to people that did not show up for the planning board meetings. However, that will be introduced from the planning board tonight as an agenda item. So again,

Okay, I have a similar announcement, uh, the data center ordinance. We have. And I have discussed that we previously tweaked that a couple of years ago to, uh, make cryptocurrency subject to the. Basically, the noise ordinance for lack of a better word, but for, um, the operation that it couldn't operate between. 7 and 9 and 7 in the morning, and that would pretty much, uh. Graphically reduce any chance of that. We did have server based facilities included in that, but. To specifically deal with that center still, and I was thinking we probably need to go ahead and ratchet that up a little bit more sort of addresses that. Um. If the way that would work with the. The county commissioners would then ask the planning board to. Consider that and make a recommendation back to them. We would then have a public hearing on that next month and they would vote on it next month in your agenda packet. There is the language that we're, we're talking about, including on that mentioned bread. That is on the amended and restated ordinance, regulating high impact land use. So if you have that, that's it. And if I'm speaking out of turn commissioners, let me know. But I think this is the recommendation that the. Board is going to run with and and submit to the planning board for their review and approval. I say all that in that we do have a large crowd tonight. If you are planning on speaking on that, and you. Are in favor of this language, you're probably. And if you wanted to defer your time for something else, that'd be great. If you are. opposed to the proposed language in here and you are in favor of having data centers, at least the ones that are noisy and use large amounts of electricity and water, then by all means you should have yourself be heard because otherwise you probably won't be because I think the majority of the commissioners, or at least all of them at this point, are in favor of having a that will help streamline some of the comments and we can get through these.

Thank you, Eric. At this time, I'd like to ask Commissioner Shields to lead us in a moment of silence and a pledge of allegiance.

If I will go ahead and stand for a moment of silence and remain standing for a pledge of allegiance. Let us pledge.

I pledge allegiance 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. Thank you, Commissioner Shields.

All right, we have no public hearings. Do we have any additions to the agenda? Hearing none, we'll enter into the public comment period. So typically public comment has a 45 minute time period. But tonight we have a lot of speakers and we decided to let each and every one of you speak. We will not have a time limit. But we will adhere to the 3 minute per person time while you're engaged to Mike. We also have had the public comment separated with the specific titles that you guys signed up for. I'd like to make note that. You were allowed 1 trip to the podium, so if you signed up for 3 different topics. Feel free to get them all out at your trip. All right. I just want to make sure I want to make sure there's no trip locations up here. So, 3 minutes and I will be a stickler to that. Out of respect for everybody's time. Okay. We won't start. Start with redistricting 1st speaker, Joanne roster.

If you're short, it's hard to reach this microphone. Okay. All right. Thank you for starting over. I'm Joanne Rossner. I live in Scaly Mountain, North Carolina. I appreciate the announcement that was made about redistricting, but I think getting views out for the public record and as a testimony is an important thing. It is incomprehensible to me that public servants would consider placing individual political ambition above the goal of ensuring fair representation of Macon citizens. by instituting a 3-2 voting model. The desire of an individual who does not wish to run against a currently sitting commissioner, or who wants elections to happen every two years, should not be the impetus to institute changes which harm citizens. It is equally unconscionable that elected officials here and members of the planning board would completely disregard the bulk of public comment in making their decisions on this issue and others. I see no benefits to citizenry of countywide voting and especially of that large commissioners. The only advantage is to candidates who wish to run. Voters should choose candidates and elect officials candidates should not be allowed to choose their voters. The only fair option here is five districts with each district voting for their own commissioner. This allows us to elect candidates who intimately know local issues, have a vested interest in the outcome of resolution of issues, and allows greater accountability of elected public servants to the voters who elected them. Democracy at its best is one direct code for each woman or each man. The incorporation of District 2 precincts into the current District 1 and District 3 precincts results in an overshadowing of rural voices by residents of Franklin who may not be at all familiar with the issues in Scaly Mountain. I live on a dirt road, my power goes out all the time, and I want to keep it that way. I challenge you to place this into the forum of ultimate public expression. Place redistricting on the ballot and allow citizens to choose. Is this not after all how democracy should work?

Kim Leister. Hello, I'm Kim Leister.

I'm a resident of the town of Franklin, have been for 30 years. And I'm on the town of Franklin Planning Board. This evening, I speak to you as a private citizen. I attend county commissioners meetings pretty often, almost every day. And I've heard a lot of talk about fairness, but it is giving fairness to people who are running versus to what is right for the community, what is fair for citizens. When we look at what's been proposed by the planning board, the 3-2, there's a couple different possibilities. Two districts could have two representatives and one district only have one, or two districts could have one and one district have three. I fail to see how that is fair representation of our citizens, but that's just me. On the town planning board, we have certain criteria when we are deciding what to suggest to the town council. One of the items is, is this in the best interest of the community or is this for individuals? And I think that is one of the things that really needs to be considered when you're looking at the redistricting situation and that the community should be your first priority. A little off topic is the roadless rule that the Department of Interior is repealing. They announced it in June of 2025, and they are working towards formal repeal. There's going to be a public hearing hosted by Mountain True at the Cowie School on July 23rd at 5.30. I encourage everyone to look at this. By repealing the roadless rule, it makes... are national forests more accessible for roads, which can increase mining and logging. I request that the town board look at this situation and put forth a resolution. And I encourage all citizens to attend that open meeting.

Before you get started, Ms. Lisa, is there any way to treat this like graduation and hold our applause for the end? Okay.

Thank you. I really appreciate all of your service. I'm Lisa Walker. I live in Franklin. And I'm once again in front of you to urge you to vote no on the suggested change in the 3-2 voting district. And I appreciate the fact that there's no action to be taken on it tonight. I have attended every one of the planning board meetings on this topic, and I can share that there was no clear decision criteria, no data collection, no data analysis, and no serious consideration of any of the other redistricting options that were on the table, including the simple option solution of leaving districts as they are today and just aligning the term dates for those in District 2. About 20 people gave public comments over the three meetings, and only one person was in support of the 3-2 configuration. If there is a change, the vast majority who spoke want five districts with pure district voting. I realize this is a really heavy lift for Macon County, but this is a serious decision that will last decades. There's been fear mongering about the unconstitutionality of our current map. This was refuted during the planning board meeting. Unfortunately, the county attorney wasn't able to make that meeting and to refute this when the claim was made. Importantly, there are other counties in our state who have a similar configuration to ours with multi-member and single-member districts. I know because I called them. Scotland County, for example, has one multi-member district and three single-member districts. It's constitutional because they all have at-large voting, exactly like Dayton County does today. I think it's really important for constituents to know that you are considering a map that could result in three out of the five county commissioners residing in the least populated area of our county, or more likely, three county commissioners living in the smaller District 2 footprint with significantly expanded territories for District 1 and 3. Either scenario results in over or under representation for voters, and especially for those living in the Nantahala and Highlands districts. The counties that I surveyed chose district configuration to maximize representation and that candidate advantage, which seems to be one of the driving forces for this change. So I urge you to bring this to the people, put it on a ballot, and let us decide. Thank you for your time.

I'm Constance Neely. I'm from Scaly Mountain, and I really appreciate always the opportunity to share our views. The redistricting decision for me is about whether you will strengthen local representation and public trust or weaken both of them. I want my commissioner to live in my community. I want them to know my community, and I want my community to know them so well that they can hold them accountable at the ballot box. And that's why I support the 5-0 option of pure voting. Across three planning meetings, the clear majority of public comments did not support 3-2. One comment supported it. Yet the planning board sent your recommendation for 3-2. And that includes votes from some of the planning board members who never spoke or explained their reasoning. during deliberations. When the public shows up in good faith and board members respond with silence, it undermines the confidence in the process. It raises serious concerns about how that outcome was reached and if that decision was reached in advance of the session. You are not obligated to accept the recommendation of 3.2. you have both the authority and the responsibility to say no. If there's going to be a change, please, it should strengthen representation, not dilute it like it would do for Scaly Mountain. I was at my community association meeting last week, and I asked, who knows about redistricting? Nobody. Nobody in my community at the association meeting knew anything about this process. So I appreciate what I just heard that we are going to go out to the community. I feel like we really need to get the input of voters first and earn the trust of the people that are being served. So this, in my view, would include a robust citizen education process for all the options that were presented and their implications. And that would be followed by a referendum. Please let the voters decide how they're represented.

Hello again and good evening. I'm Margaret Pickett. I live full-time in Highlands. As we're still engaged in a countywide discussion about changing the configuration of the County Commission, I'm asking you to reconsider the issue of at-large voting. The decision by the Planning Commission to vote on and keep at-large voting was made before THE VARIOUS OTHER OPTIONS WERE DISCUSSED AND WAIVED. BY MAKING THAT DECISION, THE OPTION OF A FIVE DISTRICT PEER VOTING OPTION WAS IMMEDIATELY TAKEN OFF THE TABLE. DISTRICT VOTING ALSO KNOWN AS PEER VOTING OPTION ALLOWS THE VOTERS IN THE DISTRICT TO CHOOSE THE REPRESENTATIVE, GIVES THEM GREATER ACCESS TO THE REPRESENTATIVE AND ALLOWS THE REPRESENTATIVE TO HAVE BETTER KNOWLEDGE OF THE DISTRICT'S NEEDS AND ISSUES. ON JUNE 9, THE SAME DAY AS NAKED COUNTY COMMISSION MET TO DISCUSS THE LIBRARY BOARD, HIGHLAND'S TOWN BOARD MET AND WAS PRESENTED WITH THE VARIOUS OPTIONS IN REDISTRICTING NAKED COUNTY. ACCORDING TO A REPORT FROM ONE OF THE MEMBERS, THE CONSENSUS OF THE BOARD WAS THAT BREAKING THE COUNTY INTO 20% population per district is the most logical and fairest way to go. The pure voting option would give the voters greater say and each commissioner a smaller constituency so voters would have the ability to know their representative. As Highlands resides in District 1 and our representative champions the 3-2 option to the county commission, there is no advocate for our government's position on this board. I am here as an advocate for the five-district pure voting option and asking you to reconsider the at-large voting recommendation from the planning board as well as the 3-2 option they recently voted on. As there is no hurry to make a decision and the public comments at the last planning board were overwhelmingly in favor of the five-district option, I hope you will look at all the possibilities for change and seriously reconsider the five district pureboding option to better serve all your constituents. Thank you for your time and service.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. THANK YOU, COMMISSIONERS, FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO ADDRESS YOU TODAY ABOUT REDISTRICTING. I'M LAURENE ROSS. I LIVE IN FRANKLIN. I'M IN THE UNION PRECINCT. I DON'T SUPPORT THE 3-2 PROPOSAL AND I CONTINUE TO QUESTION WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR CURRENT SYSTEM. I ATTENDED THE PLANNING BOARD MEETING, THE LAST ONE, TO LEARN MORE, MYSELF, TO BE THERE. I REALLY CAME AWAY WITH MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS. FOR EXAMPLE, WHAT IS BROKEN ABOUT THE CURRENT SYSTEM? Other than a person wanting to run for commission, a claim that our current system is unconstitutional, that cannot possibly be true. There's been no public concern about our current districts, not from the Elections Board, not from Senator Corbin or Representative Gillespie, not even appearing in the rant and rage section of the Franklin Press, which usually raises these kind of topics. Who will draw the districts? How will precincts be assigned? Will the current precincts be split? Where will my precinct, Union Precinct, end up in this scheme? When will the new plan take effect? What steps must be taken to ensure it meets all North Carolina law? None of this has been fully explained. I fully support Mr. Culpepper's decision to vote no at the planning board. This is in a state of total confusion. We need more answers before this drastic step is taken. I would also remind you that this will affect each and every voter in Macon County, all 29,000 of us. These are the people who should really decide. If you want a change, put it on the ballot. Trust the voters that put you here too. Please vote no. Thanks again.

Thank you very much for allowing me to address this situation and speak to you guys. I'm Ricky Siegel, and I live in Highlands. It's my belief that the plan offered by the Planning Board places Macon County citizens who lived in Highlands in District 1 or the citizens in District 3 at an unfair disadvantage. With three County Commission Board members being elected from three creative districts and two members being elected at large, possibly being elected from high-intensity areas, can mean that one district, District 2, could possibly have three voting board members. A five-district Macon County Board of Commissioners, with each district electing their own representative who lives in their district, and lives in their district, enables each district to have an equal voice. All that's wanted here is for people voting on the issues we care about to the people who live with us and among us and understand the issues and the importance to us. There will no longer be a Highlands District or an Anaheim District, which was set up 50 years ago to give Highlands and Anaheim a voice. Thank you.

anyway thank y'all for letting us speak and i appreciate your patience as much as anything else hopefully y'all can hear me i want to give you a little uh historic perspective on this this was first voted on to change to go to the system that we have now with this is uh districts in 1976 so it's actually 50 years ago um at the time that was uh three county commissioners no districts at all just basically three county commissioners um The reason it came about is taxpayers in the Highlands area decided that they needed some representation. And so they came to the town board, and then they came to the county board and said, give us some representation, just like Nantahala should have some representation, or that area of the county should have representation. At the time, two of the county commissioners are quoted in the Franklin Press saying, HE HAD STILL HEARD NO EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST IN REVISING THE BOARDS EXCEPT FOR THE PROPOSAL FROM THE CITIZENS OF HIGHWAYS. ANOTHER COUNTY COMMISSIONER IS QUOTED AS SAYING HIS OPINION WAS, QUOTE, I STILL FEEL THAT THIS IS NOT IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE COUNTY. BUT THEY HAD THE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS DID DECIDE TO PUT IT ON THE BALLOT AND IT WAS ON THE BALLOT FOR THE 1976 NOVEMBER ELECTION. AND THEY DIVIDED THIS UP INTO THE THREE DISTRICTS, THE what we call Highlands District, which is Flats, Highlands, Sugar Fork, and Ellijay. The Nantahala District, which is Kartuka Jay, Nantahala, Burning Town, and Cowie. And then the center district didn't get divided up, not because they didn't want to, but because they did not have the actual population data to allow them to divide that into three districts. And so they kept it as one district and gave them three commissioners. So they had the vote. And the vote was overwhelmingly in favor by everybody in the county. The good people of Macon County saw the fairness of having representation from other areas of the county and overwhelmingly voted over 2-1 to have these districts and have representation in the other counties. So even though the county commissioners didn't think it was going to be necessary, they did in fact go ahead and put it on a ballot. had a referendum, and the good people of Macon County, fair-minded that they are, all said, yes, that's the only fair way of doing it. And so I ask you to please consider putting it on a ballot and letting people understand what's going on, educate them the way it's going to happen, and let them decide how we want to elect our county commissioners.

Heather Johnson. Thanks.

Hi. My name is Heather Johnson. I'm a resident of Alto. Thank you for leaving more time to do the proper data collection and hear from your constituents before going on this issue. There's no rush to make redistricting changes. That leaves appropriate time to listen to your constituents and do the neutral due diligence and data collection needed to ensure apolitical neutrality and that the residents of Macon County are properly and fairly represented. Thank you.

so far but i'll save my comments for later thank you all right all right let's move on to data centers josh yes sir would it be appropriate to or just wait till it comes up i'd like to address on the day though we've got it on the agenda okay i'll wait because anyways there's a lot of missus that's uh data centers i'm sorry Let's move on to data centers, and our first speaker is Matt Jackson.

Hey, guys. Oh, this works really well. So first off, I really want to thank the community more than anything else. Last week, I was extremely proud of how many people showed up for such an important factor that could happen to our small town and our small county. It was interesting. When I came in, I saw pickup trucks and Subarus alike. I saw, you know, sandals and boots. And I saw locals and I saw damn Floridians. They're all here. They all agreed on the same thing. They didn't want any data centers in our area. Now, we do have a wonderful thing in this county. As a realtor, one thing I love doing is taking people around and saying, this is unrestricted. And they go, oh, there's no way it is. They don't believe me. There's caveats. There has to be. And I say, no, it's unrestricted. As long as you're not doing something against the law or against the EPA, it's unrestricted. You can do whatever you want. That's for the local man. It's not for businesses. restrictions, and you guys have done a good job. You guys have put some good restrictions on the board. You've helped with float ordinances. I know that was a tricky one, a messy one for a little bit. And then there's also the crypto mining, which I agree with. I see the high-impact ordinances for the crypto mining. I disagree just at face value. I want to look at it a little bit more. Now, just putting data centers is a catch-all. I worry that there are too many loopholes that can be involved with that. I like that the fact that the Talon is putting a year moratorium on it for research purposes. I fear the idea of just slapping the data center label next to cryptocurrency is enough. I just have concerns about it. So that's really why I'm still talking, even though we have some potential movement. I'm glad to hear y'all are not in favor of any data centers. I hope that stands true. And since I got one minute left, all y'all were very good... Students of Bob Barker, I hope, every last one of y'all. So I hope you all understand how important it is to stay new to your best, and I'm sure you all do. Please, please, I encourage you, go one step further. And please tell your friends and your family, snip them. Get them snipped. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, gentlemen. Nice to see you here up in this nice big room. And the room is small. I'm going to start with you asked for any changes that need to be made on the red line part of the document. Commended ordinance regulating high impact land uses in Macon County, Chapter 157, page 10, number 21, the chart of specs for separation, setbacks and buffers. You said you don't like the language under the crypto mining line item. Please broaden the definition of these facilities. That's what the county commission did. The town council, sorry, that's what the town council did, was felt like it was too specific. Making it broader makes it harder. So I can give you this page if you want to just, you can do that. Now, apologies to storytellers of African and American Traditions and to Joel Chandler Harris. Well now, those rascally county commissioners hated Betsy Baste on account of she was always speaking up and being bossy. So those commissioners decided to capture and kill her spirit. They thought and thought until they came up with a plan. They would let tech companies come in and build and make lots of money and not pay taxes and destroy the environment. So they lured Betsy in with their plan. Oh, please, gentlemen, please, do whatever you do. Don't throw me into the untouched forest and make me hike a trail. March me, roast me, shame me, do whatever you please, only please, gentlemen, don't make me cattle on those cool, clear waters of the Little Tennessee River when it hasn't rained. Drown me, march me, shame me, do whatever, please, only don't torture me with peaceful, quiet spaces. Blast my ears, drown me, do whatever you please. Don't make me drink clear water from my well. But despite all my pleas to do otherwise, you protected our forests and our rivers. You ensured that our communities have quiet spaces and clear waters to drink. You see, I was born in a small town, and I believe it's important to value and protect the people and our land. So thank you for doing that needed things.

Chuck Watson.

Good evening, I'm Chuck Watson. Long time. A resident of Macon County, choose to live here and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. I appreciate every person here and what you do for Macon County. I want to talk about a couple things tonight. Data centers, I don't want to talk about much because I'm ignorant. I don't I have some concerns about data centers, and before I speak too negatively of it, I feel like I should get a better education. What I do know about data centers is it doesn't seem like where we need to be in Macon County. So moving on to the flock campers. I appreciate our law enforcement. We've had a good run of Sheriff's Department. Thank you very much. I appreciate what you do every day. However, I feel like the fly cameras absolutely step on and infringe on our privacy rights. And you can easily argue, say, hey, that helps us in law enforcement. And I can see how, I see how it would, and I would agree with that. However, we have flock cameras now, and by far, we're not without crime. And I'm not sure that it's helped a whole lot. But what I'm most concerned about flock cameras is, where does it go from here? went from 14 days to three years of overreach, and that's not where we need to be in that county. So those are my concerns tonight, and thank you for listening.

Rob James.

Hi, my name is Rob James. I'm a lifelong resident of Macon County. I've come up here to ask that if we can to put a further moratorium on data centers. I have worked in the computer industry as a server tech for about the last 20 years or so. And let's see. confusion about what type of data center we're talking about here. As I've seen a lot of people comment online about how we already have data centers, I don't see what the difference is. The type of data center I'm referring to is not the couple of server racks in the local business, or even the ones that take up the bottom floor of a building somewhere, but the ones in some of our neighboring counties that span 70 acres can draw hundreds of megawatts of power. The kind of centers that morph our local Walmart 10 times over require gas turbine generators, not as a backup, but to operate day to day. The kind that drink creeks dry and wells and replace the water with murky, chemical-laden cooling system discharge. For the last two decades, I've watched as CEOs have lost their minds and fortunes trying to make the next big thing in tech happen. You might remember how everything was going 3D, or how VR and metaverse were the way we were going to go with everything online. Now AI is the bright, shining future for those old enough to reach for it. Get into it or get left behind. The problem is that brave new world sacrifices require sacrifices made in the form of vast amounts of water, land, and power. Enough resources to sustain, house, and heat entire space populations. All of that to generate a picture, fake a video, or replace a person on a computer with an LLM that uses everybody's internet posts to hallucinate answers to the questions it's asked. all while the companies building these data centers are burning money they don't even have for a product that doesn't make money. For anyone who would like to see this in real time, there's a website out there called AIprofitable.com. Go see it for yourself. What you will be greeted with is an answer to the question, no. Just below there are graphs that show all of the major AI companies and the amount of money that they are burning in real time. to make AI happen. The only companies listed in that that are in the green are the hardware companies selling the silicon or virtual shovels to all these miners. All the while, those companies are being paid with IOUs. What I'm saying is let's not sacrifice our future for this house of cards business idea. that will not create any jobs around here, even construction or anything like that. They hire huge national companies to come in and build these things. And honestly, speaking on the flock cameras, a lot of these are being used to take that flock camera data and collate it and run the AI LLMs against that so that they can load up information on people if they need to. All right. So I thank you all. I know you're down.

Thank you. Michael Scarborough. Scarborough. Scarborough. Yeah. Hi, I'm Michael Scarborough. Thank you for giving me a chance to speak. I'm very proud of my community. I was at the city meeting before. heard all the evils of data centers, and I will agree with most of them that they are not something we want our community, we don't need. They've got built-in obsolescence, then we have to deal with the problem that they left us not only with what they've done to our environment, but the fact that they need a giant high score in our community. So that's all been rehashed over a million times. We have an ordinance in place that tries to address it. It does need improvement. The term like is very vague. The other big problem with this is if some builder comes in and they want their data center, they need all the setbacks. They buy no property. They need all the setbacks that are in the right area. Then it's up to you guys to have another zoning commission board and to change the zoning where it's the public wants. Biggest problem with that is lack of transparency in zoning changes. It is very, very, I've been the resident here now 12 years. I try to follow these changes. I've been part and active part of the government where I came from. I'm an IT person by nature. It is very difficult to find what these zoning ordinance are going to be talked about in these meetings. It just says zoning ordinance blah, blah, blah. Then you have to go search through the websites and try to find it. Often you can't even find it. You can find it on some of the media pages and some people talk to you about it, but it is not very public and very clear. to do is when you have these zoning changes, throw up an extra page that lists these zonings so people can go online and look. It would avoid a lot of the confusion and a lot of the anger that you've even seen. Most of this is all over miscommunications. The people don't understand what's going on. You need to find a better way to be clearer to your constituents. Now I'll give you back to the minute and say thank you.

Thank you, Michael.

Ms. Judy, you might have to help me with your last name. I'm sorry. Oh, Judy Hartley.

Well, I was at the last meeting. I don't know if I'm allowed to do this. At the meeting, we were with the town, the lawyer. Is he the lawyer? He's from the county? So can I ask the question? They said they were going to do a moratorium. And the lawyer said, you know, that they were going to do that so they could investigate because the language was not really sufficient for what we were going to try and not let the data science come in. So I'm hoping that you all will agree to a moratorium. And I'm hoping that the lawyer will find the proper wording which will not let anybody slip in somewhere. So, Gallaudet said, we have 330,000 acres in Macon County. Half of that is in federal land. Most of the data centers, I'm here to talk about the data centers. Most of the data centers are probably thousands of acres. Now, we have a lot of mountains. We don't have a whole lot of flat land. Everybody comes and builds on the side of the mountain. But coming into our beautiful county from Clayton, there is lots of land on both sides. And I just think it would be a terrible thing. I don't know how much of that is for sale. And it just would break my heart that people come here to hunt and fish and you boys hunt and fish. And you don't want that messed up. And as a county, it's a little different to town. does tourism, but county, I think you're more probably, you know, not that they're not concerned about us, but the data centers, from what I know, I did everything, and that young man there, he made a comment, I think, at the last meeting. Water is something you can't live without, and we really don't know what the toxic waste is. You know, when I was doing some investigating, it's called e-waste. But nothing tells me where this goes. I'm assuming it goes into the ground. I'm assuming it goes into our water. And it would be a terrible, terrible thing. It not only would affect the humans, but the beautiful deer we have and all of the fish that you all hunt. It's not going to be here. And if it is, it ain't going to be worth it So we really have to think about this seriously. The lawyer really, he's going to have to earn his pay. So find the words that will keep anybody from sneaking in and doing it. There are already, in this great place called America, 4,500 data centers. They are built all over America. Go ahead. you off put your times up okay can i just take this last thing this is i just got one little very great place okay um they're built all over our beautiful nation in california illinois louisiana they have a meta one it's 3 500 acres and in 10 years this is what the young man said in 10 years The technology that is here now is gonna be non-existent. You walk out of Walmart with a computer, it's already obsolete. And that's what's gonna happen. You got those big buildings, you need to think about them ugly monstrosities. Thank you.

Good evening. I'm sorry I had a whole thing planned, but it looks like I may not need to say half of it. I do want to point out that the reason I'm speaking tonight is because the data centers would create so much light pollution, it would actually damage your tourism economy. Because most of your tourism around here, you may not know it, comes from dark sky tourism. And if you look on this really pitiful little picture I took for you, screenshot, of the light pollution map, This little tiny blue spot is Manahala. And right in there means you get to see the Milky Way. And it's one of the few places in Western North Carolina, dare I say the region, if you want to go an hour drive to go see the Milky Way. A data center would create so much light pollution that you would see it from one of your balls, trust me. I'm taking pictures. With the light pollution we currently have, we are in trouble, gentlemen, and I really suggest it would be wise to do what you can to let me do light pollution because your tourism from dark skies actually pays more than your regular tourism because they stay overnight. They spend money in your community a little longer than a regular day tourist. And the reason that matters is because I'm into lighting bugs. I mean, it's my business, and they will not handle... any more increasing light pollution. And we are also the salamander capital of the world. I don't know if I told you this. I probably have before. That is important because we are currently in an extinction crisis. And our area, we are in a four or more species that are possibly endangered or threatened. And we really We really need to do what we can, gentlemen, to save this because those little words in your legal language, every little word, you've got a lot hanging on it. I want you to make sure your words are nice and buttoned up top, better than me. And if you could, the thought cameras, they are not very good because they, too, require the data centers. I don't think that's a good thing. And if we could, yeah, I think redistricting weight would be a good idea, too. Thank you very much.

I appreciate your time.

Just a second ago, our county attorney mentioned that there would be restrictions at the Bitcoin facilities that one was built here in the county based on noise. What restrictions are against Bitcoin facilities about drained water? my question um because the bitcoin facility in andrews was converted to a data center and that was the loophole they used was it being a bitcoin facility so i just think we should have way more restrictions than just noise on a on a bitcoin facility making county um that's the loophole we're educated enough in this county to see what's going on also that area is where the land looks like a data center would probably go. Why are we trying to split up the districts and change the voting where also in that area may not be represented fairly enough anymore where the data center would probably go? Our town manager said in a news report that we have places in Macon County that would, closer word, embrace or accommodate a data center in Macon County. So which parts of Macon County and what districts are worth giving up for a data center so we can have clean drinking water for our children and their grandchildren? Some of you men ran on the terms of that you are a sixth generation Mekonian. How far are you willing to go to protect the sixth and seventh and eighth and ninth generations that come here from cancer, from the noise pollution, from everything that's associated with these data centers? People across the nation are crying out and not being represented over this. The last thing I'd like to say is AI has never worked a 12 or 14 hour shift. It doesn't know what a real life sacrifice is like trying to determine are you gonna be able to pay your bills on time or pay for your kid to go to camp. It doesn't know what it's like to have a sacrifice where you can fix your car or pay your credit card times or medical bills on time. It doesn't know how to, it's not real, it's fake. It's called artificial for a reason. It doesn't feel emotion, it's never lived. Do we invest in our resources, which are our children and water, have in this county it's the only resource in the entire galaxy that isn't just anywhere else but on this planet or we can let our clean drinking water which is the smallest amount of water on this planet be exploited for computers or do we choose humanity Are you fighting for people or are you fighting for robots to take our jobs? What happens in five years from now when you call 911 and you say you have a medical emergency and they don't understand your momma's southern accent and a data center is answered by Bo Dingle's drive-thru instead of a human being? We need to invest in humans. Our kids are looking at you gentlemen. Your decisions you make tonight reflect and will be your legacy forever. Nothing you've done for this county matters more than protecting us against data centers, and you will be held against this forever if you don't vote clearly and represent the people in this community. We will hold it against you forever. When you go up to dinner, everybody's not going to forget about it. This is how it is. If you chose to be politicians and to be on the spotlight and to be judged, this is part of it. You're getting in. We love you. Please represent us.

Nathan Pound.

Nathan Pound.

I'm coming. Give me a minute. All right. I'm neither a Republican or a Democrat. I'm the son of Appalachia. NAFTA was the scalpel to kill American manufacturing. with so many fired, wages and benefits fraud. AI ain't no scalpel. It's a motorized bone saw, and data centers are the motor. Just to turn it on requires the inflation of power bills and computer parts, and pollution that inflates health care. Who among us rednecks and hillbillies consented for a working class double amputation? Big tech bet the farm on AI, and it's a bumble. In their desperation to turn it into a cash cow, why would our lives matter? What's it called when someone forces herself onto another? How different is it when a community says no and is then violated? Washington and Raleigh ain't coming to save us. The Gold Wars, the Battle of Blair Mountain in particular, teaches when Apple actions seek justice, flatlander governments will happily shoot and bomb us to protect flatlander profits. When a land A once-in-a-millennium catastrophe struck Appalachia. Republicans flocked to aid and Democrats played the quiet game. Would Appalachian would testify against another for rotting a computer virus or tampering with sensors to disable a data center's cooling system so it melts down? Would Appalachian jury would convict for less restrained acts of self-defense? Your unanimous support against these data centers is expected. We can no more afford to be weakened by division. than by going it alone. Appalachia must be unified as never before, so the fascist threatening any community is treated as a threat to all. And you must play your part in that, though we don't expect you to do it alone, of course. You didn't sign up to help organize the defense of Appalachia, but here we are. If you're not up to the task, you can honorably step down and we'll respect you all the more for it.

Thank you very much.

Maybe we need to practice golf claps.

Thank you very much for having me. I'm Pam Haley. I live in Highlands, North Carolina. And one word kind of bothered me when you said restricted use of data centers. So I went around and I looked at some places where there are data centers. And here's what I found out. there's a constant high-pitched hum coming from these cooling equipment and the on-site power generations. People have difficulty sleeping. So I'm wondering if there's a low-pitched hum, are you still going to have the data centers with a restricted data center? People are having to keep their windows closed year-round. Some people are even resorting to putting plexiglass plexiglass, and even mattresses up against their windows. So, I mean, is this a way to live? In Prince William County, Virginia, they said there was catastrophic industrial noise coming from these centers. The sound penetrated inside their homes, so it was 24-7. The outdoor, of course, became totally unpleasant. And existing county ordinances were not written with data centers in mind, therefore making difficult enforcement. So it couldn't be enforced depending on when the laws were written. In Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, there's constant noise, similar to a freight train. I left Florida to get away from hurricanes. It sounded like freight trains. Bright lighting at night that somebody already mentioned. Of course, property values are going down. I mean, nobody wants to live near these data centers. I think that's pretty clear. So I'm just asking you to please protect the people of Macon County and especially the future generations and always vote against these data centers, not even with restricted use of data centers. Just know on data centers of all kinds. Thank you very much.

sorry i'm sorry i just have to say one thing i forgot man i'm sorry we're in public comment you had your time i hate to be that guy my name is linda tyler i live in franklin technically

Actually, I guess I'm kind of talking about data centers because, as I've read several times, we already have a data center. We have a library. We have several libraries. They're wonderful. And they provide the data that we need in many ways. I would like to say that exiting and ending the FRL, I think it's a horrible idea. It's served us for over 80 years. It continues to serve us today. Jackson County left. They made their bed. They don't have to lie in it. Moving forward with the FRL to support and hopefully change y'all's mind and maintain it is going to require thinking outside the box. Maybe we can find another county that wants to join us. Maybe it would help them out financially. We also need to put people on the library boards that support the library and want it to continue. It's not reasonable to expect people that are not in favor of a library system to try and support and maintain and improve it they're just not going to have to hurt it so please consider that when you're thinking about board members to put out

in LJ Precinct. I teach at the high school. I was at South Lincoln before that. I want to talk about a couple things. A real brief on the data center. As folks have said, clean water is everything. And I appreciate the work that you all do because sitting at these meetings all the time and all the things that you do is, it's a slog and I get it.

And I thank you all for it, for being willing to serve. THAT WE LIVE IN THE HEADWATERS FOR THE ENTIRE SOUTHEAST.

I SPOKE OUT AGAINST FRACKING WHEN THAT WAS BEING TALKED ABOUT AT THE STATE LEVEL, AND I THOUGHT IF THE WATER IN THESE MOUNTAINS IS POLLUTED, IT'S GOING TO KILL THE ENTIRE SOUTHEAST. IT'S NOT JUST AFFECTING MAGEN COUNTY.

THAT'S OUR RESPONSIBILITY, WHETHER WE WANT IT OR NOT. THAT'S JUST REALITY, AND I APPRECIATE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THAT.

far as the library um i was i served five i think five years on uh on the fontana board in franklin and uh with ms karen wallace and we had very liberal people we had very conservative people on the board and we were doing the best we could um and and you probably read my letter so i don't want to get in all into all the politics but basically there was a throw out the baby with the bathwater. And I think that was a horrible decision. They didn't get what they wanted in Maine County, so they went off to Jackson County and let that go down. And now I know it's left to y'all to deal with the financial impact. I guess my biggest thing is, from what I've read, meeting, y'all voted to withdraw from the Fontana Regional Library System. And from what I read, and correct me if I'm wrong, that was not on the agenda. So I have some serious questions as to the legitimacy of that decision, and I know we have time to reverse it. Somebody just mentioned possibly looking at other counties. I don't even know. This is just a spitball and brainstorming thing. with the charity Wall of Boundary, if there are other ways to do this, because I know the burden is heavy. It's a lot of money, but it's a good system. Thank you.

Thank you, Dan.

All right, moving on. My last sheet. Patricia Tracy. This page is labeled block cameras.

Yes, yes. I just, I wanted to speak about the block cameras. In the military, the most prized analytical tool is a pattern of life analysis. We take scattered data plots, a vehicle here, a signal there, and assemble them into an intimate portrait of the target, where they pray, where they sleep, who they meet. They used that against foreign enemies and declared combat under strict rules because they understand how powerful that is. Flock sells that same exact military capability to local police, and it points the cameras at us. This isn't just taking photos of speeders. Flock uses AI to build a vehicle fingerprint, blocking the make, the color, and the bumpers, even your bumper stickers. to track movements over days without a warrant. Combine the software, like the upcoming Leonardo signal trace, it reads electronic signals from phones, smartwatches, tire pressure sensors, and even pet microchips to build a total digital profile. MIT researchers proved that just four location points can uniquely identify 95% of people. Flock scans over 20 billion plates a month. In this system, nobody is a suspect, yet everyone is tracked. The legal ground beneath these systems is collapsing. In Schmidt v. The City of Norfolk, residents challenged 200 Flock cameras. While the lower courts relied on outdated arguments, the Supreme Court's recent ruling at Khatri v. The United States made clear that government tracking of location history, even brief windows, even stored by third parties, is a Fourth Amendment search. Justice Gorsuch explicitly warned that modern location data is a protected effect. A warrantless plate database is in severe legal jeopardy. Proponents will tell you that these cameras solve crimes, but catching a thief doesn't justify handing the government a machine that surveils everyone first and asks questions later. The framers wrote the Fourth Amendment specifically to destroy the general warrant, the idea that police can rummage through free people hoping to catch something. And the abuse isn't hypothetical. The Institute for Justice documented dozens of cases where officers used flock to stalk ex-partners. One officer ran an excess plate 69 times. That's why major cities have moved to cancel or pull the plug on these contracts. Commissioners, when you place a reasonable search record of every citizen's daily travels in the hand of government without a warrant, you aren't buying a safety tool. You are funding a military-grade civilian apparatus aimed inward at the very people who elect it.

That was very informative and scary as AT double toothpicks. Anyway, thanks again for letting everybody talk tonight. This is not the first time that you've done that and I really appreciate when you see a need that you expand a little bit and that's If, just briefly on the five, on the county commissioner, if we have three and two, everybody's voting for everybody. There's still five at large. It's just because one person lives in one place. Everybody's voting on that person. They're still at large. I mean, it doesn't make sense to have districts and then not be voting for somebody in your district. On the fly cameras, I can't believe this happened. We have at least 22 of these things in our community. This is y'all's job to watch out for our community. And this didn't happen. This is already here. This is just like when they cleaned the river up. All of a sudden, oh, they destroyed our rivers. Oh, we should have known about that. I think we need to get ahead of these things. As a commission, we need to know, we need to see what's coming down the road. We don't need to be spending time on who's reading what book or who's doing this and that. and what's going to harm us, like these data centers. I appreciate the board's feelings on these data centers, and I really hope we can word this in such a way that we can prevent these things from coming in. I know New York just passed data center prevention laws. I just saw something in my feed this morning about it. I know they have nothing against our local lawyer, but I'm sure New York has a lot of lawyers working on this thing, so they probably have something that's pretty tightly worded, and maybe we can

good evening commissioners mr county attorney mr county manager i'm here to speak against the use of flock cameras in macon county it seems to me that what this amounts to is basically a warrantless search. It just seems to me that you have data being maintained, as I understand it, by a company that has a contract with law enforcement. That makes no sense to me. It sounds like China. and you know I'm not anti-law enforcement by any stretch of the imagination but this goes above and beyond and it needs to stop and there are a number of communities that have already stopped it and I have a list of some of those which has been compiled by an organization called deflock.org and I brought enough copies which y'all can each have one and track it down for yourselves, should you be so inclined, and I hope you are. There's going to be a lot said by a lot of people about this, so I'm going to shut up and let other people have their say. Thank you.

Good evening. Each of you as elected officials, as well as all of the law enforcement officers that serve in Macon County, took an oath to support, uphold, and defend the constitutions in the United States and North Carolina. The key word in my mind is defend. Enshrined and protected in our constitutions are our freedoms. These documents exist not to tell us what we can and cannot do. but rather to tell you, the government and its officials, what you can and cannot do, so that we remain a free people. We give you our consent to be governed. You promised God and all in Macon County to support, uphold, and defend these freedoms, not slowly let them erode away. Also critical to this discussion is the word prudence. Not as common today, but it held great weight in the day of our founding fathers. It's the idea that decisions must be made with foresight for the future. While these cameras in Macon County may not have violated someone's freedoms yet, surely you can see the potential for abuse, not just locally, but by anyone who is capable of gaining access to this data. Further prudence would also recognize that the mere presence of legal battles across the country would require, at the very least, a pause. What happens if, in a year or two, the courts discover that these indeed violate the Constitution? Are you okay with facing the citizens of Macon County and saying, we had the chance to wait, but we proceeded anyway, hope you can accept our apologies? Please do not be short-sighted. Look at the precedence this could create. The last time you had the chance to defend freedom was the COVID pandemic. Back then, you sided with agencies and government officials rather than our individual freedoms. Siding you had no choice. You had to follow their instructions. Now it is different. Now you hold the entirety of the issue in your hands. Remember your oath to defend the Constitution, to defend our freedoms. That should be your primary focus in a truly free society. It should be very hard to violate our freedoms. That's the point. I know that in this instance that may make law enforcement's job harder at times. But we should see that as the blessing of freedom, not a hurdle to work around. That is a tough line to walk, but such is the burden you bear as leaders in a free society. If the argument is to approve any and all measures to make law enforcement's job easier, then where does that end? Some have argued that a phone or a smart TV or even social media can already be used to track people, and that's correct. But I can get rid of all of those things if I so choose. What we're talking about is government-mandated and controlled surveillance technology implemented against not only the will of the people, but against the freedom protected by the Constitution. Defend the Constitution and uphold your oaths.

You needn't have anybody else. I don't come up here very much, but this is very, very serious to me. I do believe in my fourth amendment of the Constitution to not be searched with unreasonable aspects of it. When you say that I drive off of my property line and now I can be searched, I just don't agree with that. I don't consent to it and I don't think our government should either. I respectfully request that you guys not put not one more penny on surveilling us and trying to prove us guilty, and then we gotta prove ourselves. I have been watching videos over the past month and a half of atrocities created on the American people, and then they had to go prove themselves. That is not the way this is supposed to work. The sheriff is supposed to, or the police officers are supposed to find the problem, they're supposed to go before a judge, they're supposed to get a warrant, and then they can spell us. That's the way it works. We do not need mass surveillance in Macon County. And I heard Bill Tritt say something about China. I mean, China's the most available country in the world. Is that what we're here to do? I'm afraid we are. I don't think we need any mass surveillance in Macon County. And I would greatly appreciate it if you all would do your best to stop any mass surveillance in Macon County. Thank you.

Firstly, I'd like to thank my community for everybody being here, because we all love our home. I thank all of y'all for your service and your commitment to that. I do want to talk about the plot camera, but I want to talk about it from kind of a different point of view. The Fourth Amendment and the Constitution of the United States says that we should have a reasonable expectation of privacy. That's what it says, period. When you're collecting this data, can I ask you all a question? If you just raise your hand, how many of the commissioners knew about this before recently?

Isn't that awful? Okay.

all for law enforcement. And I'm all for having whatever tools you all need to do your jobs. I understand that. But if I got four boys, if I'm raising four boys, and one of them does something wrong, I can't beat the other three for what Billy did wrong. And that's kind of what it looks like going on here. In 1970, important in the Constitution that the Supreme Court took this up in 1967 and expanded the Fourth Amendment. And the reason they did that was, and it was in, y'all can look it up, it was Katz versus the United States. The reason they did that was to stop electronic surveillance, digital data searching, and law enforcement practices. So it's four. You can't, the sheriff, no matter what I do, he can't come to my house and just walk in. That's why they can't have arbitrary power over doing just what they want to do. Or whoever decided that this was a good thing. You have to have it. You have to show just cause. You have to tell them. Just because you've got bad people coming into the county, take care of that. I'm all for that. But you can't surveil the rest of us that didn't do anything. And where is my data at? Who's holding it? Or is it secure? Is somebody going to steal my ability from me? I don't know. That's about all.

Good evening, my name is Jamie Miller and I live in Franklin. And I think that we've heard from the audience here of where everybody's heart is at. I did write a speech, but I'm gonna tell you something a little bit more personal. My mom has this thing on her iPhone called Stock by Family. that she likes to use. And to tell you the truth, I love my mother. But to tell you, I'm 45. I don't want my mother to know exactly where I'm at every single moment of the day. And I love my government, but I don't trust you as much as I trust my mother. So in lieu of that, I don't want the government to keep an eye on me I know what I'm doing, I'm going to work and I'm coming home, but I don't need to have somebody else micromanaging where else I go, where else I do and who else I'm speaking to and who I'm meeting up with and what I'm doing in my personal time. I find that that is the reason why we have such a great freedom in this country is to be free of our privacy and be able to conjugate without having a fingerprint pressed down on us. The only thing I'm going to say is at the very end is to anyone says that if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear. First, I want you to ask yourself a few questions. If you did nothing wrong, would you want to publish your map of everywhere where you go? And can I see that? The other question is, is that who and when are they going to be able to get this information? um is it going to be through a judge is it a warrant or is it going to be something where a police department can call flock and get that information right from the get-go i find that there is definitely a an issue here that we definitely need to resolve and i think that um the community has definitely spoken on this thank you how you guys doing this evening i'm jeff miller um i'm gonna

Put this to the side so everybody kind of has an idea of what flock cameras do and what they can do and what they're going to do in the future. As many of you guys in this room know, I'm Jeff Miller. I'm probably on the flock hot list from the Sheriff's Department. I made a mistake over 20 years ago, and I want to give you guys my point of view. I live in constant fear every day of my life because I'm surveilled. What I did when I was a kid was what made me in a category where I'm constantly checked up on. I'm always surveilled. I'm always watched. I have been targeted. I've been attacked professionally, personally by officers, by people. I'm just trying to be the best person I can be with what I have. knowing how being surveilled is just, it's the hardest thing to live with. I've suffered with depression because I've been where I don't know how to go on with my life sometimes because it's so hard. And that's where we're going as a society is we're going to be surveilled probably worse than what I'm dealing with. I mean, I'm going to get 10 times worse than they are again. But We're going to lose all our rights. We're going to lose everything. We're not going to be able to go outside our houses. There's going to be drones with microphones on them. I mean, they already have microphones on power poles just saying, you know, listening for everything we're saying. You know, you have a political party that you're leaning on. That's going to be marked in these AI databases. It's going to know everything about you and where you're they can target certain people. I mean, I don't know if the whole FEMA camp thing is true, but I mean, they have a way of getting aggregated data to pinpoint who they want to put in, who they want to lock up. And it's just, it's not a good thing. I mean, I think Sheriff Holbrook is a good guy and he's very fair. And I respect the fact that the cameras are good for you know, getting criminals, but I mean, how many criminals is it taking down compared to all the violations of the Fourth Amendment right for all of us citizens? That's about all I got to say. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, commissioners. I stand with you tonight in opposition to flock cameras, which are an egregious offense to a free people. Their existence is a knife in the back to every soldier going back to our founding who died or was maimed for life for the cause of our liberty. Benjamin Franklin said that those who give up a necessary liberty for temporary safety deserve neither. Our founders are rolling in their graves people who call themselves Americans who willingly surrender the liberty that tens of thousands gave their lives, wealth, and property to protect and secure for future generations. In only a few short hours of research, I was able to identify a myriad of abuses of these cameras. I will not mention them all, but will highlight one in particular. In Georgia, which resulted in criminal charges, a police officer used the cameras to stalk his ex-wife and her new lover. He was then investigated by an officer from his own internal affairs department and summarily charged criminally. However, the very officer from internal affairs that investigated him was then charged for having used it 20 more times against someone that he was stalking. So, he doesn't have a good track record here. History has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that sinful men in different positions cannot be trusted with much power, if any at all. George Orwell's book, 1984, once required reading in high school literature classes here in Macon County, painted a picture of a future dystopian nightmare of a government that spies and tracks every single person and uses the invasive tech to exercise tyranny upon them. The technology which is employed against American citizens right now, violating our right to privacy and to be secure in our persons and property for warrantless searches, exponentially exceeds what that dystopian nightmare novel describes. The flock camera companies have already been caught lying about the capabilities of their tech. Let me provide a couple of examples from the investigation of a security researcher, Ben Jordan. He states, flock license plate meters take a time stamp photo of every vehicle that passes every camera. Police can search your historical travel information for 30 days. This creates a searchable database of everyone, not just the suspects of crime. If you were to build a graph of that sheet and plot it to a map, now it's as if you had a GPS on your car for the entire month. The supposed transparent flock company won't publish the total, but there are at least 15 cities that have flock-powered real-time crime centers, live network surveillance hubs, quietly watching everything that moves. Their condor cameras are PTZ units that use AI to detect, zoom in on, and follow people in real time, panning and tilting to track human movement and sending live video to police. Security procedures found dozens of these streaming openly online with no passwords. letting anyone watch people walking or leaving homes in real time. While having lived a greater part of my childhood here in Franklin and graduating from Franklin High in 1987, go class of 87. I lived a long time in Naples, Florida and Collier County while there almost a decade ago at this point. I helped over here in the campaign to have a red light campaign.

I just cut you off, sir, but it's time.

Thank you. Let me just ask, I'm not asking that you get rid of the red light campaign.

really reluctant to ask this, but does anybody else want to speak on any of the topics we just discussed? I've got two more. Please address the mic and state your name for the record, please.

Mr. Chairman, members of the board, thank you for your time. My name is Bodie Catlin and I am a resident of Macon County. I am standing before you tonight to ask this board to vote no on contracting with or expanding the use of flock safety cameras in our county. I want to be very clear from the outset, this is not an argument against supporting law enforcement, Chair, nor is it an argument against using technology to solve crimes. masquerading as simple traffic enforcement. Traditional license plate readers act like a targeted net. They scan a plate, check it against a list of stolen vehicles or active warrants, and move on. Flock cameras do not do that. Flock uses AI to capture what they call a vehicle fingerprint. logging every car's main model color bumper stickers and unique dents more importantly it stores that data in a centralized nationwide cloud database shared across thousands of jurisdictions additional research in the flock's terms of service notes the ability to also scan and store driver and passenger facial recognition Under this system, 99% of the people tracked every day are innocent citizens going about their lives. When you place flock cameras across our county roads, you're building a searchable 30-day historical heat map of every resident's private life, all without a warrant for judicial oversight. The US Supreme Court made the constitutional danger of this clear in Chattery v. United States. The court ruled that geofencing, sweeping up location data on everyone in an area to catch a suspect, is a Fourth Amendment search requiring a warrant. The justices recognize that dragnet digital tracking intrudes on our reasonable expectations of privacy regardless of whether the data is held by a third-party company. Flock operates on the exact same suspect logic as a geofence warrant. suspect with probable cause, Flock turns our public roads into a digital dragnet. Beyond the legal ethical concerns, Flock operates on an expensive recurring subscription model. Our taxpayers will be locked into paying ever-increasing annual fees for technology we do not own, store this data on servers we do not control. Commissioner, safety and freedom are not mutually exclusive. We can empower law enforcement with proven targeted investigative tools without turning our public roads into a permanent digital checkpoint. I urge you to protect our constitutional rights, protect our local budget, and say no

your name to the right place.

Hello, Michael Lyons, Union Precinct, District 2, I believe. I'm wanting to be the one person, if no one else, to say I support the creative ideas you guys have come up with with new voting districts. I, being part of District 2, have enjoyed three people out of my district for a very long time, but I see talent in Highlands and I see talent in Anaheila, and that shouldn't necessarily be limited to a single individual. is very large i feel they have the abilities that should have the ability to do that second of all on the topic of data centers i work over in swain county and i know the commissioners over there have taken this issue very seriously as well and i would like you guys to know that there is a publicly uh public volunteer group right now working for the entire year ahead of their moratorium revote next year in the spring so that they can lock down all the restrictions, all the different pollutants that their data centers could generate. So I encourage you to talk across county lines to that county commission, find out, get their findings, and consider adding them to your own. Now, that said, I think there's something that needs to be said on that topic. I don't like the idea of selling off my precious Macon County land, the people, this territory that my family has been a part of since the Revolutionary War, to anything that could fall through, that could damage us, scar this territory. But I also understand how there's strong value. And when there is value, you have to ask, okay, what exactly are you offering? These people are not making some money. They're making money. an insane amount of money. And so if they were to come here, I encourage you, make it strict. Sell yourselves high. These companies can sometimes make billions of dollars per acre. And so this is something that if they were to come here, they could invest heavily and everything needed to make sure this is as clean as possible. I'm just saying that I don't like the idea, but there's too much money to delete more. And finally, I want to talk to the cameras. I want you guys to know that there's a lady whose name is... Karisna Elsner, she was falsely accused for stealing a package off of a person's door, and she fought for months in court just to show, and she had to provide her own dash camera footage to free herself from serving time as a thief. So that was all courtesy of flock cameras. They create a lot of illusion and make a lot of false accusations.

I'll be very, very brief. Thank you. What's your name?

Heather Dombrowski. I live in the town of Franklin.

I just want to say I love our Constitution and I'm a supporter of our Fourth Amendment. But I do find it ironic that tonight in this room a convicted sex offender with an open case for being on the premises where there are children spoke about being targeted and attacked. Sheriff's Department, please track those individuals in our community, but not the rest of us.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, board members, chair. My name is Carl Gillespie. I live in the Paula Springs community with my wife. We're both fifth generation Viconians. I come before you tonight to talk about one item. As you know, I have to stand on a bridge serving in North Carolina House of Representatives, representing the 128th in Iowa. The four western most counties in western North Carolina. Kameka County being one of them. I want to publicly state to all of you gentlemen and as individuals what an asset you have been to our office and support the constituents that I've been elected to represent. Without your steadfast support, your willingness to take my call, your regardance of how many and what time I call, I just appreciate that. To me, it speaks volumes about each one of you and your commitment to serve the community and the constituents that elect you. Before our egos get too big, I also want to recognize wonderful staff that you have starting at the top all folks that's sitting around the table we we rely on them we rely on their expertise expertise um you're all very fortunate i know you already know that but you're very fortunate to have the wonderful staff that you have and it's just an honor

The last comment. Okay, thank you very much. Please state your name to the record. Um, hello! I am Brian Calabres. I'm 16. I've lived here all my life. I love this town. I love this county. I love the mountains. I love everything about it. But I don't feel that. And I love sci-fi as much as everybody else, but I don't think we should, uh, set the world on fire to pursue it. AI, it isn't what it's cracked up to be, it's an illusion, it's a farce. Nothing about it is good. It doesn't, it does not provide any real benefit, and the vlog cameras, they, there's no real benefit to them either, they're more prone to making mistakes, especially when they're powered by AI, a lot of the time. And AI is very, very prone to mistakes. Yeah.

All right. I've got some public comment. Thank you to each and every one of you guys for stepping up here and speaking to us.

I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda. Chairman, I do have a request. In the consent agenda 11F, FY 2026-27, Juvenile Crime Prevention Council Certification of County Plan. I would ask this board... TO PLACE THIS ITEM, REMOVE THIS ITEM FROM THIS CONSENT AGENDA AND POTENTIALLY ADD THIS TO A FUTURE COMMISSION MEETING BECAUSE I WOULD LIKE FURTHER CLARIFICATION ON JUST EXACTLY WHAT THIS AGENCY DOES FOR THE AND FOR MYSELF AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC. MR. CABE, DO YOU KNOW IF THAT'S TIME SENSITIVE?

I'm not aware. Obviously, there's some funding involved there, but it's grant funding, so I'm assuming we could.

You approved accounting allocation in the general fund budget.

Please speak into the microphone so we can hear. Thank you.

You approved in the general fund budget an allocation for the JCBC. It's been there for years. If you would like for them to come and speak to you, you can. The funding has not come in yet.

Let's do that. Let's push to another meeting. So we'll remove item F from the consent agenda. Any other adjustments? Changes to the agenda? Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda. So moved, Chairman. Motion by Commissioner Sherrill, seconded by Commissioner Shields. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please raise your right arm. Stay back for the record. Any opposed? Motion passes. All right. No reports and presentations. Moving on to old business. Continued discussion regarding making the county public library. County manager.

So, Mr. Chairman, I wanted to basically just brief the board on some things. all voted to notify the FRL and state library of your intent to pull out of the Montana Regional Library system, give our one-year notice, and start our one-year demonstration period for the state of North Carolina. So essentially what happened was in June, I did submit that letter to the state library, notified them of your intent, also notified the FRL and the other counties in that letter. come from North Carolina that help support your local library systems. Abby Ferguson, I'm not sure if Abby is here tonight. Yes, she is back there. If you have any further questions. She and I actually met with some representatives from the State Library Board last week along with some of the folks that helped process that application and with representatives from Now we're aware of the process that we need to go through to apply for that state aid. They made us aware of the timeline, and they offered assistance to us as we go through that process. So that has actually started, and we will follow through with that 1 of the things I know the biggest concern is, what's it going to cost? What's it going to do for folks? I worked on some preliminary figures there. There's still some unknowns. So I can't tell you exactly. This will be a 100% exact number, but I have basically taken. Operating budget for. Also, taking into consideration the number of employees that are currently in the Macon County Library system, either at the Franklin Library, the Hudson Library, or the Anna Hay Library, we already know that we'll probably have to assume at least one IT position that those services are currently funded by the, on the FRL side, back office type person. So, with all that being said, IT person. Putting those people into our system, looking at expenses, saying what our costs are. Tentatively, we're about $1,350,000. Last year, this current budget year, you budgeted a little over $1.29 million. So, essentially, at the moment, it looks like about a $96,000 a year increase in that We certainly need to look at the staffing that the library has. We need to make sure that the right people are being paid the right amount of money. We want to make sure that we treat them fairly. One of the things that I've asked Tammy to do is to get with the resource staff the next couple weeks, have our HR folks go meet with those library folks at each one of the libraries, sit them down and talk to them about our package, our employee package, our benefit package. how this looks on our end. So we're already gonna start that process. Now the state aid and the 1,290,000 that we budgeted this year, that also doesn't include state aid. And this year state aid was $115,000 that was appropriated based on Macon County. So if you take the 1.2 million-ish that we budgeted and you put the 100,000 with that, We're still in pretty good shape financially. Now, I also can't sit here and tell you that that's 100% what that number is going to be. There are still some things that we need to look at the infrastructure. I've already got our information technology folks. those might be duplicates of what we already have. So we're going to put those folks together, try and navigate through what we think that's going to look like if we follow through with this and obviously exit next year when our one-year demonstration period is up. So with that being said, I guess the main thing I want to tell you tonight is not that I don't know the exact number yet. We're still working on the process. However, I haven't seen anything concern and we can't do it financially next year. Again, there are things that we've got to work through. You know, there might be some staffing changes we'll look at. If Abby looks at something and says, hey, we need more people here, we need less people here, we need to recalculate the, you know, regrade these folks somewhere. You know, there's some discussions we need to have to get where we want to be. Number one, to take care of those folks. be to do better if we can. But right now, I still, I'm pretty comfortable we're in an okay place financially, and we're going to keep working through that. So, obviously, that dollar figure will be quoted somewhere in the media, and I just want you all to understand that's a good estimate based on 30 days' worth of time since we actually decided to pull out of the FRL. But we will fine-tune that more as we go on over the term. Bill McGat has back there in the back with the FRL. At the last meeting, you heard me talk about budgets. You heard me talk about the funds, the surplus funds that were to come back to the counties from the FRL. Obviously, all of you are probably aware now that Slane County followed a junction, so those funds are not going to come back to Macon County as we thought. that actual budget he's balanced his budget based on some fund balance that they have and we're working through that situation with Lane County to see how that affects us somewhere down the road and we'll obviously be able to have more information about that later. ask that we increase some more funding to them to give $312,000 or $20,000, $326,000 to the FRL. My concern when I went into the budget was I didn't want money to just pass. If they have a fund balance and we added $300,000, $400,000 extra, we would give them three or $100,000 and then they'd turn around and give us $500,000 back for surplus funds. That didn't really make a lot of sense to me. So obviously he's had to balance it if you want to let mr address that opinion or not but are there any before we get that deep are there any questions for me or anything else as far as the update are we closing the library down no we are not are we changing or losing any services our intent is not to change any services and actually i have the budget that i calculated i both full-time and part-time that Abby provided me.

Mr. Manager, the only comment that I have on this is local control is much better than regional control, and local oversight for any agency in this county serves the people much better.

CONCERN, AND I SENT YOU ALL THE INFORMATION, TWO LIMITS OF INFORMATION. ONE WAS WHAT WE NEED FOR THIS YEAR TO BE ABLE TO PASS A BUDGET. WE HAVE AN INFAM BUDGET RIGHT NOW USING FUND BALANCED MONEY TO BE ABLE TO BALANCE THAT. HOWEVER, WE CANNOT PAY COLA, WE CANNOT PAY PAY RAISES FROM FUND BALANCED FUNDS ON AN INFAM BUDGET. We've got about 38 employees in Macon, Spain, and the headquarters that are still waiting for a COLA raise, 2.8% they were supposed to get. And we've got three right now that are due pay raises for various reasons. All that's frozen. We're operating on an interim budget, but we have to pass a budget in order to do that. The information I sent you last week, the 326 is based on It's a little less than our initial thought that we were going to need back in February, March. And that's based on what we had to put into it from the fund balance to be able to balance our budget. So it's, again, slightly less. And that's a real problem for our personnel until we pass the final budget. Also mentioned to you in the information I sent last week, we are saving a little bit of money but not having a director hired, which has been approved, and that's part of the difference in how much funds we would need based on a full-time director. That will continue to be the case. It will save some money there. Trying to get an interim director for the next year at least to get us through the phase out of dissolution, if you all do. PULL OUT. SO THERE'S SOME SAVINGS THERE. AND I MENTIONED THAT DOWN THE ROAD, IF WE DO FIND WE'RE HAVING SAVINGS, BECAUSE I WOULD EXPECT THE FUNDS WE GET FROM YOU WOULD COME IN MONTHLY INCREMENTS, THEN WE CAN SUSPEND OR STOP THE MONTHLY INCREMENTS AS WE GET TOWARD THE END OF THE YEAR IF WE ARE ACTUALLY SAVING SOME FUNDS. SO I WOULD ASK THAT YOU WOULD APPROVE THE 326,000 that we need to be able to pass our budget and get off of the entry budget. I'd be glad to answer any questions.

So, Mr. McGaha, you're saying that all those employees have not gotten raises that were due raises and also the increase in pay that was promised to these employees. Right.

The 2.8% COLA And we have three employees right now, two in Macon County and one in the headquarters that are due a pay raise for a couple of different reasons. And those are on hold under an interim budget.

And so the $326,000 gets you to where you need to be, correct? Yes. Chairman, at this time, I'd like to make a motion that we do a budget amendment from the fund balance in the amount of $326,000. to the library system at this time.

Second. I hear a motion by Commissioner Sherrill, second by Commissioner Antoine. I think my biggest question, and pardon my ignorance, were due raises and adjustments, where's the $326,000 coming from? And the second part of that question is, I understand the injunction to raise the surplus funds not to be redistributed to counties until further diligence, but how can courts essentially shut down the library? Essentially, that's what they did.

I don't think I would say they shut down the library. There was a couple things going on, Mr. Chair, with the net surpluses. I think all of you are aware it was based on revenue over expenses that had come in the last eight years below 1.4 million dollars of a 2.4 to 2.5 million dollar account that we have a balance that we have in our account and so we're a non-profit working on a balanced budget with a 2.4 2.5 million dollar sitting in the bank take 25 percent for our reserve and even other funds that are restricted for various reasons and there are some uh we were still looking at a million 1.2 million dollars extra and so we you know came up based on the uh net surplus that each county had provided in that eight years because that's all the financial records we had and and determined an amount of that for various counties based on that um There's a couple of things that occurred in reality. First of all, Swain County, because of the amount of net surplus that they had provided, was fairly low compared to Jackson and Macon. And that was the order, Jackson, Macon, and Swain in that order, as far as the amount. And so that was a slight issue. The other part of the issue was that the interlocal agreement doesn't address this fund's going back in any manner. They'd just sit there forever unless the interlocal agreement was changed or there was a dissolution of the FRL. But it does address dissolution. And when you get your notice, if you withdraw next June, then the FRL will dissolve. And the assets that are there will be distributed between Macon and Spine County. So there's quite a bit more money sitting on the table next June to be allocated out than there is now. And I think that was part of the issue that all of a sudden the suit was brought against us. And so that's just a matter, I think, of dollars that will be on the table next June. And the board, financial policy that we have allowed us to do what we did. That's an issue in the lawsuit. And the issue was Jackson County withdrawing. And the ILA does not provide for them to get funds back under a withdrawal. But the issue that we were at hand was these excess funds had nothing to do with Jackson County's withdrawal. All three counties were included in the amount that we were trying to refund until the suit is settled. We can't do anything as far as those refunds.

That's kind of why I'm still hung up. So you can't use fund balance to give the employees the wages?

No, and we can't pass We can't use fund balance to balance a budget other than interim.

Says who? Can I ask that? Who says that you cannot pass your budget? Because we can appropriate fund balance. It's not ideal, but we still can.

Our finance officer. And that's the information that she's given us based on her research.

I think where I'm hung up is you have the money in your account. It's an in-house policy that you don't pull the money to pay your own employees. I feel like you should use the money that's in the FRL account that you have access to, your fund balance, to operate the library until everything gets ironed out. I want every employee to have every raise they were promised. Please don't misinterpret that. But you have the money sitting in the account. I don't understand why you can't use it. It's an in-house policy.

because our budget number that we budgeted, the $1,249,601, included all of the requests for Macon County minus the FRL expenses and minus the contingency. So it was my understanding that those figures would cover the local employees.

Mr. Rigada, are you being told this is a legal issue, that you cannot use those funds?

I'm being told by our finance officer that it is a legal and policy issue. And I believe she was quoting something from NCGS 159.

I mean, I think for me, I'm kind of with Chair McMillan on that. It's hard to imagine pulling money out of our fund balance to balance your budget when you have a fund balance. You know, if that's an inter-department policy, I think that needs to be addressed. I don't think I can support that. I want to support people with their raises. I mean, I think they deserve that for sure. But you had $2.4 million last year. You had $2.7. I mean, that fund balance is growing. What is the intention of the

OBVIOUSLY IT'S NOT SIGNIFICANTLY. IT'S THERE THE REASONS IN OUR FINANCIAL POLICY AND A COUPLE OF THEM NORMALLY WOULD NOT HAPPEN, I DON'T THINK. ONE OF THEM WAS INCONSISTENT INCOME FLOW AND THE COUNTIES HAVE ALWAYS PROVIDED CONSISTENT INCOME FLOW OBVIOUSLY BASED ON THAT EXCESS. ANOTHER IS STATED IS THE USE or matching funds for grants, applying for a grant that we have to provide matching funds for, that would be one. Emergency situations,

balance has been growing based on what we've been paying the FRL that 1.2 million every year.

Is that correct? Correct. We just finished 2526, $314,000 more revenue than expense.

So in other words, according to the FRL, this money that we've been actually pouring into it cannot be used when it's supposed to be used.

But the fact of the matter is, other than a reserve, it should never have been built. But again, this year, and there was a dedicated effort to, you know, expand for things that were needed. And we still had all three counties because Jackson County was in there in that budget year.

Council is there anything in North Carolina General Statutes that says that FRL cannot use their undesignated fund balance to balance the budget?

Just on, since I've been researching since this issue came up, I do not find anything. It sounds like the only thing that that could be is a Is a policy of that board in which case I believe that board could change that policy. To allow for that.

Okay, speaking for myself. I might have connected to you and your board if there's a policy, you know, in the state of North Carolina or general statute that doesn't allow this. I'll support it next month, but I would encourage you to use the fund balance to pay the employees pay their wages. And I agree with Commissioner Breeden, we're switching buckets of money. Why do you have a fund balance? So that's where I stand. If you do not get the money by general statute and they cannot get their wages, I'll support on record next month. But I would encourage you to use your fund balance to balance your budget. That's where I'm at.

So an interim budget probably will not allow them to do anything more than current operations. Right. So, like, if we were under a budget, we could not do anything different. They would have to pass the budget to give those races. Like, general statute one fifty nine does require you to have a balanced budget, but it does not prohibit you from appropriating fund balance for things. Is it ideal to do it for operational things such as raises and salaries? No, but sometimes you have to. If you have a policy, I don't know if we have a policy for fund balance to have a certain threshold. I don't know. You might want to find that out. But again, that could be changed. But I don't think anything prohibits you in general statute for upgrading fund balance to balance your budget to give your people raises. And then again, if you find something, then maybe tell us about it.

Chairman, I was under the impression that the court ruling over there was blocking their funds and all that other stuff. At this time, Chairman, I'd like to retract my motion.

Mr. Chairman, I retract this motion. Any other discussion? Action?

Comments? I will add one thing. That brings up a really good conversation. other libraries that are equivalent to the size of what Macon County's library system is. So she's already been gleaning some information. We've already been looking at the numbers of staff, the circulation numbers, all the data that we have on those. One of the things that I think this board needs to think about, nothing would prohibit you. We would obviously have to report the FRL. Nothing would prohibit you from hiring a librarian. also nothing would prohibit you for those employees putting them on board into our system prior to July 1. We could obviously, we would have to work with some sort of an MOU or an agreement with FRL. But if that transition were to take place, those folks would, at some point, would be paid out of our payroll, but they'd still be doing FRL functions Tonight is not the night for us to get in deep into details with that, but we can certainly look at that. And if that's what it takes to make sure that those folks are paid appropriately and we help solve whatever financial problems there are that we have to get over, I can certainly look at that. And it also might help make the transition process, if you decide to continue to agree with that in July, easier so that we're just not walking in one day and turning the lights off and coming back the next day all of a sudden.

All right. Any other comments? Let's move on to redistricting. A recommendation from the Macon County Planning Board, Planning, Permitting, and Development Director, Mr. Joe Allen.

Um, back at their major marks meeting, you requested the planning board, receive public comment and make a recommendation back to the board commissioners on redistricting. We have 4 meetings, 4 months worth of meetings, and we see 20 comments from 16 different members of the public.

The board has voted to recommend, as you've already heard tonight.

A resident districts at large voting.

Pre equal districts to our seats. Do you have any questions? I'll try to answer.

Chairman, I'm not here to get in a big debate about this redistricting. Just a little history in this. This has been going on since 2023. This former board passed a resolution to send to the state of North Carolina on this same measure, three to two. As of 23, we've had public hearings, we've had public comments, we've done everything and for the people of the public to say they were uninformed about this issue is um it's hard to believe unless um you know that's not on us these these uh meetings are well published they are published online you can watch them live on youtube and i just Just a few things that has caught me off guard, but I want to clear up a few things. The same folks that has been against these are the same ones that continue to come to this meeting, and their sense has never changed. It has gone through the planning board. The planning board members that we appointed has come up with their resolve on this with the same thing this board passed in 2023. It is about fairness. I'd mentioned some time ago about a candidate potentially in District 3 that would make a great county commissioner. He's not a friend of mine, I know it. We don't go to dinner together. I just know who he is and I know where he stands. So in my mind, If you have three people, regardless, you can have three people, those in Ottawa, North Carolina, that serves in District 2. You can only have one person from District 1. You can only have one person from District 3. So it has nothing to do about candidates. It has everything to do about fairness for every human in this county to give them the same opportunity that anybody in District 2 has. One person I heard, I believe it was Mr. Siegel, said, you know, it's not fair that three people are in District 2 and you have one in District 1 and one in District 3. That's exactly my point. If you have to live in your district, these are some of the comments the planning board has made. You have to live in your district. We're dealing with the same pool of money. You represent everybody in this county. You don't represent whoever's in your district. If you go to five distinct districts, peer districts, your job, just like Mr. Gillespie, his job is to go to Raleigh and represent the people of his district. And his main focus is his district. If you have five districts, Me being District 1, my main focus is District 1. So I'm going to come here and I'm going to argue with four other commissioners trying to get something back for Highlands. That's not the way this board's working. If people in Highlands don't like me, they don't have to contact me. But you know what? They can contact one of these other four members and tell them they're concerned. So if you have five districts and you say, well, wait a minute, I don't represent you. Call your representative. Folks, this is all about fairness. Every man, woman, and child, I heard someone say that there's 29,000 voters. It's not based on voters. We've gone through that for years. It is based on every man, woman, and child, whether you vote or you don't vote, you still get representation We have beat this force to death, and we've gone over the same thing for years. However, there is still, even after this timeframe, and still the same people that are attending these meetings are still stuck on the same issues that we've gone over, over and over and over. We tasked the planning board to come to a resolve. It was just presented. I'm sure they did their due diligence. They listened to everybody that showed up at the meeting. They got on the phone. They called people to get their professional opinions and their concerns, and they brought that back to the board. No different than our board. We don't hear from everybody that has concerns. So the reason why that I wasn't seeking any action on this issue tonight was for the simple fact that I'm going to spend the next several months trying to go to the general public and get people to understand this. People that have really looked into this for months, they still don't understand it. And there's no perfect way for this. But you know what? Did somebody mention that there are other counties in this state that has multi-member districts? And it was disclosed in this. If you count up how many people that they had in these multi-member districts, there's more than five county commissioners in these districts. That's the only way. And when I say that it's potentially unconstitutional, that came from the school of government, that it has never been adjudicated in the court of law for elections of local elections. Candidates. So the School of Government says, until it goes to court, and gets a ruling, who knows? But his professional opinion, who we depend on, says, in his professional opinion, yes, it will follow state law. I think it's important, if you're not aware, Macon County Board of Commissioners and all Board of Commissioners is an extension of state government. We must follow state law. And that's it. We can set policies. We can do certain things, and we've set a budget. But that's it. We're extension of state government, and that's who we depend on to make our decisions. So all the research for years that I've done on this and studying, this is the best way. I'm not trying to convince people. I'm not bullying people. I've researched it for years, and whether people in Highlands, that district that I represent, approve of me or not, I'm still your representative. Whether you voted for me or not, I'm still representing you. The concerns, they want a candidate or a representative that knows about Highlands. I've been in Highlands for 43 years. I've been in business in Highlands for 39 years, so I think I have a little bit of knowledge of Highlands. And I also tell you that my wife is originally from Highlands, that her family was the third and fourth. I didn't disrespect you, ma'am. My wife's family was the third and fourth family to ever settle in Highlands, North Carolina. I raised my three sons there. I retired from Highlands Fire Departments. I ran Little League in Highlands for 20 years. I coached high school baseball. So I think I've been a pretty good public servant in Highlands and represented you guys well. And as I stated before, I don't know of any time in Highlands, North Carolina, that you have received any more than you have from this current Board of Commissioners. So if you can follow that and you can prove me wrong, I would greatly appreciate that, but I don't see that happening. So I think Highlands has been represented well, and it is unfair. I have no special reason for three and two other than it's the fairest way for the citizens of Macon County. It has nothing to do with candidates, but you're not born as a candidate for public office. It's a drive that you have and a passion to serve your community. And everybody that wants to serve, you come from the public. If you're a friend of mine, then so be it. I'm not going to give you special protections and everything else. But when I mentioned the town of Highlands, the former town commissioner, everybody in Highlands voted for him that loved him. But you know what? He don't want to run, but some folks in Highlands wants him to run, and he won't run. But if he had a chance, an opportunity for three and two, guess what? He could be on the ballot, and they may get approved of him. That's all I've got to say, Chair. Thank you.

Mr. Sherrill? Not this time, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, not this time. I'm going to call a point of order. Any other comments on the redistricting? Mr. Allen, any other comments or thoughts? Thank you for being here tonight. All right. Update on the 2027 reappraisal for Macon County. Tax Administrator, it's the Happy Grasswood.

Good evening, commissioners. It's a little cold in here. No, it's not. So forgive me if I chatter. In your agenda packet that I put in last week, I only put the legislative updates that we had at the time. I wanted to keep the data that I'm giving you tonight right up to the minute because that data changes every single day. So that's why I did not provide that in your packet. And I hope you received the paper copies that I gave. I did make some. Three of the salary wants to include a copy of what they are looking at. And I also have cards that give the information for the tax office if you have any questions. You can take one of these and contact us. I'm in low time. I was just going to see if you wanted to discuss the legislation, if you had any questions. There has been very little changes because they have been out of session. There was one change that 474 did pass and was signed, and 474 was in conjunction with 889. It affected four cameras. It added Chowan and Pamilco back to the reappraisal moratorium, so they will not be able to use their values until next year. It excluded Hornet County because they were on an eight-year cycle, so they now get to use their new values. And Scotland County was also excluded from the moratorium. And then there was Buncombe County, and they met today, and they are going to use their old values and not use their new values until next year. So other than that, if you have any questions, and I'll move on.

Is it too early to assume our two-year status of accounting?

Or? Economics. I think we're going to be getting close to that in the fall.

So the first, the first paper copy is titled Township Assessed Value Changes. That gives you a value for 26 and then 27, what it will be for next year, how much it's grown, the percentage increase for each township in Mickey County. These numbers will change every single day. They will not be final until sometime in January. Do you have any questions about the percentages? Sales are going to affect this. We monitor sales daily. That's what drives these numbers. We are in the middle of the reappraisals where we're visiting properties. We're doing new construction where we're going out and picking all of that up. So that adds to our base and that's our growth. I would like to discuss that next time when I come to you as to how that's going to affect the rate. So any questions on this slide? Moving on to township qualified sales. Qualified sales are what we call good sales. They are not for pleasures. They are not short sales. They are not sales between family or businesses. So I wanted to give you just a little bit of knowledge of what the highest sale was. And these sales, the sales numbers are 23 through 26. But We can only use, we try to use the very latest sales to value our properties because that shows what the market is doing. So I gave you the sales for the lowest and the highest out of each township for 25 or 26 and the sale date come out. Any questions? Reappraisal timeline. So tonight we're updating the values. On August 11th, I would like to go and I would like to do a short presentation as well to update you on the values. Like I said, these are always changing. But for our August 11th, that's when we'd like to propose the schedule values and the present use schedule values. I have to keep on a timeline because you have to present them. Then you have to advertise them. You have to have a public meeting and a public hearing. And then the board can approve them at the next meeting and then for October and November because you have to, sorry, advertise them for so long that October and November will be the advertising time. By state statute, you have to advertise them for four weeks. And then that way, it'll be done by December. Next thing, I'd like to give you a little data on what else this means. January, we're going to finalize that data. By February, we're going to mail those notices out. February to March, we'll do informal reviews. We'll take requests from taxpayers. There's going to be on the review that you get, there's going to be the process of what you do. You can go online. You can mail us the appeal form. You can call us. You can email us. So that all takes place between February and March. And at that time in March, if you're not happy with any of the informal appeals, You can then set formal appeals for the Board of Equalization and Review and they meet the 2nd of April. That's when they can start and when we do that through June with the Board of Equalization and Review, they will be downstairs in the regular room where we meet every year and we will let you know when your appointment is and your paperwork has to be submitted before and you will get to talk to the board. If you're not able to be there, you can send information in, it will get presented for you, and they will make a decision right then. And then in July, the tax bills will be sent out. I would just like to encourage the public to contact our office if you have any questions. You can email us. You can call us. And if you'd like to have a visit, we'd be happy to come in.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right.

Well, that wraps up old business. Does anybody need a five-minute recess? You guys want to carry on? Mr. Shields. Roger Oaks. New business discussion concerning license plate reader cameras. Thank you. Gentlemen, thank you for allowing me

Our license plate readers was implemented in the spring of 24. We currently operate 16 cameras throughout Macon County, with four strategically in place schools for the security and safety of our children. These cameras are utilized daily to assist in investigation of numerous crimes, including breaking and entering, larceny, abductions, narcotic-related offenses, also non-criminal issues such as dementia patients silver silver and amber alerts we have implemented these cameras since we have implemented these cameras the amount of narcotics that have been seized and the number of successful criminal investigations have increased significantly significantly and uh lee tritt lieutenant lee tritt will be sharing some of those stats tonight fail to mention is Chief Deputy Derrick Jones and Alex Grooth with flock safety. In fact, some of our most successful narcotic seizures have been aided by this information. Additionally, our LPRs very recently helped us. We actually assisted Jackson County in recovering a kidnapped child. So we assisted Jackson County. We actually found the child who came through Macon County. We were able to follow them through Macon County, and they were actually pulled over Calumet, safe, returned safe. Furthermore, I really want to slow down and touch on this. Furthermore, there are no controlling North Carolina decisions that prohibit the use of LPRs. Courts have generally recognized that license plate readers displayed on vehicles traveling on public roadways are visible to anyone and that individuals do not have an expectation of privacy in public. End of story. I don't know, counsel, would you like to touch on that? Yes, sir. Anytime you're ready. Go ahead. As such, capturing license plate information in public places do not constitute a Fourth Amendment, and it's consistent with a plain view doctrine. What gets me is we want to censor local law enforcement, but how are we going to censor these repo companies that are coming in here? They're running, I don't know if you guys are familiar, but repo companies that are in Macon County, almost daily in Macon County are running LPRs. How are we going to control Lowe's, Home Depot? I know Home Depot is down in Clayton, but how are we going to control them? And heaven forbid, do not cross the threshold of your big box stores. Walmart, Ingalls, Lowe's, Home Depot, they all have facial recognition. I mean, you're wanting to censure us, but you're going to leave everybody else alone? It just doesn't make sense. Also, with that being said, this young gentleman here said, and I hate to call anybody out, but I've got to call a spade a spade. Just bear with me. About, does anybody have, anybody see it in the budget? I've got 2023 budget. Thanks to Lindsay. I've got it right here. It was in the budget. 2023, 25, 26, 26, 27. It's all right here. So I don't understand. If you didn't see it, can you explain why you didn't see it? Or you don't know about it? May I respond? Absolutely. Okay.

In 2023-2024 budget, these tag readers is all it said on the budget, and it was capital for the Maine County Sheriff's Department. Tag readers is a broad spectrum. It don't say anything about a contract with a private company. So knowing you and trusting you and respecting you and your obligation to update that these might be a violation of the Constitution of the United States, and that will never be approved, that will never be proven until it finally makes it to the U.S. Supreme Court. And so when that happened in the 23 budget, you asked for tax breaches. Tax breaches, that's a, I mean, you can put tax breaches in your personal cars so that you're out here on traffic, and you can bring tax can you not is that not i mean without i think i'm going to ask something from the budget john and put it in my 2013 chevy silver brothers my personal car well your control cars anyways i'm i'm i'm not going to argue with you i think that i'm going to argue with you i think the attendance here tonight has been proven that the only people in society that appreciate these is law enforcement. Yeah, because... The general public... It's the safety concern. Let me tell you something. In my own family, I've got a law enforcement officer. How did the conversation go with Michael? It didn't go well at all because he cussed me like a dog. And that's the mentality of law enforcement in today's world. My son, that I would give my life for, cussed me like a dog over this, Brent. I'm just definitely passionate about this, man. I depend on you and your agency to keep this community safe. Do not. No, no, I don't need to talk to him. No, it's stats. I want to share stats.

Do you mind if I share stats with you?

Brent, I'm trying. Listen, I don't want to. I mean, my deal is not with your agency. My deal is with you, the elected sheriff of Macon County. That's it. I don't need to talk right now to Flock because I know what they're all about. There's a reason why in this country that 80-some agencies has disconnected or removed from a contract from this company, and it's all based on concern of their citizens. Every one of them, the second largest law enforcement agency in this country, let their And that's Los Angeles. Do you know why, John? Yeah, because of privacy concerns. You're wrong. Oh, am I? Okay. Mr. Flockman, would you like to? No, no, no. I didn't contract with Flock. You did. But you signed the budget. I think you. Well, it was also removed from capital out of your budget. The former county manager signed this contract in November. And there was a change from the coding of that from capital to contract services with no information ever provided to the county commissioners. That's a big difference in my mind. You're going from tag readers that you're requesting to contract services with no input.

This has been a secret.

No, it hasn't.

Yes. I mean, the first one I knew about was in February. But we're getting off the beaten path because I've got some very direct questions for you to answer. And it does not include your officers. It does not include anybody from FLOP cameras. But I will tell you, back to my son, there's a divide in my house right now. You want to know the numbers? And I guarantee society is the same way. Everybody in my family except for my son is for these or against these. Only my son is in law enforcement's forum. And that's what was evident right here tonight. There wasn't anybody that came up here from the general public that you serve and I serve that said, heck yeah, leave them out. There was one actually at the end.

Who?

The lady at the end. Yeah. No. Anyways, so Will, go ahead.

I do, yes, with Lee Trick. Absolutely. And I'd like to, if in any way possible, regardless of how this turns out, guys, there's no ill will from me to you. I mean, Lord, after this is over, we'll go break bread. If you vote to defund the flock system, it is what it is. I want the citizens to know that we're going to continue to work hard. worth. And my son's leaving for the Army in the morning, so I mean, I sure would like to see him before he leaves. He's going back to his duty station. Lee, you want to come over here and give your share some stats with the commissioners and the citizens.

Absolutely. Thank you all for letting us come do this. I know it's a tense topic, obviously, with people on both sides of it. And the crazy thing is, I agree with what John said. It's actually, I'm against government overreach, totally. I'm a big time, you know, Fourth Amendment, Second Amendment. I actually agree with a lot of what you say. But, you know, I was with the FBI for 30 years in entire. Came back. I'm trying to move over here actually buy some land. So I love it here. I love it. So about 200 years of family there. So, but I also like to look at stats and my big thing is, is since the implementation of this, it has been a game changer for this county. And I just want to share a few things with you. And something a lot of people don't know is there's been a ton of misinformation that has been going on, and social media goes crazy, and I know that, but there's a ton of misinformation. There is a lot of different companies that do LPRs, okay? There's Leonardo, Licata, LSA, all these different ones. Flock is just one of them. And something that people get confused on is a lot of times flock is used synonymously with LPR, or sometimes you hear ALPR, which is automated license plate reader. They're interchangeable terms. So a lot of people get confused that everything's flock. Well, everything's not flock. So some of the things I just want to talk about real briefly is this whole LPR system in North Carolina, a lot of people don't know, it's managed by the SBI. They were appointed by the legislature to take it over, start a pilot program. We were the first 29 counties that initially had a pilot program to allow us to put LPRs on DOT right-of-ways. So, of course, being from the SBI, I know the integrity of the SBI, okay? The integrity is incredible with them, so I trust them that they're going to manage and do it right, and they have been. So I want to talk about in 2023, we didn't have LPRs, okay? So the total cases we worked at, there were 376 total cases, and we had 115 family charges, and we seized 1,241 grams of meth. I know it's going to be hard to remember this number, but I want you to remember. 2024, we got LPRs. The end of March, our first one is end of March 2024. Just in 2024, we had about the same number of cases. We had 376 in 23, 342 in 24, but we had 365 felony charges in 2024, but only had 115 in 23. As far as meth, remember, we seized 1,241 in 23. We seized 5,803 grams. That's the difference, almost, what, five times more meth was seized in 2024. So I want to touch on 2025. We got to use the cameras for an entire year. So what happened, we only had 165 cases, had a big drop in the cases, and we had 159 felonies. So we had about half the number but we seized almost 14,000, actually 13,956 grams of meth. So from the time, the year before the camera, till we got the camera, we had what, 13, 14 times the amount of methamphetamine seized. And the way I look at it, is that is not going to our children and our community. To me, that's a win for us. And I totally contribute that or attribute that to the cameras, without a doubt. We could not do this. These cameras are almost like having an extra debit. And some people don't understand that By having these cameras, we're able to focus. Say we have a target. I don't think that's been done. So basically, we have a target. We can put a tag in of someone we have information on that's transporting drugs in the bank account. So that camera basically, wherever it's at, can tell us when that person has made a trip. We're not physically having to be with them and sit with them and babysit them the whole way. Because if we do that, there's several things that does. It takes at least five of us and five cars to do that. And we have to stay with them for hours. So it also burns off our overtime. So it actually, in a way, is saving us money by being able to use LPRs in the county. We can work on another case while we're waiting on something to happen on that case. So to me, it's very efficient. But I think in the end, what it boils down to is LPR has increased our solvability factor because we're able to get leads quicker, which if you watch any of the crime shows, like the first 48 or anything, what do we learn? The sooner you're able to develop the suspect, your solvability goes much higher. So I think there's a lot of pros to this. Um, I do understand people's concerns. There is not an expectation of probably the public air expectation of the air. The Supreme Court has moved over and over and over. I can stand in the area or roadway and I can feel all day until every person and nothing can be done legally. So, but I do appreciate the time that you guys have given us. I thank you for it. And any questions you may have, we do have the flock represented. We've worked with about three years, and I think he could actually get to the truth of some things. And there's a lot of misinformation that flock is not doing that has been said tonight that I think would be critical to this decision.

And I would like for him to come up and explain that. Where the data goes, where the data is stored, etc.

Good evening. How are you all today? My name is Alex. What an awesome night this is. This is the Democratic process playing out. But I want to clear up four main things. I want to cover four main things. There's been 40 court cases across the United States that have affirmed that AOPRs do not violate the Fourth Amendment because it does not track the whole There was comments made about the Supreme Court rule that geofencing is illegal. What they were referring to was Google's continuous tracking of a person down to the elevation of that individual. So I bring that up to say that it has been affirmed multiple times all the way up to now. The second thing, there's a big concern about data. The data is purged at 30%. your data being purged flox80 is more than willing to provide that data okay at 30 days down to the second that data is purged and you cannot re-access that data it is stored in amazon aw gov cloud servers when it is secure it can only be accessed by a lot of people um let's see And then lastly, I'll tell a quick story about myself and how I came to Flock, and then I'll share a quick success story to kind of bring up the little tip I talked about. So I remember talking to Flock before I had my first kid. I wasn't really interested in cameras. It didn't make a whole lot of sense. If anybody here is familiar with the Covenant shooting that took place in Nashville a few years ago, it was pretty traumatic. I remember my next-door neighbor, his child at the time, he was five years old, was in the first bathroom with a body camera footage of him. And he called me screaming and crying on his way to the school when this happened. And I remember the feeling that I thought of hopelessness. And throughout my life, through college football, the real world, I could outwork you, the whole nine yards. And when I had my first kid, I was sitting in the NICU the first night realizing how hopeless I was. And it reminded me of that night. I called Flock back and I said, what did you guys have? Because I understood, because if you think about the individual who committed that atrocity, that crime, was seeking help and getting counseling from the pastor on Saturdays. It's not about flock. Imagine if that school had an LPR there because that individual sat in their car for eight minutes before they started shooting. Imagine what those students and teachers would have been able to do with eight minutes compared to that, okay? Second of all, we talked about solvability in cases. Just last week in Maryville, Indiana, a three-month-old was abducted, okay? Before the Amber Alert could even be completed and entered into the system, a flock camera had notified them and recovered that free moment. So you talk about solvability and speed to success. Lieutenant is 100% correct. And let me show you real world examples of what happened. We have real world examples for everything, right? And I'll show you something so similar. Austin, Texas, there was a crime spree that took place for 48 hours with a group of juveniles who were randomly shooting houses, apartments, and people. Over 200 officers worked multiple air units, multiple K9 units, and you know what caught those individuals? A city of 20,000 people with one flock here as they drove by. So I say all this to say that at the end of the day, we protect the data and how it's accessed. can choose how you manage and who accesses your data. Completely your right to do that. A great example, the state of Virginia does not let any state outside of Virginia access Virginia LPR data. So North Carolina officers, if a Virginia agency wanted to give them that information, they legally can't do it and there's no way for that to happen. So if there's any questions, I'm more than willing to sit here and answer those, but I just wanted to give you a quick overview about the data, how it's stored, where it's stored, the purchase seats, and regarding the force of that. Thank you for your time.

Chairman, since we brought him up here, yes, I do have several questions for you. So if you say that we own the data.

Yes, sir.

And it disappears in 30 days. When you drive by Cameron every day, it don't go away, does it? It's a permanent tracking, isn't it? So if I drive by that Today, in 30 days, it disappears, but when I drive by tomorrow, that 30 days starts again, correct? Every time that I pass by that camera, that 30 days starts over. That's called a footprint of your movements, is it not?

According to a federal judge, it does not track the whole of the being. It is a photo of the point in time. I'll give you a phenomenal example. I came up here from Atlanta. I had to fly in from Dayton for a meeting. I drove up here from Atlanta. You could run my rental car tag and flock, but I promise you, you'd have no idea that I was standing here right now in this place.

Look, and I don't mean any disrespect for this, okay? But you're just like a car salesman. you sell the best product in the world, and it's bulletproof. But I'm sorry to tell you that there's a lot of law enforcement officers around the country that has lost their jobs because of misuse for this. They rightfully should. And you say, Flock says, that you have safety nets in place for misuse. Who identified Georgia Bureau of Investigations for these officers that were misusing these cameras, or the Who did what? Who contacted the Georgia Bureau of Investigations to say, hey, your cameras are being misused in your agency. Who did that? Did it fall to it?

I can't speak to who did it. If I were to have a hunch, there was an investigation that was done and it was reported to the GBI because there's a law in Georgia that criminally prosecutes police officers for misabusing their parents.

Well, wait a minute. I don't want a hunch. I want the truth. And the truth is this. If Locke has safety nets in place, then it wouldn't have gone on for three months, would it? I mean, some of these officers have been doing this for three months. Don't tell me you've got safety nets that protect the citizens of this country because most of the things that I've researched, this company is secretive. Most of these agencies have left Locke. because of lies that's been told, do the research. Less than 2% of law customers? Okay, if you want to do that, it also says that 90% of convictions is not done by any license plate readers. Only 10% of crimes is help solved by your cameras. Okay? So, 90% and you're surveilling 20 billion tags per month. It'd be different if you come in here and say, well, shoot, we're solving 95% of the crime. But that don't justify me to vote for the government to surveil the citizens from your company. I've done three weeks worth of research on this. Now, let me give you another one. You're talking about all these great instances that happened in flock cameras. What about the man that was falsely accused by these flock cameras and police swarmed him and made his life a total nightmare? What do you got to say about that?

Flock cameras are not a reason or a probable cause to be in contact with any individual. That is a lack of training and policy.

Okay, it happens.

Correct.

And that supposedly the law enforcement agencies are well trained in order to use your system. Well, obviously there's some misinformation here somewhere. Another thing that really bothers me, and maybe you can address this, the CEO of Falk Cameras, Garrett Langley, has verbally targeted critics of his networks not exact phrasing, considering people that go against his system as domestic terrorists. What does that tell the American people? You can't trust his company. And I don't agree with it. And I, unfortunately, my friends that we elected and hired to represent us and to support the Constitution of the United States, I disagree with you. about the Fourth Amendment, because there's a Ninth Amendment. Nobody ever talks about that. Ninth Amendment basically was put into place to protect the American people for any other right that was not enumerated. That means all. And also, I think it's against the Fourteenth Amendment. And this little case in Virginia, yeah, it was tried. And a district judge said, oh, no, it's constitutional. Now a federal judge comes in and says, yes, it must go forward. That case right there in Virginia will make it to the U.S. Supreme Court. And there is no difference in your system, in my opinion, than a geofence warrant, except law enforcement don't have to go to anywhere except that database and start looking. That just happened in Hilton Head Island, July 4th weekend. Look that one up. There was a mass shooting in Hilton Head. after the city leaders of Hilton Head reviewed what actually happened, because law enforcement went to every camera that was in that area. Law enforcement was there in 17 seconds, according to the report. But they had to go to every camera around there and start researching. You know what? Everybody that was in that area was guilty until they were ruled out by law enforcement. Don't tell me the American people are protected from your And it's a shame that we have to sit here and argue with people that we trust and we respect to keep our rights. There's nothing you're going to tell me that says your cameras or anybody else's, is it Axios or Oxios or whoever, Leonardo, his camera system, What's signal tracing? Can signal tracing connect to your cameras? No, sir. They can't? No, sir. So all the information that's put out there is completely false? Completely false. Okay. So let me ask you another question. I've been watching these cameras in the bank account because I have to pass by five of them to get to my job. So you know what? When I pass by those cameras every day, somebody suspects me of a crime. They can go in there. You don't have to have a tag, right? You can put in the vehicle description and if you're looking for a white F-150, which white vehicles is the most popular color vehicle in the United States. So if you're looking for a white F-150 and it collects the bumper stickers and the scratches and all that, you know what? All those white F-150s are guilty until law enforcement says that's not the one we're looking for. Those cameras don't replace human eyes. I don't trust your system. And now that I see what our law enforcement is doing, to not have a concern about this is very concerning to me. It is very concerning that our law enforcement will fall and let your company store data of 40,000 residents in Macon County. You know, another thing that these other places are doing, is because Hill Dead Island was one of them. Their biggest concern was, who owns the data? You own the data. No, according to the city council, after they reviewed what the police force did, evidently that's not accurate. And it's a fog system, okay? So, I've done a lot of research. And... There is nothing. Do you want me to read you what your contract says about you owning the data? No, I want to have that conversation with the sheriff.

I can pull it up right now.

No, I'd rather hear from the sheriff because the sheriff put us in this contract.

Okay.

Okay. Not to disrespect you, but I think the sheriff owes that to us to let us know why we're in the contract. Thank you for your time, sir.

Any other questions?

This is between you and the citizens of the county. And I owe the people that I represent this information. Do you believe in the Constitution of the United States? 100%. Do you have any concerns whatsoever that these cameras may violate the Constitution of the United States?

I do not, but if they do, John, listen, I'm not there with you with government outreach. If I had any inclination that there is anything being sold or any violations, I'll pull them up myself.

I get it, but not until it's proven in U.S. Supreme Court. How many people have you violated? Until it is. John, we're not violating anybody. Not until it's ruled on. Hold on a second. No, please. I'll talk to you for just a minute.

This conversation, you asked me to break the law yesterday. No, sir, I didn't. I got your text message, John. I know you did. But did I give you your text?

No. Okay, wait a minute. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not interested in that.

Well, we are.

Because my question was, what is the general public allowed to ask for with this system? I went in front of a camera the other day. I drove by it. And then on my way back home, I stopped by that camera. As I drove by, I stopped by on the side of the road. And I got out of my vehicle and walked around my vehicle to see what that system picked up when I got out of my vehicle. And I asked for that Those images of my car and my persons. And I was not allowed to retrieve that. Okay? That's what I asked for. And that's pathetic. It's my car. It's my tag that I paid for. And I believe that I have every right in the world to say what the government and this vlog camera system is picking up on me anytime. And now it's according to Mr. Jones, it's illegal for me to ask for that. What can we ask for? The question is, I did it today. Who's watching the watchers? It takes your act of citizens that you're taking pictures of. Your data shows all this stuff. How many pictures, since you put these cameras in, how many pictures have been taken in Lake and County?

I think it's around one to three million.

I've got it from the state.

A month.

Okay. Yeah. So surely to God, with the Highway 441 coming out of Atlanta with the drug traffic, we ought to catch somebody.

Your buddy.

Yeah. I mean, we could do that same thing with the deputy sitting down at the state line watching.

Yep.

Could we not? Absolutely. Okay. So now, if you can sit in your office and you can watch and listen to these hot lists and everything, why do we need deputies for?

Right.

Why are we paying for cameras to do your job?

Well, John, did you not hear what Lee said? I heard exactly what Lee said. We can focus on other cases while the cameras are kind of helping us out.

No, I'm asking questions that the citizens of Macon County has asked me. Well, I just answered that question, John. All right. So, basically, if we had cameras all over this county, we didn't need all these deputies.

Because we're catching every criminal with these cameras that, I mean... Well, you're not going to have AI go before a judicial official and swear out anything.

Exactly. And that's what my point is. The Constitution tells you that the American people have a right to face their accuser. And a camera, you can't face a camera as your accuser.

Yeah, I think you can because we have system administrators in place, i.e. Derrick Jones and Lee Tritt. And they...

They monitor who accesses that, et cetera. Sheriff, do you have any idea what your job description is? Tell me, John. Okay, I'm going to. Yeah, let's hear it. I'm going to tell you exactly what your job description is as a North Carolina sheriff. Bear with me just a minute because I didn't write this down. in Macon County. An elected sheriff by the people is a constitutional officer serving as the chief of law for this county. You don't have any concerns. You just said, okay, state law says these things are legal and we're just going to latch on to them.

Anything that will help the flow of illegal narcotics and crime in the county, dang right.

Are you familiar, are you aware that states pass laws pushing the issues of constitutional rights every time you turn around and then until they're challenged and make it to the Supreme Court? Look how many people's lives are ruined. by this unconstitutional act. It's your job to protect your citizens. That's right. In this county. And we have to protect them. Okay. So this will come in in just a few minutes. Do you think it's right for the government to watch its citizens, the American people, 24-7? Absolutely not. Okay. But we're doing it every day. And you add it to the system.

I don't think flock's doing it, John. I think there's other things in place that supersede flock. When the Patriot Act was enacted, the government put things in place, John, that just blow your mind.

Let me, okay. Do you believe that Macon County's ordinances are a violation of the Constitution of the United States?

Ordinance?

Yeah, ordinances. Do you believe that, say, for instance, the First Amendment's violated by Macon County? The First Amendment, that's what, no. You don't? The Constitution of the United States gives the rights of the people. That's right, yeah. To protest peacefully. Yeah. Okay, peacefully protest. Sure. It don't tell you where you can do it or when you can do it or how you can do it, but Macon County does. Macon County, you've got to get a permit for it. And they tell you when you can do it, where you can do it, and everything else. Why aren't you taking care of that, Brent? I didn't know nothing about the job. I do now. Okay, the second amendment. The second amendment. Right. Okay. Do you believe that Macon County is violating our constitutional rights to carry a firearm? To write the baron arm? No, no, no, no. We are not allowed to carry a firearm. On county-owned properties, the only people that are allowed to carry, now correct me if I'm wrong, to carry a firearm in this building is law enforcement, the judges, the magistrate, counsel.

I don't know if he can or not. He can.

You can? Okay, so counsel can't do it? The district attorney. District attorney? Register of deeds? I don't think the rest of your needs can. Clerk of court. I don't think the clerk can. Okay. So the Constitution of the United States guaranteed the right of the people. I know it's not absolute. Okay, I understand that. But a purpose of carrying a weapon is for protection. Absolutely. Okay. Now, let me make this, let me just say this. When I leave this courthouse, If anybody wants to attack me or rob me, do it when I leave the doors of this courthouse through the parking lot. Because I do not park on county-owned property. Because once I get to my car, you better leave me alone. That's a shame here. I have a concealed carry permit. I'm a law-abiding citizen. I finally got my first speeding ticket two years ago. And I don't have any rights. I would be more considerate of this whole thing if I knew that you as an elected official was looking out after the people's rights.

I am, John.

You say you are. I am, John. But as people said here tonight, they disagree with you.

They disagree with Flock. They disagree with Flock. If you own that, I guess they disagree with you too, John, because you signed the budget.

Well, that's that's that's a good point, right? I didn't do that in this time. That's right, because I'm the one that called this out and had no budget cycles. All right.

OK, OK. You want to sit there and say you go to the fine tooth column, but well, must be a question.

I thought I could trust you to where we where we were going. and not put us in an unlawful, or I shouldn't say an unlawful, unconstitutional act, it will be proven soon. So you believe the Constitution is the law of the land. Absolutely. It trumps everything. So if North Carolina passed a law, John, can we talk about flock? Yeah, we can, but this is very important about the Constitution because this is the problem. If North Carolina passes a law and you don't agree with it, are you going to enforce it?

If North Carolina passes a law, I'm going to enforce it. Are you? 100%. So if North Carolina... If it's a ratified law put into place, I have a duty to enforce that law.

And not challenge it.

No.

I challenged Town of Highlands, and I won under the Constitution. But it took six and a half years. What they were doing was unlawful. But anyways, let me get down to the nitty gritty. Okay, here we go, Steve. How many pages was the contract for flock camels? I've got it right here. Well, this was just a new contract.

I've got the original contract right here.

Yeah. Mercy, we'll have to count them all, let's not.

Did you review them?

Yeah.

Did you completely understand that contract?

Yeah, with the help of some colleagues. Yeah.

Absolutely. We didn't elect them.

Oh, my God.

Anyways. So you said that we have 16 cameras. Does that include the ones that... that the school received in a grant?

That's correct. So we have 12 that the school system has.

Okay. And it's my understanding that your office had to request those through the school system in order for them to apply.

They were required through a grant through the school system, and any LPR-type system has to be administered by law. Yes. And we do monitor those cameras.

And those cameras were sent directly to the Sheriff's Department?

I don't know if they were shipped to the main county sheriff's office or the main county school board. I don't know.

Well, there's a controversy there again, and because the school system said yes to work. And you decided where those cameras went? Yeah, they're at schools. Yeah. Yeah. Taking pictures of state highways, correct?

Yes, but to ensure the safety of...

If they belong to the school system, don't you think they would be up in the main entrance of the school? They're facing the main entrances.

They're facing the main entrances. Like Cartuga J, for instance. There's two entrances, Cartuga J. One to the west and one to the east.

Who chose what schools to put them at? Lieutenant Tripp. Okay. who pays for maintenance of those cameras? That's under the school system. Not according to them. They've never been asked for any money for that.

It's part of their payment.

Okay. Okay. Did you hear that, John? What's that? It's part of their payment. It's part of the school system's payment. The maintenance is included in the payment of those cameras.

How many officers in the Sheriff's Department have access to the system? The investigation team and the four patrol sergeants. Are they downloaded on cell phones? Yes, sir. So cell phones are absolute, no chance of being breached? Anything can be breached. Exactly. So how are we protected? What information is public records so that people of the citizens of Macon County can send them public records?

Well, I have them under the general statutes. You want to write it down? I don't know if you've got it. No, I don't have it. It's 20-183.32, Section E. It says capture data, plate data obtained in accordance with this article is confidential and not public record as that term is defined, which, yes, 132-1, data shall not be disclosed except to a criminal justice officer at the state or local law enforcement agency or a similar official at a federal law enforcement agency for legitimate law enforcement purposes pursuant to a written request written request may be in electronic form. Nothing in the subsection shall be construed as requiring the disclosure of captured or plated data in a law enforcement agency determines that disclosure will compromise an ongoing investigation. Captured or plated data shall not be sold for any purpose.

Who is this data shared with? I'm sorry? Who is the data shared with? Okay, so it's not shared with anyone else. I mean, if you have, if someone's on the hot list, you don't share it with other law enforcement? No, sir. So it goes in. So what's the purpose of the hot list? How do you notify county to county to county to state to state to state?

So whenever we enter a plate, for instance, John Sherrill, we catch you from Mikey County to Horry County, South Carolina. Yep. We're partnered with all these other agencies, and we can utilize their cameras. So we're going to watch you go from Macon County to Horry County. Was that not shared? No, it's not. Because they don't see what hot list has entered. So... But how do you access somebody else's system? What they're talking about, plate that shall not be sold for any purpose.

Sold. Sold. Sold. All right. Commissioner. Okay. All right. Okay. I just got a few more questions, and these are really. I think Commissioner Shields is dying to speak. Oh, go ahead. I mean, certainly.

This is the courtroom. judge or jury making this decision not during shields thank you i have no jurisdiction what you're saying i appreciate what's been said here murder teams wait don't be my son is uh he's uh the first armor armor division shields old ironside yeah can i say one thing just to clarify i just need

The public to know it was included in the budget as capital, but there is a reason it was. It was not trying. And when it was moved, it was not trying to be manipulated. Gatsby 96 requires us to recognize the asset as capital. So those cameras are an asset, even if they're not property of the county, they are an asset. So that is why it is recognized there. That's what brings it to your attention. When it was moved to contracted services, it's because it is now a subscription. So I just don't want it to be that we were trying to be manipulative.

Are you okay? Yeah. All right. So three counties in North Carolina or municipal governments has ended their contracts with the law. There are other agencies like Apex and a few other ones that are considering the same thing. And every one of them has the same concerns, privacy of their citizens and who owns the data. So obviously there's some kind of nationwide concern because that's what all of them are saying. As I said earlier, 82 law enforcements across the country have now ended according to the research I've done. This is going on in Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, all the way across the country. There's major concerns, and they all come back to the same. So I don't think all these agencies are manufacturing any untruths. Now I've got a hypothetical for you, Sheriff, and I'll end with this one. I'm out of the country. Somebody comes and steals my vehicle. And that thing's picked up on cameras and cameras and cameras. And that vehicle comes back to my driveway because they just needed a longer vehicle. Who's the suspect in this crime? Not you. Why? It's my vehicle. It's your vehicle, but we're going to do our due diligence. Are you not going to come to my house and look at my vehicle and say... Yeah, absolutely. And I'm guilty until proven innocent. That's not true. Chairman, I'm done. Thank you.

Thank you all.

I guess I'll say something.

Okay.

It's a hot topic around the country. And, you know, I was talking with the command staff, Barry, and one way or the other, I'm glad that this is going to be over with tonight. To be honest with you, the stress. And again, there's not going to be any hate from me to these folks, these folks back here. Nobody. There's enough in this country, let alone right here in Mikey County. It's ridiculous.

It's probably a little unpopular.

You know, I said earlier somewhere from 1 million to 3 million tags read a month, and there's about 150. That's it. So I don't care that...

It's kind of like the quarter of a penny. We'll pay it everywhere else, but we don't want to pay it here. We're going to get these cameras everywhere we go. I've seen it on Facebook and all the things about...

Yeah, exactly. And I heard Mr. Tritt back here mention Leonardo. They do. They track. They get your Wi-Fi, your cell phone data. They can get your cell phone data even off. I didn't know about the microchip. And they are in Western North Carolina. Don't believe me. They are in Western North Carolina. The flock don't do that. The flock can't do that.

you'd want to be able to find her. So to me, there's things that are, there's really good things that are going wrong with them. I totally understand the other side of it too. I know this probably doesn't clear up for anybody, but it just, you know, to me, I feel like we're picking and choosing certain things that we want to either see out of it or not see out of it that A LOT OF GOOD THINGS THAT ARE GOING ON IN OUR COUNTY I THINK THAT WE HAVE MADE A PRETTY BIG IMPACT ON SOME OF US SO AND IF THE CAMERAS ARE HELPING YOU KNOW I DON'T KNOW AND AGAIN I TOTALLY GET THE CONSTITUTION PART OF IT YOU KNOW I UNDERSTAND WHERE PEOPLE ARE COMING FROM BUT I MEAN WE'RE SETTLING OUT EVERY DAY WE'RE ON BASIS OF THE THREE-YEAR-OLD Whatever you're on, you're selling out every day. You're being tracked regardless if it's a flock camera or other things. And you agree with that, won't you, John?

We're being tracked regardless.

But where is it at?

Well, at the end of the day, it's not related to in-making, John.

My only standpoint is if these cameras are held I just feel like we're, we're picking and choosing what we want. And again, it's like, we go everywhere and spend it, but we can't do it here. We're going to drive through Jackson county and we're going to try to, you know, we're going to drive through Raven County or wherever we have cameras. It's just, you know, to me, I feel like we're making a mountain out of a mountain.

I agree. Thank you.

Let me just say I appreciate the job, what you're doing. I think we're in the wrong position here tonight. I think if this is to be handled anywhere, it should be handled in a court of law. And I don't think it's up to us to turn against each other on different positions. We're all in the same house. But if there's something wrong going on wrong here, it should be handled legally or pursued like that. Again, Gary Shields has learned about this early. In the last week, walking out of a building, somebody asked me what a flock camera was, and I thought she was drinking. I didn't know what a flock camera was. But I appreciate what John has shared here. Appreciate what you do, how you handle it. There may be some questions in both situations, but I want to say thank you for what you do for Macon County. Thank you. We're all in this together. It wasn't the wrong arena tonight. Thank you. In my opinion, if it's wrong, then a court of law should say it's wrong. And we'd be required to make a decision. And I appreciate John What you said, appreciate what you said. There's no winners in this. It has to be handled legally, in my opinion. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Brad, I want to say thank you for the job that you and your officers do. But you're going to find different sides of this no matter how you look at it. There's pros and cons. I'm a constitutional guy, so I get that side of it. But at the same time, I work with kids. And if one of those babies get abducted, I want that guy found immediately. So it's a tough situation. So thank you guys for what you do. But honestly, just like Mr. Shields says, we've got enough stuff dividing us in this country at this point. When does it stop? When does it end?

Thank you, Mr. Randall. Thank you.

I guess we need to take action on this. Is there no action?

Yeah, I'm going to make a motion that we deflob the bank account.

I hear a motion by Commissioner Sherrill and a second by Commissioner Antoine. I think my comments... I've dreaded this conversation for probably three weeks now. And... Mr. Shields is so wise. I mean, the division between just the citizens, whether you're for or against this national politics that I don't know. I don't know where it lands. I don't know what the correct answers are. I feel like in my personal opinion, we have 70% of the county that has no clue what a flock camera is, and tomorrow they're not even going to know this meeting happened. And I think there's 15% that support flock cameras, and there's 15% that don't support flock cameras. And you sit here, and, you know, I've struggled with it. Three weeks ago, I told the sheriff, you know, if the elected sheriff of the county comes up here and asks for cameras, I'd support it. And for two or three, well, for probably two weeks now, I went around to about everybody I've spoken to, the plumbing stores, the just construction workers, the guys that are on the jobs I've worked on. And I found one person at the plumbing store that actually says, I don't mind the cameras, but I feel like it's a bipartisan issue. The gentleman made the reference to Subaru's and Boots, and I feel like they're both in here and they both share the same ideas. And that's where I struggle. It's not like it's a Republican-Democrat issue or a major division. It's, I think, People, you know, have nervous tendencies to the government as a whole. I don't think anybody would disagree with that. But I hate that it's landed in our lap, you know, and I will say not to dig at the sheriff, but I think there's not been a lot of just generalized public information put out about this. I think, you know, a lot of people don't even know what flock are, and you read the tags on Facebook and social media, and then everybody kind of, you know, flares you up. So in my heart, I just genuinely feel like the people that I represent, the people that I work with, just the average day working man and woman that I run into, they don't want the cameras. And I feel like I represent those people. I wish there was more information that would come out. I hope there is more information that comes out. But I just feel like the people I might run into tomorrow, they don't want the cameras. And that's kind of where I landed on this. I worked for the people. The people put me here. And I've had an overwhelming majority of people reach out and say they just don't want me. Period. An overwhelming amount of people. And I've had very, very, very few. I can count on one hand people that say, yeah. And most of those people say, I don't know what they are. And that's kind of where I'm at. I hate it. Hate the strong word, but I hate it. I don't know what else to do, though, man. We all, you know, our kids play together, and, you know, I have painful kids myself, and it makes me nauseous to think about, you know, not having this, and I could have saved that, you know, so it's very divisive.

I'll say what I was saying. Mr. Ridenour, you're their legal counsel. I don't think this is any of our business. I think this is the business of the court system. I just feel uncomfortable making a legal decision of something's illegal or legal as a county commissioner. I think it needs to go through a legal system in order for it to, to me, for it to be real. And I'd like to wonder if Neighbor counties may have gone through the system and they've chosen not to be a flock representative. But I feel uncomfortable making a decision as a commissioner that I feel strongly that this is a legal situation for Macon County. That's my comment.

I'm not sure if you had a question for me or not. You're the legal person here. I don't know. Well, I guess the question that you're answering tonight is whether or not you are funding, the question that you're asking yourself tonight is whether Macon County is funding this line item. So you don't have to make the legal decision on the legality of it. Your decision tonight is on whether or not you choose to fund this expense.

I agree. I was actually going to say that the decision that I believe the motion covers is the money that's been put into the line item that's specified for license plate readers. Do you want that money to be used for that?

Mr. Shields, if I may, according to the state, this is a local government issue. This is not a state. They have all the rules and regulations pertaining to tag readers. So it's up to the cities and the counties to decide whether or not you want to continue with these systems. So the state tells us it is on our backs to decide. And in my opinion, the general public has been very clear that they do not want these cameras. And I think we have their money, and we have an obligation to them to not spend their money for something they don't want. And that's according to the state.

Okay, so just to clarify, other entities have their own choice. In other words, Macon County doesn't have any authority that's not handed to it by the state. So that's called ultra buyers and we can only make those decisions that we've been enabled to make by the state. So if the State Highway Patrol comes in and says, teams up with the DOT and says, we the state are going to put cameras within the state DOT and Macon County is going to accept that, Meaghan County doesn't have a say in that because Meaghan County doesn't have the authority to say so. What we have the authority to talk about is Meaghan County money being used to buy cameras per contract that Meaghan County is introducing. So that's the authority that you have. It's purely Meaghan County money basically on this decision. You don't have the right, I heard a comment earlier tonight that, you know, outlaw all all type of surveillance cameras within the county. Okay, well, if you don't have the authority, ring doorbells. You don't have the authority to tell somebody that they can't put a ring doorbell on their house or a security camera outside. If that security camera picks up car tags or vehicles, so be it. You have the right to put up those cameras. Lowe's, Walmart has the right to video you while you're in the store. They're all doing that on their rights on their property. So the same holds true with state-owned property, county-owned property, and county-owned contracts. So again, the issue before you is purely whether or not Macon County is going to spend Macon County money on cameras on behalf of the Macon County Sheriff's Office. That's all the authority we have.

Any last comments?

I'm getting ready to make up my mind, so don't burn my house down.

Is this something that the county can vote on, or is this just us?

We have a motion on the floor by Commissioner Sherrill, seconded by Commissioner Antoine, to use taxpayer dollars to fund

License plate readers within Macon County and the funding amount is about so we have their motion was to not fund to not spend the correction to not fund $47,000 is currently in investigations contracted services line. We would need to know what the sheriff would like us to do with that. If this motion.

If his motion passes. If John's motion passes, we're going to leave it in overtime.

Let's hire another deputy, put him down to the state line. I support your eyes better than I will somebody else's.

We have a motion, a second, any other discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? All in favor is to defund the LPRs. Raise your right arm straight out for the record. All right, any opposed. Let's let the record play. Come on.

So, right?

But Josh, are those funds that 47,000 will it go into overtime?

In my opinion, you can use your discretion. Okay. Now, that's my personal opinion. Listen, at the end of the day, once a budget ordinance is enacted, I can do with what I want. I've got case law, I've got general statute, but I didn't bring that up because this is not, I'm open. I'm open.

We're over it. So, Chairman, at this time, at this time, I would like to know When these cameras are going to disappear.

I'm not going to speculate, but I'm going to assume when the contract expires, is that a fair assumption?

Clearly up to you guys, you guys choose that and access to it. Now you can, if you want to wait until October, it doesn't pay for your service.

Okay, so are the cameras actually removed or it's just access right?

Whatever you choose, you want, if you guys decide tonight that you would like to get rid of access to.

The 1 thing I would caution the board on, we need to look at that agreement to make sure there's no early out closet.

You have a lot of preparation.

There is definitely better. I'm sure that says off 2 sets.

So, chairman, at this time, I would like to make a motion that those cameras leave back and telling immediately as soon as it's feasible for the company to remove. Motion by commission Cheryl.

That's all second. 2nd, my commissioner breathing.

But I heard the word peaceful. Is that still for contract questions? Sorry.

Well, cameras loan insurance. I'm not touching the schools. I can't. They're not. They're not the sheriff's office property.

Then if the school wants to continue with those cameras. then I think those cameras should be moved to be on school property only. Well, the one out at the Carthage J School or West Macon School is sitting there getting tags on the old Murphy Road. So if the school system wants those, then I want to make sure that they are only getting tags as they enter before you get to the school and not retrieving public tags just like the uh the two cameras that's out at the roundabout next to the mbi are those your cameras or those school cameras school cameras okay so please remove those and put them either to middle school on their grounds to where they're not taking pictures of any public highway tags of the citizens of Macon County. And wherever the fourth one is, I don't know. But please remove it and put it on school grounds.

So I'm going to go ahead and call the question. Any other discussion pertaining to the motion by Commissioner Cheryl that was seconded by Commissioner Breen to remove LBRs essentially immediately. Any other conversation? Hearing none, all in favor, please raise your right arm and state aye for the record. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? I'm just going to be pleased that the record reflects 5-0. All right. That wraps it up. Item B, new business, schedule a public hearing, propose revisions to the high-impact ordinance, and request the planning board to review. Council.

There is some proposed language in your agenda packet there are. There is actually that's in the in the packet again that's chapter 1, 2, 2, 7 of the making county for the ordinances. We change that definition and outlook applicability 1, 57.4. there is proposed language to the changing in that definition section in 1, 57.5 and then Joe. reminding me that those revisions, and that didn't appear in the agenda packet. The agenda packet went out before we got those thought, but also there's 157.20 paragraph O. That one we'll go ahead and include at least for consideration by the planning department to include data centers. And then that likewise changes that Ms. Baste pointed out in 157.21. There are, I hesitate to do this, but with AI, everybody has access to some information of law, some of it's right, some of it's not. So I'm just going to do this. I'm going to try this. This might die firing. This might be the worst, one of the worst decisions I've made. If you're listening, if you wanted to put in your AI search. We have, we don't like strip joints in Macon County. They have no business. They demean women and it is a cause for trafficking of children and young girls. And so we want to outlaw strip joints in all of Macon County. We're the county. We're going to outlaw strip joints in Macon County. Okay. Sounds like a great idea, right? Put that in your AI and see if you can outlaw strip joints in make and counter. All right? You don't have to do it right now, but if you do it, we'll see what the answer is. I assume AI is going to answer that one correctly. And that answer is, you can't do it. But what you can do is you can regulate. All right? And so how do you regulate? Well, you make it so that it's legal under these circumstances. And under the circumstances, That isn't going to happen. That's how you do it. So if the language isn't three pages of definitions and creates all these words, lots of words create lots of loopholes. So sometimes a little vagueness is okay because what a little vagueness allows is for a human being rather than a computer AI-assisted search, it allows for a human being who is familiar with what was going on in Macon County, such as Joe Allen, to make the call on whether or not this business is or is not a data center or a business that's going to work or not, according to our ordinance. All right, so if it says in here that, yeah, they're allowed, they're only allowed if it is X amount of feet away from something, if it doesn't use excessive electricity, if it doesn't use excessive water, if it doesn't do anything which is going to environmentally impact our community, and it isn't audible from any other adjoining place, and it only operates between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., and it cannot operate between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., Guess what happens with those data centers? They can't locate here because that is not how those work. But guess what? They're allowed under our ordinance. You bet. You can have it as long as you comply with the rules that we did. All right? So we've got rules in place. It's not illegal. This stuff hasn't been around long enough for it to get to the Supreme Court on a First Amendment right. All right? So Larry Flint can take Penthouse to the Supreme Court and Chief Justice Stewart has this long, often used quote, which is, I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it. All right. So if you try to define pornography, yeah. I mean, what is art? What is pornography? It's hard to define, but you know it when you see it. All right, so we have a little bit of that. So if I catch a lot of heck about how dang right now, this isn't very solid. You could have used somebody else's look at what some big city did. They have 10 lawyers that worked on this for ages and it's 100 pages long and by golly, that's the line. Oh yeah, that might've worked for that city. All right. So some of it is I'm not necessarily that I'm the I'm the expert on certainly on data centers or the language and ordinances. But I know what we need to do, because when this does go to the Supreme Court and if the Supreme Court says it's the First Amendment right that you have to have them, we completely outlawed them. Then we lose. All right. But if we allow them only according to our criteria, then we're OK. So I throw all that out there now. So when I go to the planning board meeting and I catch a lot of heck about, what the heck's this? You tweak this little bit and you tweak that little bit and you and Joe Allen think that that's good enough. I mean, what have you been doing? All right. There is a, there is reason to it. So I throw all that out there just to say that Joe's really good at his job. I'm not as good at mine, but I do have some some history with ordinances, and what is allowed, and what's going to be challenged, and knowing the First Amendment rights. Those are the these-me's. And you bring that argument up, data centers, they provide AI for people who otherwise wouldn't have access to that information. So therefore, that is like a library. Guess what the library big argument is? First Amendment rights. You have the right to read books. You have the right to this. So if you apply that First Amendment right stuff to AI, which is going to happen in data centers, then people have the right to AI. Then the only way you have the right to AI is access to data centers. The only way you have access to data centers is we got to have it. So anyway, we have got this. We've got some, there's a method to the madness. If it looks like it's again, if it looks like it's sophomoric and drafted by somebody that. Could have been drafted by a kindergarten or that it was a little bit of the intent just so, you know. All right. So sorry about all that.

We schedule a public hearing and we need to figure out. the next meeting for the record the next planning board meeting is august 6 5 p.m 5 p.m and 5 p.m with a b room of human services building which is just to the right of the landfill and it's time we need a motion to schedule public hearings for our next schedule board meeting yes all right without the public hearing

This is a 160 D ordinance, which means it's a mind planning ordinance that doesn't require a public hearing beforehand. We can have the public hearing before next board meeting and then vote on it later that evening.

So, I hear it most of my commissioner.

Second, my commission reading any further discussion. No, I think it's I've had a few conversations with Senator Gordon about data centers and what's going on in. Is no longer offering incentives for that in the state of North Carolina. So there's some action in the state level. And also, I think they are looking at the fact of. Back to just right now is conversation or comments that. And I tried to send him a text message to say, but. My understanding we're going to be able to completely banal accounting, but I'll clarify that before the next couple of years.

Here again, all in favor, please raise your right arm. Stay after the record. All right, we have removed item F from the consent agenda. I hear a motion by Commissioner Breedon. Second. Second by Commissioner Antoine. All in favor, please raise your right arm and say aye. Aye. Any opposed? I want you to pass this by zero. We do have an appointment. SCC Board of Trustee, we had one seat. We had a ballot. We'll add it and get a recommendation.

Let me say one word on that, if I can. Let me just react to that a little bit to see who this pertains to. At one time, in 2024, I was the trustee to the SEC. When I became chairman in 2024, I felt uncomfortable being the trustee, so I went to talk to Dr. Thomas. At that time, He said, stay with me until this summer. Then you do not have to have a commissioner on this.

Is that correct? That's correct. You can have a commissioner, but it does not have to be a commissioner. This appointment is the remainder of Brett Rogers' term.

Okay. The reason I'm saying this is because you really get in complicated situations if you're going to be a trustee at Southwestern. Because this board vote one way, when you get to Southwestern, you're going to be sitting there with a red face because you can't vote that way. So at that time, when that summer came up in 24, I got out of the trustee business because it was too awkward to be a trustee. And you had a difference of budget opinion about something. They voted one way and you voted, the board voted another way. And you had to, well, Ethically, you had to vote the way your board went, not the trustee board. So I just wondered if that room was still there where it does not have to be a chairman. But at one time it did or something like that.

It does not have to be a commissioner. Obviously, you only have one applicant, so you don't have a ballot. So you can either choose to accept that applicant or we would have to repost. And who was the applicant? The one applicant was Mr. Logan Gillespie.

Call soon. That's it boy. And he's a he's a non commissioner, so he he's fine.

I hear most of my Commissioner Braden second by Commissioner Shields. Any further discussion? All right closed session. Yeah. Got to.

Okay. So I need to go on a closed session under 143 dash 3.1183 in order to discuss with the county attorney and also include that pending litigation that may involve.