Commissioners - Regular Meeting

All right. Good evening, everyone. At this time, I'd like to call to order the September 9th Mon County Board of Commission meeting. Um, I also want to welcome the overflow room. Tonight, the courtroom uh air condition isn't working, so please bear with us. So, please bear with us. And, uh, thank you for being here. I'd also like to welcome Senator Corbin. Thanks for coming tonight. And uh welcome to each and every one of you. At this time, I'd like to start off with announcements. Uh Miss Tammy Kezer. All right, Mr. Kate.

So, Mr. Chairman, I'll do the the first one on the list there. The May County Board of Education has requested a joint meeting and they've offered some dates uh that we need to run some of those by them. The dates they've suggested is the u the 17th which would be an evening meeting the 29th or the 30th uh which could be a morning meeting I assume. So we need to eventually get a consensus now or later on when you all want to meet with them. If you want to do it now or you want to wait till later that's fine. Is everybody good for the morning of the 17th? 17th was evening. They they specifically asked for evening on the 17th. Yeah. about 6 p.m. I'd prefer to do that.

Danny, Mr. Antoine prefers mornings. Do we have a morning? We could do the 29th or 30th on mornings, but John can't do that. Um, and we can you give me another date or I'll go back to him and get some other options. I can do that as well. We'll talk about that later. Okay. Other than that, I don't have anything else. Commissioner Braden.

Yeah. I would like to uh make an announcement. Um, first of all, thank you all for being here. Um, as we move into this um, first portion of this agenda, the public hearing, I I kind of wanted to address a couple things on there. Um, when we started this a few months ago, um, and we made this date a couple months ago, you know, that we the talk was is the board of commissioners would would take over the board of health and and maybe an advisory role for the board of health um, as it sits. Well, that has kind of evolved into a couple other options. Um, so I would like to say that the board of commissioners taking over the board of health and moving them to an advisory role is not an option. That is that is not on the table. That's not what we want to do. The options that we have are leave uh the board of health as it is and just continue on like we're doing or a consolidation which would be the health department and another human services department. Um, and what that would allow us to do is it would allow us to appoint the current board of health and then we would have to to add a few members to that board of health um as the consolidated health board and give them the authority over that board. So they would be the governing board. They would decide all of the um, you know, they would look at policy, they would look at the um the uh the budget, they would do all of the medical things that need to happen, all of all of those decisions that we don't need to be involved with. That's not something we need to do. That would fall to the board of board of health or consolidated board of health as it stands right now. That what that does is it gives us the personnel side of things, the county, which would allow us to do the day-to-day operations. So, you know, we have a a great group of professionals here. Um, help our community, do a lot of things in our community, all over the place. But what it does is it allows us to go in there on the day-to-day if there's issues, if there's anything that needs

to be done. It allows our HR to be involved with with any type of uh things that they need to be involved with. Um, and it it kind of just relieves those professionals that can't maybe get out of the office to do those types of things. Um, but it allows the county to to kind of step in and help in that role. So, I did want to say that before we get to the public hearing, we we are not looking at the board of commissioners taking over the board of health in any role whatsoever. All right. Commissioner Antoine. Nothing. All right. Commissioner Shields. Uh I'd just like for do a little reminder uh in the Hol Brooks family of the passing of your dad, former sheriff. Uh appreciate him a lot.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Shields. Mr. Cheryl, Miss Lorie, uh legal counsel. I have probably a lot to say, but not all right. Well, at this time, I'd like to ask Commissioner Shields to lead us in a a moment of silence and a pledge of allegiance. If you're able to stand, please stand for a moment of silence and I'll lead you into the pledge of allegiance.

This reverend pledge for allegiance. I aliance 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. You may be seated. All right. So, at this time, we have a public hearing. And I would like for Miss Kezer to present to us what the public hearing is all about. Can you do that?

I will try my best as of a couple of hours ago when I was told I was going to do this. So, we'll go from there. Um so, um have a PowerPoint presentation. On July the 8th, the board of county commissioners, this board began working on a strategy to consolidate the board um into a uh consolidate the board of health and create a consolidated human services agency. So when we look at a timeline of the major elements of consolidation, we have a public hearing which is being held this evening. the then the board of commissioners will adopt a resolution of their intent and their uh pathway that they want to take. Then there they will meet with the current public health board and any other board from another agency that they decide to include in the consolidation to talk about what consolidation looks like and how the boards will be formed. That is probably October time frame. These are all fluid timelines. Then the board of commissioners will adopt a resolution formally consolidating into the consolidated human services board. Then applications will be taken uh for the unfilled consolidated human services advisory board uh capacities. So that would be public and the consumers and those uh criteria of folks that have to make up that consolidated health and human services um board. And then there will be board training. So, we're looking at a timeline um a possible timeline of things to start from this evening after the public hearing to be concluded in December. What is a consolidated human services agency? So in 2012, the general assembly enacted legislation that provided counties with options for consolidation and how they could govern local human

services agencies, which includes health departments, departments of social services, and other human services agencies. All counties are allowed but not required to consolidate human services agencies that are either governed by an appointed board or by the board of county commissioners. Counties are also now allowed to keep separate county public health and social service departments but abolish their appointed governing boards and have the elected board of county commissioners assume that role. So, of the options, um, and Barry talked about these a few minutes ago, but you have the option of where the board of county commissioners assumes the powers and duties of local boards and the agencies stay the same. You have the option of where the board of county commissioners creates a consolidated human services agency and the board of commissioners appoints a consolidated human services board. And then you have the option of where the board of county commissioners creates the agency and the board of county commissioners assumes the powers and duties of the uh consolidated health services board. This is the map from the school of government um as of today of the North Carolina consolidated organizations and their governance. I know it's hard for those in the audience to see that, but um we are currently a separate social service and public health. We have separate social services and public health agencies. So, we're one of the blues. So, what Mon County's recommendation is is the option two where you have the board of county commissioners, a consolidated human services board, and a consolidated human services agency. So the board creates and appoints the board. The county manager hires the um

consolidated health services director with the advice and consent of the uh consolidated health services board. The consolidated health services director appoints the person with health director qualifications. Okay, this is a sample of what the proposed organizational chart would look like with the county commissioners at the top, county manager, your human services agency with the consolidated health board. Your consolidation, as we are discussing tonight, would be public health and other agencies that are yet to be determined. Why consolidate? It eliminates the governance silos that exist by having separate public health and other boards. To be more strategic in meeting the human service needs of the citizens across all programs offered within the county and to create a unified personnel system for all county employees. What does this mean for the employees currently working at the health department and those other human service agencies? The benefits stay the same. So there's no change to any of the health benefits or other benefits that they have. The retirement remains the same. Currently, public health employees are subject to the state human resources act. But if consolidation agency is created, the employees are governed by county personnel policies. What about grievance procedures? Currently, the public health director has grievance authority and under the state human resource act any formal grievances, harassment, discrimination, disability accommodations are submitted to the public health director. The public health director has the right to investigate agency grievances and report the findings to the employee. And then depending on the nature of the grievance, the employee may have the right to appeal to the state office of administrative hearings.

Under county personnel policies, any formal grievances are submitted to the human resources director. The human resources director and employees investigate and report the findings to the employee and the department manager. and the employee has the right to appeal to the county manager who is the final grievance authority. A mere disagreement or difference of opinion with the supervisor or another employee including performance appraisals, written warnings, a non-grievable issue under both the state human resource act and county personnel policies. Employees should first try to work issues out with their supervisor and resolve disagreements by going through the chain of command. Would disciplinary procedures change? Currently, the public health director has the exclusive right to hire and fire. Under the state human resource act, the health director has the authority to discipline, including suspensions, demotions, and dismissals. They are not required to consult with a county human resources director or county manager. Employees have the right to appeal to the same public health director who made the decision to discipline them. and employees may appeal suspensions, demotions, and dismissals to the state office of administrative hearings. Can be a lengthy process and costly if attorney has to be retained. Under county personnel policies, department managers have the authority to discipline employees, but are required to consult with the human resources director prior to taking action to suspend, demote, or demiss dismiss employees. Employees may appeal any suspensions, demotions, or dismissals to the county manager who is the final authority. This process is objective, fair, streamlined, timely, and cost-effective.

All right, Eric, have you reviewed all this?

I have um substantially more than I wanted to. Um, so I did draft based upon the feedback I was getting um from comments from from the board and and also in conversations with the with the health board as to what this would look like. And going back to um one of those slides that Tammy mentioned, she talked about eliminating government silos. And that is kind of the the vogue term right now for when when governments are inefficient. you have everything in a box or a silo where you've got this department and this silo, this department and that one and there's no interaction and they may be completely treated completely different within the county system. For example, health department and DSS uh their grievances appeals go to the office of office of the state personnel um other employees go directly to stay within the county. Um it also tries to keep this this operating in isolation where where one board or one government department doesn't know what the other's doing. Um they can also be inefficient uh result in delayed services and incomplete decision making. Um well just by way of example um one issue that that keeps coming up that that we're not discussing today but as far as um government silos is health departments in charge of well acceptic approval code enforcement's in charge of that. Those are different departments set up by the statute. Okay. Well why is it that after somebody's going to get a building permit they have to go to all these different departments and stops. Um, and so that's just an example of what's going on. So, this is working to try to correct that if if you all are interested. Um, and it can be set up however you want. So, and

Tam, we did and I've got a whole bunch of extra copies. I'm sorry I didn't get them on the table. If anybody wants a copy of this resolution, I'm getting ready to to page through. Um, just I guess maybe stack off copies of 10 in each and start passing them down the roads if you don't mind for whoever wants those. And now this is purely a draft. Nothing's been decided. This board has not had any um discussion on it. In fact, I sent this um I emailed it to the board at 3:45 this afternoon right before I left the office. And so I'm guessing that they are reading it for the first time, too. This is purely just thrown out there for comment um by the board um for them to decide what they want to do with it. Um so if we go to um Tammy, we've got the resolution and for example, Miss Keyser um put together this slide presentation um between 5:30 and 6 tonight um just so that you all could see um this draft resolution for comment um before we actually hold the everybody's still going to have their time to to voice public comment about this, but this is kind of so you have an idea that this is where we're going. This doesn't have to do with what's going on other places. Okay. Um so um this right here it explains um the authority under which this this would work. Um it's a general statute 153A-77. And then in in brackets we've got these different uh health these different departments. In order to create a consolidated health services board you have to consolidate some different departments. You can consolidate all nine and additional ones. Um what is common just just throwing it out there as far as statewide is combining both department

of social services and the health department into um under one consolidated board. Um those departments would still stay separate departments with their separate um control and authority but they'd be governed under one board. And often times counties that have have consolidated both the department of social services and health department is they just merge those two boards together as one and then they go out in the public and pick whichever um additional uh positions that are required and we'll get into the different positions that the statute requires beyond those boards. So this board today you could um decide that you're well let's also talk about department of social services. Um, you don't have to decide today. You can decide today. If we decide today, I'm going to recommend let's give us a little bit of time till we can get this new board appointed. Um, you can backtrack and think about it. Um, I would not recommend up and including the Department of Social Services because we haven't even included that board in any of these discussions. So, um, they would be like, wait a minute, what what's going on? How did we get thrown into this? They could be a part of this. That is the that is the common thread that that most counties do. consolidate those two. Um All right. So, um All right, Tammy. Then on the next slide, we've got um go back one. Okay. So, this is how the resolution would read. Again, this can be commended. Um we've got it. If if you decide you're going to do something tonight, you can. And I threw in the date January 1st. And that's um I'll get to that in a little bit. That's just because we're going to need to appoint this new consolidated health services board. And until that board is created and has authority, we're still going to need the the existing health board. Um later on you'll see we'll then my recommendation

would be we take the existing health board. They're already then the first members of this consolidated health services board. There's some additional requirements um that for professions andor people that need to be included in this additional board. I think the minimum amount that we could get that to is 15. The statute says you can't have any more than 25. It's been my experience that the greater number of people on a board the less effective it is. Um so um that's so if we could try to keep it down to the 15 or 16 level we could. It could go as high as 25. So if you decided you later wanted to add DSS, you could and automatically incorporate that board. You'd probably still have enough room within that 25 limit guideline. You could automatically do those, still meet your requirements as to as to the people that are required to be on that consolidated health services board. Um then the next one, number two, and this is where the county then um has some say in in what's going on in some direction and the equal treatment of county employees um with regard in regard to other departments is is that the county manager would then um be in charge of hiring and firing with with quotes um the human services director. The director would still oversee the operations of the of the health department or the consolidated health services agency as CHSA means and but that person would still report to the county manager. That's really the only change as far as that goes. However, if when it comes to hiring and firing and Tammy that's going to be we go to the next one. I'm going to come back to that one. Um, get to what I was hitting on earlier where

I'll just stay in order. Okay. So, uh, when is it going to become effective? Whenever you all say it is. Um, subject to, however, we need to get some additional appointments on to that. If you're going to do it, we need to get some new appointments on the Consolidated Health Services Agency board. Um, I said in there no more than 21 just because I think you can make 21 work. Says you can go up 25. Again, my recommendation you keep it as small as you can with, you know, they still have an affected board. um said the consolidated number five the board shall consist of the current members of the Mon County Board of Health until the current term expires and so anyway it wouldn't be a oh your term starts or stops you about the staggered I think although I think most of the people on the board of health are fairly new um we would then need to add these additional consumers of human services that is a requirement under the statute also required under the statute that we have a minimum of two physicians statute says that one of them has to be a psychiatrist. Um, and I don't know, I've not yet determined what we do if we don't have either a psychiatrist in the county who's willing to participate and if um, if we can just go with a regular physician under this under the old statute, one of the issues was whether or not the physician on the board has to be licensed in this state or can he live in live in this state. it actually be licensed in another state that under the board of health statute it did it was unclear on that under this statute it specifically says that the physician has to be live in the county and be licensed within the state of North Carolina. Um so number six then it says that the current members of the Mon County Board of Health shall nominate the new appointments and so that's in addition to their board. There's going to be some additional appointments I think made

tonight at the end of tonight's meeting to fill some unfilled roles on the current board of health. Those appointments will be to the board of health. That board of health will then nominate the appointments um to have the for appointment by the board of commissioners at the blank meeting. Well, that depends on when the board of health can coordinate getting those nominations in. we get that board appointed and then that turnover can happen if the board is so inclined. Um terms of service um this is again according to the statute. It says that members shall serve four-year terms. Um no member shall serve more than two consecutive when we if and when we get to that point. It would be nice to have those staggered so we have the consistency of of a board. Um, the other changes are that in accordance with the statute, employees are now subject to the county personnel policies and ordinances. And that's what Tammy was speaking about. And the county manager is directed to develop and implement a transition plan. Um, and again, that's just a that's basically to give notice to the health department employees that this is how this may affect you. This is how it most likely won't. Um, they won't most people actually won't really see any difference. Um, one thing that I meant to hit on and I don't know if it's in here and I just glossed over it, but while the health services director would report to the county manager and the county manager would have authority over that person. He could not hire or fire that person without the consent of the board or the of the

consolidated health services agency. So, if you're wondering, well, you know, I don't really like the makeup of this existing board and so I'm worried that they're going to put pressure on the county manager to fire the health director if the health director doesn't do this. Okay. Health board who's making all decisions related to health related and policies and um rules of the procedures that the health department's going to take. would still have to okay that. So I don't know what happens if manager says we gotta terminate or we got to hire this person and the board of health doesn't but they're going to have to come to a meeting of the minds before that would happen. So that gives the series of checks and balances that um I think most people are want to make sure is in place which that's the reason for this consolidated health services is that there should be a series of checks and balances at every level uh to make sure that the best interests of the public and the board and the employees are all being protected. That's the that's the theory behind it and I'm happy to answer any questions from the board. Think you summed it up. Thank you.

Well, wait a second. If we vote tonight to consolidate, we have to make the decision tonight which agency we're going to consolidate with or do we have time after that actual vote?

No. If you're going to vote tonight on that, you're going to have to at least incorporate an agency. I think you could come back in and incorporate additional agencies later. Um it might make it more difficult with regard to um making sure you've got a a board that fairly represents all agencies um because under this one we we've got certain criteria that have to be met. Um, in the event that there is an opening, one one thought it was, let's let's say that there's an opening in the director of an agency coming up or a department, who's going to hire that person? So, do we want to go ahead and form it to hire that person or both people from those different departments or do we wait? Do we hire one person to oversee both those agencies where that person is the consolidated health services director of these different departments all at the same time with the county manager over that person? So, lots of different um scenarios that may have an impact on what you decide to do tonight auction.

Thank you.

Good everybody good. All right. At this time, I'd like to open public hearing for for consideration of assuming powers and duties of the Mon County Board of Health pursuant to North Carolina General Statute 153A. And I'd also like to do things a little bit different. Since we have an overflow room, I'm going to call out the speaker, but I'd also like to call out the next speaker. That way, they can kind of make their way I'm sorry, make their way into this room and and maybe we speed things up a little bit. All right, just a reminder, please state your name and address for the record. First speaker, Constance Neely. And the next speaker on deck is Margaret Picket.

Thank you so much. Well, I have to Constance Neely. I'm in Scaly Mountain, 334 Hickory Ridge Road. And first of all, I want to thank you for the opportunity to get to speak. And I also have to um say that when you come to think that you're talking about one thing and you get a lot of new information, it does challenge you. But I feel like I've still got a few things and you've raised a number of questions. So allow me just to get on with that. Um, I just want to underscore that we need to put science and patient care above anything that even sniffs of political decisions over the patient care of the residents of our um our good good county. We saw a cautionary tale with the CDC in the last week where medical decisions were overridden. We do not want to ever see that in this county. I do have some concerns about the process that got us here. First of all, I want to compliment you on a lot of work has happened since the last public meeting that I attended. But I have to say that from a resident standpoint, what I witnessed was pressure between the commission and our valued health board. It was, dare I say, bullying. That process was flawed and it seemed that meaningful solutions that the board could have raised were in many ways dismissed. and there was a sense of nope, we have to take this over. So, I'm very glad that a lot of progress has been made. Um, I also just want to say again that

we value our health board and I am sorry that the process that we just witnessed. We lost two board members because of that process. I don't think that's how we operate. I don't imagine that that's how we want to operate. So, I just want to um ask um are there any changes that the consolidated health HSA will remove any medical decisions or patient care decisions by our board? Will any of the medical decisions be overtaken by this new structure? And I also would like to know how are we going to evaluate that this new consolidated approach works. So with that um I'm very keen to know how we'll how this what we know if we don't even know which other agency we're subsuming. It feels like we're not yet there and that we would want an opportunity for the citizens to react. So thank you so much for the time. Thank you, Miss Neely. All right. Um Margaret Picket and uh Lisa Walker, you're up next.

Thank you for the opportunity to address the board. I am Margaret Picket. I live in um full-time in Highlands. Um I have a background in nursing with maternal child health as well as um child and family mental health. So I'm aware of the difficulties in um organizing and and running an agency a health a health agency. Um I too like Constance was am surprised. I'm very prepared to speak to the issue that is the non-issue now and I am not prepared to speak to the issue that you have presented tonight. I feel like um for you to vote on this issue tonight would be pushing the public comment section away and out of the process. So I would like time more time to research to look at the benefits of a consolidated health agency versus the agency that we are currently dealing with. Um and I would like for the public to have the opportunity to comment before you vote. So, I hope that will be the path that you go and I thank you very much for this time.

Thank you. Thank you, M. All right, Lisa Walker and Mary Williams, you're up next.

Thank you for the time. I'm Lisa Walker. I live at 80 Saddleup Drive in Franklin. And um I like the other speakers had a whole list of things to talk to you about, but um based on this decision, it's kind of irre some of it's irrelevant. Um, I do want to thank you for serving our community and I also want to thank all the people who have uh courageously and boldly and bravely um the employees of the health department who spoke. I think that took a lot of courage. So I if they're listening or in the audience I want to thank them for that. Um I guess the one question I have is in the new resolution it says that the board published public notice 30 days in advance and held a public hearing on September 9th. Well, based on this new resolution, will we get another 30 days so we can have time to absorb and really feel understand what the impact is going to be on our community?

I don't know if you can answer questions now or I I know it's up for a vote tonight. It's up for I mean the board the board has the power we they can the board has the ability to vote on it is after the public hearing. That can be tonight, that could be next month, that could be three months from now. Um Okay. So then the then was just trying to help clarify now this board just to be clear now the board this is just what

is my understanding of what the issue is the issue could be so big that that we could spend 10 hours here and not get anywhere and so based upon what I was hearing this is the one I crafted it's up to them so to be honest yes I mean technically could they say we're going to scrap this resolution and we're going to go back to the county commissioners or the board of health yes they because the board of health I mean the public hearing has been noticed they can make that decision. I I don't think we need to have 30 people say that, you know, vote, you know, talk about that because I don't think that's actually what they're considering. But

okay. Yeah. I just hope that we have a time to absorb what the impact would be. And and like the other speakers before, I also firmly believe that um we need medical professionals making medical uh policy decisions and not an uh a board, no offense to y'all, but um we need we need medical professionals making medical pol policy decisions decisions versus an elected board. Um so let me think there's anything else. Um, yeah, I think that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Mary Williams and Kina Kenir, you're up next.

Hello. My name is Mary Williams. Um, I live at 172 Welch Road, Lower Burning Town. Uh, I'm a physical therapist, retired. My husband, Bob Williams, as part of the school system here. Um, I too just echo what has been said before. Uh I came prepared for the previous resolution which I was totally um not in agreement with. Uh but I am encouraged by the look at a consolidated model. Uh my background is I worked in um for the largest healthc care organization in Alaska for 14 years and I managed not only therapy departments but also nursing units and we were very dependent on having inter relationships and policies and procedures between the different departments and human resources was very key in in promoting the the education and orientation uh annual competencies and such. And so to hear it discussed that we would have kind of that consolidation and shared knowledge on those basic things that are are across the organization the same. That's great. But then maintain the specialty part of the medical aspect of it with elected board members with the board of health being maintained looking for other medical professionals in the community to sustain that. Um I am concerned about the timeline. I think it's too quick. Um my head's spinning about that. Um the idea that we would implement such a huge change and the way that things have been done by January 1st um is is not really a smart idea and I think this board is is um is more intelligent than that to try and do a fast track on this. I encourage deliberation on it. I encourage consumer

feedback. I encourage looking toward uh individuals in the community who would add uh positivity to this and also professional knowledge. Um and I think that's just kind of where I'm at. Yeah. I'm just asking that you don't make any quick decisions tonight. Um I would uh definitely against the previous resolution and the resolution that's been now presented. Um, I'm encouraged by that, but I don't like the timeline. It needs to be slowed up. So, thank you very much for all that you do in this opportunity. Thank you, Miss Williams.

Kelina Keenir. Up next, Jessica Jones, Jamie Waldrip.

Okay. Good evening. I stand before you tonight not only as a citizen but as a daughter, as a mother, and quite frankly, as someone who might be sitting in one of your seats one day. I am the daughter of a retired health department employee, and I am a mother of a child who was told she could not compete in the Special Olympics. Both of these experiences traced back to one place, the leadership in Mon County Health Department. As a daughter, my mother gave 25 years of her life to this county. She showed up every day with dedication, with pride, and with heart. She loved her work and she loved serving the people of Mon County. But under the leadership of the health director, the director of nursing and the finance officer, her workplace became a battlefield. She didn't just make her job, they didn't just make her her job harder. They attacked her very spirit, her confidence, her career, her joy, even her health. I watched a strong, proud, unstoppable woman fade before my eyes. They created a hit list targeting employees who refused to bow to the arbitrary rules. employees who were only trying to serve the county the right way. In the end, my mother retired and this county lost somebody who is invaluable, irreplaceable, and she was not alone. Many of the best employees this county has ever had were pushed out. As a mother, two years ago, I made a simple suggestion, a way to improve the Special Olympics and make them better for athletes and families. But instead of being heard, I was silenced. the director of nursing at the health department who who also serves as a local Special Olympics coordinator had the regional coordinator call me and tell me that my child could not compete in the Special Olympics. My daughter is profoundly autistic and non-verbal. She has very few opportunities in life and yet she was told she could not compete because one person refused to listen to ideas that were not her own. Do you understand what that means? a child was excluded not because of her ability but because of the leader's ego. And I cannot help but

wonder, was this retaliation because of who my mother is? If so, that makes the situation even more shameful. And it doesn't stop there. She allows the Special Olympics and the athletes to be used unlawfully and unethically in political campaigns, directly violating US law and IRS, IRS regulations instead of protecting our most vulnerable. Commissioners, the choice before you is clear. You have the authority, the responsibility to act, to end the culture of fear, favoritism, and cruelty. To protect the employees who serve this county with integrity. To protect the children who deserve every opportunity to thrive. Leadership is not measured by title. It is measured by courage. By doing what is right, even when it's difficult. So ask yourself, when history looks back at your time in office, what will it see? Will it remember leaders who stood up correctly and just for injustice and safeguarded the future? Or leaders who looked away, tolerated abuse, and allowed talent and opportunity to be destroyed. The people of Mon County, our employees, our families, and our children, our county on do not fail us.

Thank you. Thank you, Miss Kenir. Uh Jessica Jones, Jamie Waldrup, and Mike McGee, you're up next. Go ahead, Josh. I might just just re reiterate just for public comment. Um let's try to keep this focused on the issues that we're here today on. I understand that there's a lot of emotions involved um on a lot of this and I know that there's been a lot of hurt. Um so I understand that. Um but if we could keep it um keep it from being personal, I think that would be more productive. Just a general comment. Thank you. Good. Thank you.

My name is Jessica Jones. This is Jamie Waldrup. who are nurses at the health department. I stand before the board tonight to present a prepared statement that has been collectively written to represent the clinic and laboratory staff of Mon County Public Health. We first want to thank the commissioners for taking the time to not only hear our concerns, but to take action. We want to thank the board of health for the additional time these issues have taken from each one of you and your efforts to understand and evoke change. We we appreciate each of you who have taken the time to reach out allow us to be heard and to better understand the situation. We want to be clear that any actions taken to address leadership and supervision shortfalls that led to this moment have never been motivated by personal vendetta. Unfortunately, hurt feelings and uncomfortable self-reflection have been a byproduct of the circumstances and attention this has brought. We have arrived at this meeting tonight as a result of ineffective leadership over the years leading to the loss of valued staff, poor morale, toxic work environment, and working conditions that have at time placed our lure at risk. It's been a difficult time and emotionally taxing for all involved. Unfortunately, it's apparent that without this level of attention to the issues at hand, change would not come.

Okay, guys. And as as Jessica said, my name is my name is James Waldrup. I'm the CD nurse for Mon County Public Health and been there about 7 years now and I come to you guys asking for help tonight. Um we have been surprised that the inadequacies and leadership particularly in clinical services continued for the length it had before being addressed. Currently we are equally surprised that more actions to correct the situation have not been done. We understand there are protections afforded to a vetted employee of the health department that require careful consideration when contemplating reprimands or demotions with steps that must be followed before action can occur. However, when it is clearly demonstrated that a leadership role is not aligned with a person's skill set, it should be possible to place them in a better suited position where the employee can grow, thrive, and be successful. Perhaps the expectation of real change was unrealistic based on the reality of a lateral move in leadership that occurred as a chosen solution. For those of us who have witnessed the entirety of this situation, the reasoning of the new leadership structure has not been appropri appropriately justified. There is a perceived layer of protection that has been afforded that if not present would have undoubtedly resulted in the documentation required to meet the legal criteria to implement more significant change. We appreciate the community's interest and opinions in moving forward with this decision tonight, but respectfully we want to express there is a significant lack of understanding in what has brought us to this moment. What may publicly be publicly be mistaken as a power grab is in reality an effort to bring structure and leadership to a system that is lacking in both. For the efforts that have been taken to correct this problem, clinic and lab staff are appreciative of the willingness to take action by the commissioners. Whatever the decision tonight may be, we simply want accountability and leadership with confidence that fair and appropriate solutions to problems can be obtained. It is our opinion that the board of health should although it sounds like you guys have already s um I'm just

going to speak from the heart here. I I've been a health department nurse for seven years. I've seen a poor support from certain members of leadership that have caused us to lose valuable employees. I've seen um inappropriate actions in front of patients as far as yelling at in employees and and and saying things in front of patients that shouldn't be done. And I've seen patients I've seen employees called out in p in public settings when they should not be. So, all right. Thank you for Sorry to do that to you, but thank you for coming. Good. Thank you. All right. All right. Mike McKe,

Jacqueline, you're up next. I'm sorry I can't pronounce your last name. I think you should have given the same counsel that you just gave a few minutes ago to some of these board members in the past. Your behavior has been absolutely very poor. Head of the snake. Going to cut off the head of the snake personalizing this related to different staff and leadership. I mean, you shouldn't be embarrassed. You should have given that counsel to this board. Okay. And as I said, I was just generically talking about personal attacks, but these these are all up here doing a service to their community. They don't really get paid and the amount of hours they're putting in is Let's Let's stay on topic right here. I'll take Yeah, I I'll talk about that. But let's let's not mix the message.

Thank my council. I make mistakes just like everybody else. I understand that. And I'm not saying I've made a mistake in this case. I'm just saying let's let's move on to the issue at hand. Well, the issue at hand here is people be dealt with constructively. Secondly, my question is Mr. Cheryl, I asked you in the last meeting that I was here, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak, what steps are going to be taken to resolve the issues that were brought up related to the health department because you and Mr. Breeden were on the board to help support helping identify those issues and help put resolutions in place to correct those problems. So, what was done? It's a question. Would you like me to

listen all all questions are supposed to be directed to the chair. Okay. Just eliminate side discussions. I'd like to know what was done. Listen, if you want to use your time right here, Mr. Sh allowed to answer. Okay. Go ahead.

Okay. So, what was done was we were u retrieving all the problems that you're starting to hear some of these employees talking about. And and if you listen back to whatever my stance was on this entire thing, it was the protection of all of our county employees or the health department employees that feel that they have been mistreated, abused, bered, uh everything else. So all of these people need protection and you cannot protect all of these people when there is one person that is overseeing these people. That's where you talk about cutting off the head of the snake.

That's correct. And so and so that's where that's where we're headed. I hope to cut off the head of the snake. And you think this is constructive, Josh? Well, I'll give my comments before we make the vote. Okay, Mr. Cab, do you have any background in healthcare hiring and the healthcare industry?

Secondly, Mr. Mr. Breeden, you can couch this any way you want. You're still taking over the health department. It's still putting the ultimate authority on the part of the board over the direction of hiring and firing on this health department. So, you can structure it any way you want, but that's the end result. Now I can tell you having been in Houston during all the issues related to CO and watch what happened in the county I was in there and what happened in the county here was exemplary exemplary. So you've heard strongly that people need time to digest this. My strong recommendation is is that one you give more time for people to digest it. Have another public hearing because that's what you're hearing. Secondly, as you move forward to your point, Eric, and to everybody else that we teach pe treat people constructively, all of them. Thank you for the time.

Thank you for your time. Mine. Next up, Richard Edfield.

I'm Jacqueline Rue. I live in Holly Springs. Um, I had a lot to say, but you guys answered my questions and I really appreciate you guys taking the time to pay attention to the details and especially to look after the county employees. I spent a lot of time at the health department. I'm a community health worker and I know firsthand that they're always working and so I I don't know what the details are, but we definitely need to support the staff. Um, thank you guys for your time. Thank you. Mr. Redfield and Richard Brady, you're next. Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Richard Edfeld. I live at 135 Willowbrook Run in Franklin, but in the auto community, I like a lot of others came here tonight to share my concerns about the issues that has surfaced at the health department and its leadership. I do appreciate the proposed resolution that's in your hands now and I believe it has a lot of positive merits. I would encourage you not to rush in deciding tonight and use the days ahead to hash out the many potent potential issues that it could face. Since I'm here, I would like to say public health should not be should only be under the leadership of those who are in the medical profession and have the training and expertise to make sound medical decisions based on science and research. Putting our health department under the control of any other governing body leads to the chance of medical decisions being based on politics and public opinion. Our current board of health includes people who are physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, veter veterinarians, and engineers. They are the ones who should be driving the decisions for this public health and this proposal tonight. This is not an insult to any of y'all. You

have your plate full when making the decisions and you have a massive job to do in directing the progress of our fine county. However, directing the day-to-day decisions in public health is not one of them. Thank you.

Thank you, Richard. Next up, Richard Brady and Miss Betsy Base, you're you're next. Good evening, Mr. Chairman. Good evening, members of the board. My name is Richard Brady. I live at 346 Pauline Avenue here in Franklin. Before I get started tonight, I'd just like to say that um I thank you for your service as a commissioner. I know it takes thick skin and a solid heart to do the job, but I came prepared to speak on the subject matter before it got changed tonight. But I think the change might be a a better approach, a better offering for um a win-win situation for the people, for the citizens. You know, at the end of the day, we're all making countins. So, I know that y'all have it in your business mind and in your heart that you want to do the right thing, provide a good work place, workforce and all that. Um, and resolve the issues if possible. Um, and so I understand uh, you know, where you're at and where you're going. I think I researched this quite a bit, spoke with some of you commissioners quite a bit um about this matter when it was the first option that we talked about and then uh now that this uh this other approach has been considered um I think it's it probably will be a better better outcome for everyone. Um I I I was in the overflow room. We could see you but we could not hear you some of you. And so I just need

a clarification just from my own mind. Uh does this consolidation would also include the department of social services? It could um it's not on the I don't think it's up for consideration right now. um would be my recommendation if they do consider that that it be postponed to at least give time to coordinate that and discussion with the board of okay with the with the DSS board.

All right. I just was asking because I thought well we're going to go through this community trauma what you know let's do it all at one time. Uh that would be my my take on it. Uh there has been some social media uh information here lately that you know is u not been um supported for the DSS board and that that's for what it's worth. So all right so at any rate I just want to let you know myself I I have 41 years of healthcare experience. 29 of those 41 years I served as a COO and a CEO and an administrator of a healthcare organization. and I spent my last 13 years serving here in Mon County in Franklin. And uh so I understand the healthc care processes. I understand um you know that takes change, the federal regulations, the state regulations. Each time they're in session, they bring out new laws and uh so we had to adapt and uh and so I think I'm just looking at this like it's another opportunity for a change. But I do um I do just want to say that I think it's a and a good move that the employees of the Mickey County Health Department if this is another attempt for another layer of protection for them and another process that's what we really should focus on because of the negative things that we've heard from them at recent meetings and uh and so I I myself um would support the change. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Brady. It's Betsy Bas. [Music]

Good evening, gentlemen. Thank you for the opportunity. Really sad that I'm last because everything good has been said. I do want to say that what's critical in this whole conversation is that employees needed to be heard, needed to be believed, and needed to be treated with respect and professionally. That was a simple fix, a simple solution. Now we have a huge complex problem that we are trying to make really, really difficult. And I'm really curious as to why something that's very simple. As business owners, as you all have been, as I have been, we know how to help our employees thrive. So, I'm curious as to why we just decided that that wasn't what we were going to do was just simple solutions for problems with management. Real simple. Nope. We're going to make it super complicated. So, here's my big fear. We tonight saw a pretty rushed presentation, but thanks for all the work. It was amazing to give us some knowledge and information, but none of us can digest it that fast. And I don't know how you can, unless you've already seen this and had a chance to think about it and deal with it, but the public hasn't seen it. And the public is now just hearing how we should think about this and feel about this and give you some input because you've asked for input. So my ask would be not to rush into a full hearty decision to take your time postpone this do a separate work session you're asking your of yourselves to create a huge new change with what an hour to think about it or you're going to take 10 minutes to think about it and make your decision. That doesn't seem like a good idea. Give yourself plenty of time to make the right decision to really help the people of Mon County and the employees. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Miss Bon. All right, that wraps up public hearing this time. Public hearing is closed. Um, would the board of health like to make any comments? Again, [Music] my uh kind of statement has evolved through all this, but um for everybody that doesn't know, I'm Garrett Hagden. I'm the new chair of the the health board, and I'd just like to say to the commissioners, thank you all for allowing us to speak this evening. and everybody. Um I would like to express our gratitude first um for this board highlighting the ongoing issues at the health department and due to this in large part there's two things that the previous iterations of the health board have not had contacted information listed publicly and secondly the former complaint process did not include an option to contact board of health members. Bringing these to our attention, you have given us the opportunity to fully understand the root causes and critical policy gaps that need to be addressed. At our joint meeting in July and called and special called health board meeting in the following week, we learned of these issues and have taken measures to address them with our commissioner liaison. In the span of two ch short short months, we've held emergency meetings, regular scheduled sessions to work towards resolving these issues. Action items include restructuring of certain departments, increased focus on key areas, and restructuring of a complaint policy, which we have a draft that we will be presenting at our next hope to be presenting at our next meeting of a new and improved complaint policy um for the people um and the employees at the health department. Um, additionally, subcommittees have been formed with the subject matter, healthc care experts to examine various departments as efficiency and structure

to ensure everything. Um, and county emails have now been made to ensure an open line of communication between the board members for situation that exists outside of the normal complaint process. We've requested that both our county emails and our phone numbers be published and given to the public to access. Uh we have worked diligently to make ourselves accessible and if you and if you are continuing to receive concerns um we ask that you inform us so that we can continue to work together to address them. Although we have a lot of new board members, we want to make it clear that we are dedicated board. Our board is devoted to fostering trust between us and the employees and ensuring that um all issues are handled promptly and fairly and continuing to improve the work work culture at the health department. Um, you know, we know that, um, now there's a consolidated option on the board. Um, you know, and as part of that consolidated option, it would be voted that we would become the new health board, you know, and and again, I kind of iterate what everybody else has said. You know, our our board has not had time to dis to discuss what the new processes would be either. And you know, our board, I think our goal, we think for right now is the best to remain intact um until we can have time to, you know, discuss within our meetings and um and have time to process what this consolidated board would look like. Um and this option seems you know like you said it allows for the authority um by non-elected health care professionals um to continue. Um but you know there is some concerns you know we've seen the map on there that there's uh the majority of the counties in North Carolina have stayed just like our board structure has. Um and I would like to investigate to you know why why have more counties not moved to this

consolidated health board. Um, and so I wanted the last thing I want to say, um, you know, just we'd like to ask that you would give it more time to consider this option. Um, you know, give us some time to thank and and to make and for the public and for the employees of the, uh, health department to really see, you know, what the best option for them is. And um but this board is dedicated is made up of dedicated volunteers who want to continue giving our time and expertise as medical professionals to make a positive impact on public health services of Mon County. We're committed to this and hope that you recognize that we have the capability and to do this and that um we would like to work alongside you to handle any challenges that come our way. Um, but we thank you all for your comments and um, thank you for your time and interest and your concern for public health.

Thank you, Gary. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Chairman Dton. All right, I'll open the floor for comments from our board.

Let's see. I prepared a little statement, but all this stuff, everybody's comments and stuff has changed. um a little bit of where I'm going, but I will tell you that um in the beginning when we had a joint meeting, uh the employees that have finally come forward with the problems at the health department, they were called disgruntled employees. And if you go into that agency every day to work and you're feeling that toxic environment and you feel berated and everything else, this is not rushing anything there. They come to us for help. Now, let me let me tell you, first of all, I'd like to thank everybody uh for coming tonight and sharing their thoughts about this very important agency, the Mon County Mon County Public Health. There seems to be a lot of misinformation and disinformation on the matter of the health department and the board of commissioners. As one of your elected commissioners, I have no desire to oversee the day-to-day operations of public health. The biggest issues are not the board of health nor the health department. The biggest issues are personnel matters and the environment in which they work. A lot of the problems that are in this agency did not just happen. Some of these problems are decades old old as you heard the chairman

at the joint meeting talking about when he first came in the 20 years of the problems with environmental health. So that's 20 years old of backlogs in there. My my support from this seat will be to help clean up the hostile environment and toxicity inside this agency. I am hopeful that our board will vote to help stop some of our employees going home crying their eyes out, not because of their workload and their duties, because how they are treated at work and berated. Some of the employees are seeking medical attention because of their work environment. My vote will be to consolidate with whatever agency that we do. We have an obligation to all employees for a safe and fair workplace. We have a county manager and county HR that should oversee day-to-day personnel and issues just like all the other county employees. In my opinion, the health board nor the board of commissioners have time to oversee personnel, nor should we. the um and some of the things that that was brought up um the pressure to the health board. There's no pressure to the health board. These problems have been going on for a long time. Um when we lost two health board members, they chose to leave. They were not pressured to leave. But it also comes back to leadership. If you have leadership in a board that don't understand what's going on in that board or that agency, we have an issue as a elected body that appoints this body and for them to have complete control of every operation

in that health department. There's there's room for major problems when one person has sole control over that agency and no one can touch it. It happens elsewhere. In government, when one person has complete control, you build an alliance, that alliance is untouchable. And we've got to reel that in. My stance through this whole thing has always been personnel issues. It has never been for us to tell health professionals what to do at the public health department. It's never been there. My whole issue is personnel. And how do we get personnel treated fairly? they go under the same employees as the rest of the uh county employees. So if you want to worry about public health, then you ought to worry about who is in there providing that public health because if they work in an environment that they can honest to goodness go home and cry their eyes out, that's not a very healthy work environment. And I assure you, this list goes on and on and on for many, many years. Just like we heard the lady speak just a few minutes ago. Her mother 25 years, what happened to her? These are not just isolated instances. It just started two months ago. This has been ongoing. And it is time that we stand up for the employees of the Mon County Health Department and make that agency as strong as it can be and make sure those employees walk in there with a smile on their face can do their job, take care of Mon County, the citizens of Mon County, and be happy and go home and

spend the rest of their time with their family. That's all I've got to say. Um, I would like to say that for me, I don't have a prepared statement, but uh I don't have an agenda either. Um, you know, to me it's the people that just stood up that work there that that put their necks out there to to say, "Hey, you know, we're facing something and we need help." You know, you heard them say, "We need help." Um, I think we have a great board of health. Um, I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with our board of health. I think that, you know, Commissioner Cheryl was saying, you know, just having that ability to, you know, address those issues when they come up, I think is is very important. Um, I spent my whole weekend talking to employees, former employees, whether they were retired or disgruntled. Um, but I that's where I spent my time because those are the people that were either losing or were going to lose. Um, and I think that's what's important to me. This is not a, you know, take it for what it is. You can believe it or not, it's not a power grab. Has nothing to do with that. It, what we're trying to do is continue on with exactly what they're doing right now. The board of health can continue to be the governing board to handle all of the medical things, the medical decisions, the policy. They can they can approve the budget. They can approve the health director. Um, but what it allows us to do is when there are issues, it allows us to to go in there and and handle those issues uh appropriately. So hopefully we we never have to come back here and do this again. Um, and that's if that's an agenda, that's my agenda. Um, but again, I only care about the people that are putting their necks out here saying we work here and it's a struggle and we need help. Those are the people that that I'm worried about. Those are the people that I'm thinking about because if we don't have them, what do we what

do we do? So

the uh I'm I'm kind of new at the information. Uh we have two leazison and I know a lot of the people works in the health department and I want to say thank you for what you do and thank for the public. Um, I guess after listening at this, uh, I see a note down here on this sheet and it says the the board may choose to, I'm going to put not to not take action on this matter immediately following the close of the public hearing. This is going to take consumption of of information. Uh, looking at some of this for the first time, too. Uh, let's do it right the first time. uh if we're going to get in a hurry, do it. Let's just water our paper up, throw it over to the side now. Let's do it right. And uh I think uh January uh that that's a good piece out there we can look toward, but I think the u the idea of a um a a unit, a consolidation of things is a good thing to bring into our discussion. And uh in my opinion, we should not make any decision tonight. We this thing should stay open and let's let's go forward with it. It's big responsibility, Mr. Gabe. It's it's big for you and uh this is a when I saw this tonight pertain to the consolidation piece. Uh I think it's going to take some time and let's don't get in a hurry. Let's do it right the first time or the last time. Thank you. Can Can I say one more thing? I just want to make sure that everybody that is is here tonight or listening online that we do not assume that when these folks are talking about

whoever's in leadership, whatever that is, that they're talking about people that may be currently work there. Some of these problems go back years and years and years. So there are people that work there now that may not have worked there when some of these issues have a have come up. So I just want to make sure that we're not just assuming that just because you work there you're part of the problem or you are the problem. You know I just just kind of wanted to to put that out there.

Awesome. Um well first I'm real grateful for everyone's comments tonight. That really helps us a lot when we get to hear from everyone. Um, it's a lot to digest. So, for myself personally, I'm not up for making any decisions on that tonight. Um, I've had an opportunity to talk to several board members in the last couple of days. It was really helpful hearing this that side of everything. Um, it was very productive conversations, you know, with that. Um, I'm very much concerned for the employees as well because I feel like they present a real legitimate concern and to overlook that I think it's really crazy. You cannot overlook that because for anybody to have to work in a toxic environment that's not good for anyone and I'm never going to support, you know, anything like that. That's just not a good situation. So, um, the current board right now I feel like needs time also to implement what they need to implement to be able to help. I don't know that they've been given adequate time because there's a lot of uh there's some policies that they've had to change here recently and I don't feel like you guys have been given adequate time to be able to implement that and to be able to help these employees get out of the situation that they're in. So I think just in good faith I say give the current board right now some time to be able to implement this give them an opportunity to help these employees and get rid of these issues. Um, and while they're doing that, we can explore the options tonight because I don't know that the options that were presented for consolidation are off the table either. There may be some options in that that would be even better for everyone involved. We don't know. So, we need time to be able to absorb that and do some research and figure out what would work best for everyone involved. It's not just a matter of just really helping out just one group of people. There's a lot of there's a lot of moving parts in this, a lot of people involved. So, I say give the current board enough time to be able to implement this. While that's happening, let's research the consolidation deal right now and figure

out if there's anything that would be real beneficial in the long run and look at a later date to come back and revisit this and try to make a more informed decision at that point. So, I guess the benefit of being chair, you get to pick when you speak, right? So, I get to speak last. Um, my thoughts on the issue, I think the timing, the optics probably couldn't be worse. You know, last month we're talking about a complete takeover. You know, now we're taking what appears to be the second best option. I do think the consolidation would work. I do think it needs to be looked at in more of a comprehensive manner, potentially taking in social services. And if we're going to do this, to Mr. To Jill's point, I feel like we look at the whole county. I also feel like the board of health has been a snowball barreling down the mountain. You know, we've had a an uproar in leadership. You know, I'm looking at the vice chair and the chairman, and I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but you two were the only two eligible to be chair vice chair. Am I right in saying that? Three.

Three. Okay.

Well, the point of that is, you know, there's the maturity the maturity level isn't there. The duration isn't there. And uh I think I've had more phone calls about this issue than any other to date, including several on Sunday. And uh you know, all weekend I spent time looking into this, really trying to figure out the nuts and bolts. And uh I don't think it's a bad thing. I do think it needs a little more time. I'd like to have you know, your board look into it, you know, have more of a comprehensive look. And like I said, I think it's the optics. I think it's the timing. And I don't think it's bad. I just think the timing is bad. And uh that's really how I feel to be honest with you. I think it'd be more of a, you know, a you know, a shared effort, you know, more of a, you know, walking hand in hand with the board of health. And just so you know, I mean, I feel like the board of health in in my personal relationship, in my tenure, the first 5 years, the first four years, I never heard a word in the past 3 or 4 months, I feel like everything I've asked of them. I mean, they've they've taken care of it. And I'm I believe in more of a delegation type leadership style. And they're volunteers. They've asked for it. Give it to them. If they can't do it, we'll talk about it. you know, I say can't for time restraints for their professional, you know, careers, but I think uh the biggest problem is isolating the problems and then creating a solution. So, it's really where I'm at. I've went around and around and around with this thing and it's tough. It really is. So, there you go.

But Mr. Gabe, does he have an input or No, I I think um depending on the direction that y'all want to go, I I think we as your staff needs a little bit of direction on what do you want us to do? What kind of time frame do you want from us? If you're going to take action tonight or if you're not going to take action tonight, I' I'd like a little bit of direction on a a time frame if you just want to explore it more. Well, what you have in mind for us at this time, I'd entertain any action desired by the board. Go ahead, sir.

One quick amendment just to make sure that we could put that motion. We could do adjustments to an approval of the agenda. I would like to add consideration of a resolution of the Mon County Board of Commissioners approving the creation of the Consolidated Health Service Agency. on as whichever number you all would like it just to make sure that there isn't any question whether or not that was an agenda. I know that it's under we could make that move but it gets to tax soon be there. So if we could just go ahead and make that one there's any other adjustments or approvals let's go ahead and do those as well before we call that one. Tell me again exactly what you'd like.

I'm sorry. [Music] Well, um the adjustment would be consideration of a resolution of Mon County Board of Commissioners to approve the creation of a consolidated health service agency. Thank you, Brent. You're welcome. All right. Um, so that would be C. We could make that under make it item C under new business. We can do that. All right. Okay. Let's uh let's get back to action right here. Is there any desired action from the board? I mean, put the brakes on.

No, that's that's not necessarily action. Do we have any desired action on the public hearing? We make that in form of a motion right now. Listen, if we don't take action, it defaults. Move it to 11C, which we haven't take. We had it's still on the I think we can put keep it on. Hang on just a second, Eric. I want to talk about action to the public to the public hearing real fast. We'll move on to adjustments. That's But that's what I'm putting on is the action on behalf of that public hearing.

Okay. So, you want to vote on that first? Well, no, we don't have to vote. I mean, we can have Senate. We can call to a vote under 11C. Um, but that's the that's the issue that I would like to put on for consideration as 11C is the the consideration the decision based if you want to make a decision after the public hearing. Do we have to put on 11C or can we take care of it now? We'll have to we have to vote to approve that. I think at this time is does the board am I right saying, Mr. Gabe? Well, I I have another addition. I I see what he's wanting to do. He he's want to add it as an addition to the agenda just to make sure we're proper and I have another addition whenever you're ready for you want to take the action potential action later on in the meeting. That's what Eric would like to do. Yes, I like that. Okay. And I do have another

I understand what you were saying. That's all right. All right. So, we'll pass that on. I've been garbling over here along. All right. So, uh All right. So, let's move on to additions to the agenda. So, under item 12E 12 what? Under item 12E, which is the bid for the wrecker, which is a 2026 Freight Liner for the garage. Um, I also want to include the surplus of vehicle number 310, which is a 2012 International roll back that we currently have that it'll be replacing that has 365,000 miles.

All right. So, we have item C under new business and item E under old business. Anything else? I have an addition to make to the consent agenda. So I guess that is 12 I would be a fireworks permit for a wedding event on November the 7th at Old Edwards in uh the farm property and it will be for a cold spark machine.

She wanted to die. All right. Any other additions the agenda?

All right. Now we enter in the public comment period.

All right. Vicky Sanders. Yep. Sheriff, you're welcome to ask if anybody wants to come in here. I think we've got a lot of room. You threw me a curveball there. Yeah, I know. I I I didn't know what you were trying to do, so I'm sorry. I completely understand now. I'm here.

Hi, ladies and gentlemen. Well, do you have a

commissioners? All of y'all welcome again. You've seen me for the third time. Short and brief. Three minutes. 40 years we've had no complaints at the Burning Town Fire Department. I am a new member on the board now and I hope to add a lot of value to that board. Smart work for 30 years in communication with fiber and electronics. So, I'm very up to date with how things should run. Uh, I have been a homeowner out in the Burning Town area for since 1988. Uh, I know out there that everyone is a volunteer. That adds a lot to it. You know, when you're a volunteer, you have to learn. And I know there's a lot of new members. I'm getting to meet some of those. I've only been to one board meeting, but I will continue to be on that board and strive to make it better. If the commissioners make the decision to cancel the contract, the Cowi Fire Department, and they are an excellent fire department, would take a longer time to respond to the calls, whether it be fire or medical reasons. Would you, as commissioners, please vote to keep the burning town fire department to serve all the families in our area, whether it's middle burning town, upper burning town, or lower Burning Town. Please consider that. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Sanders. All right, Betsy Bas. She may have already got her piece, but I will quick. Thank you, sir. I think she's gone. Wrap this up. All right. Last call for Miss Betsy Bas. All right. I'm looking for adjustments and approval of the agenda. Uh, Mr. Chairman, I would like to remove item number 11A, please.

All right. Anything else? Do you have my 11C? Yeah, I've got 11 C.

All right. Looking for a motion to approve the agenda. I hear a motion by Commissioner Shur, second by Commissioner Breeden. Any further discussion? All in favor, please raise your right arm. State for the record. I All right. Motion approves 5, Miss Timmy. Uh, no reports and presentations. Moving on to old business. uh update on Burning Town Iowa Fire Department.

Mr. Chairman, I'll start. I believe uh Chief McCascal and some other Oh, I see them back here in the back. They were in the other room. Um so I just wanted my intent tonight was to update you on their inspection process. Uh North Carolina off State Fire Marshall actually did an unannounced inspection on those folks on August the 26th. uh and they did pass their 9S inspection. Uh so I want to make you aware of that. And then I think Commissioner uh Breed and Antoine have I've seen some practical processes with them. So they may want to add some stuff. Of course, these folks are here. Thank you, Mr. Cape.

And what date was that they did, Mr. B?

Yeah, we went to Burning Town on Friday and um had them do some practical stuff. I think it's fire scene set up. Um, and during that time there was a call. Chief McKascal had to leave and and go attend a call, but he told his guys to stay put to do the test. We gave him a few minutes to make sure it was nothing serious. Um, and thank thank the Lord it wasn't. Um, but anyway, we we got to work on that and what I saw, what we what we saw was a I mean, it was a good effort. They're good people. Um, they're great guys, great great women and men out there trying to do the best they can. Um, but unfortunately there was a serious lack of leadership. Um, which I think was a perfect scenario because if if the chief isn't there, who's in charge? and we kind of ran into that and there wasn't a lot of um there just wasn't anybody that took that charge, took that kind of bull by the horns and and made it happen. There was a lot of um questions and uncertainty and I just feel like on a fire scene, for whatever that's worth, that could be very catastrophic. I think that could get a lot of people hurt. Um god forbid even killed. So, it uh that's like I said, great people. I think the world of those folks. I really do. Um spent a couple nights down there after the last meeting and that was my second night down there kind of kind of watching them do their thing and um I mean it's it's what it what it was.

Well, it was my first time there with everyone and I'm very thankful for everything that you guys put forth the effort for. Um, I second what Commissioner Breeding is talking about right now. Uh, in running through the exercise, it was really, it definitely was very difficult for them to get through and they were not able to do it in the time that the state would allow for them to be able to do that. Um, I would like to see in the event that we do terminate the contract that these folks would be on board with staying with that department and still serving the computer the community at that uh capacity. But as of right now, from what I saw with this lack of leadership,

um, I don't know, just set it up for a very dangerous situation from everything that we were able to see. And we were out there with them for a while. I mean, I know you guys had to call and we did wait just to make sure that everything was okay, but we spent a consider a considerable amount of time out there and really paid attention. Um, Mr. Han was with us. He got to explain quite a few things to me to be able to understand what was taking place, what needed to get done, what were the requirements, and what was missing in that. So, um, I don't know. It was it was a tough situation. I I don't know that I can explain this real well. I'm not a fireman, but um I think the state requires this test to be done for a so so the way the inspection process works for your protection class rating. The first thing that happens is you do the 9S inspection. That's first thing that happens when the inspector comes in the first day and then obviously if you don't pass that, the inspection doesn't go any further. Uh and then after that it's a u it's a it's an evaluation of both the the records and the potential for the department based on some certain parameters. Uh one of those would be a a fire scene setup which is based off of the hauled water procedures that off state fire marshall uses. So, so typically what what you were seeing, correct me if I'm wrong, but usually in in a rural area, you h you you haul water because you don't have hydrants. So, therefore, there's an evaluation that's conducted um North Carolina and actually nationwide through the insurance services organization. Uh you're required to deliver 250 gallons per minute within 5 minutes of the first arriving vehicle. Um and then it's it's

a pass fail demonstration. There was some some questions about the six people which obviously practical versus evaluation sometimes is different. Uh the evaluation process with the state of North Carolina is six. They give you four four people for the engine, two people for the tanker, which is why the the six people always come into play. Um, in the event that that you cannot flow the 250 gallons a minute and maintain that across across the course of an hour, um, you would be the the least rating you could achieve would be a class 8B. Um, and of course the reason that came into this conversation is our contract requires a protection class 7, which is minimum. Now, currently at the moment, they're a production class 4, which was their last inspection, which was in 2023. So, did that does that answer your question? I think so.

Now, can I explain a little bit about where we are? First off, we serve to save. We had a accident called right about time we were starting this for a car accident with rollover airbag deployment. three people involved. I took a minimum crew with me where we could go ahead and do that. We did not know we were going to be doing this till Thursday. I had to check with my folks on Thursday. Warren told me that Danny would like to come and observe that. Normally on a fire scene, if we pull the 250 gallon a minute for 20 minutes or an hour or whatever, we've lost it. The courthouse is on the ground. What we have been working on to get back up to standard is getting water on the fire, getting a crew packed up, ready to enter a burning structure if we needed to if there was a reason to enter. I'm not going to send somebody into one of these Chicago fire structures when the fire's coming out all the windows and the building and smoke out the roof and it's already vented. There's a thousand degrees in there. Nobody survived. They're not alive. It's a body recovery. So, that's what we've been working on. Tonight, they have electric car class going on. We just finished the water supply, which is the hall work and running the thing. And I think uh Mr. Breeden was at one of our classes when we did that and things went pretty smoothly. I know I left, but I understand the setup was within the 5 minutes and they were ready to flow water like they were entering a building. That's what I asked them to do. That's what I told them on Thursday night we were going to be doing. We have not practiced the OSFM setup as such. That's not something we use. I've done this for 44 years.

I've been on the fire department for 44 years. I have never when I've been in charge or on a fire seen them pull a 3-in line and put 250 gallons a minute on anything unless it's just it's already burned to the ground. We're just putting it out. We might pull a 3-in line and put a gated Y and put two inch and 3/4 lines with that on the fire to enter and then our safety line. So, I'm concerned with the safety of my people and us learning what we need to do to suppress fire in the district. I've been on this department, Burning Town Department, since 1993. The only time I ever recall us doing that and doing that kind of flow test and hall test was when we were practicing for OSFM, which we were very successful with the last time and we'll be there again. I don't think that's debatable, but in the three months time that I've been in leadership on this, we've come a long way, folks. We've had a lot of classes. We've had a lot of new people have gotten their hours in. They've done what you've asked us to do. I did get up with the state firefighters association. A young lady down there has been very helpful and sent me a list of things what to do now that you're chief has all the things all the way down to 101. They didn't come from the local people in charge here. They didn't come in and say, "I understand you're chief now. These are some things you need to take care of here pretty soon." When we had this surprise inspection, I left the hay field. Those of you that farm or in this room know I've had very little weather that I could use to put up hay this year and I am way behind. And I've spent three months working on this project. Terry Young sat with me at the desk with my

log on and he couldn't update the state fire marshall's website. So I've called a young lady down there and she said, "I've got your list of people. I need these numbers." So I'm putting together some numbers for her. It is on the firefighters association website, which is the one that's critical. While we're doing that, she also indicated updating and getting all of my new members for their who their beneficiary forms were. So, we're working on that. I've got most of that done. So, most everything that's on her list of things besides taking Chief 101 again. I've already had it twice, but you have to take it every 5 years now. And uh I guess it was before the pandemic the last time I took it. So, we have met those requirements. We've got a lot of people that have been behind me working on this. I apologize for having to leave, but when you call people in on a Friday night, and I've done it twice now, they have families. These people work. They're volunteers. They're giving training hours on Thursday night. They're giving time for calls. They're giving extra training. We've got one tonight. This is Tuesday night. So, I've got a class going on now and I'm not there for electric cars and lithium batteries and how to handle that. That's something we're going to have to deal with. Every department's going to have to deal with it. The other thing about this test is every time an OSFM inspection's been done, the chief trains the people and he assigns those six people. Warren didn't mention that. But you put the best person in. I'm going to pick on Mr. Shields. He was in military. He understands what I say. You take a platoon out and something, you're going to pick your best rifleman out of that if you're going to have to take a long shot. If you're going to have to throw a hand grenade or a smoke bomb, you're going to pick the guy, you know, is most accurate, got the best arm, you can put it where you want it, right?

You played baseball. So, if I'm going to do that on the scene, if I'm in the leadership role and my people are in the leadership role, I want to be able to choose them. I don't want somebody coming over here picking a piece. Let's let this do this and this and do this, so and so do that. And that's what we've been experiencing. I've got new people. I would like to debate that because that did not happen on Friday at all. Not Not even close. Um you picture your six people. I didn't even see a list of people that showed up there. So that that did not happen on Friday. Well, it did the first time. Okay. Well, you said that's what's been happening. So, I just wanted to clarify that.

That's important. And if I have a fire scene and somebody shows up, but I've got somebody that's better at a certain thing, I'm going to switch switch those roles. Warren was fire chief for a while. He knows what I say. If you've got somebody that's there with a truck and you've got a crew that needs to go in and you got a guy that you know is a good nozzle man, you're going to put him on the nozzle and send him in. You're not going to leave him over here running your truck when you got, hey, I got a real good truck operator right there. I can swap these guys out, pack him up, and go in. So, that's what we're trying to do. We're building back and we're building back better. I'll leave it up to you. Thank you, Mr. Cask.

All right. Any other comments from the board? Well, I appreciate what Mr. McCascal and what all of them are doing. The thing that stays in my head, what what liability do we have to the community or what what liability monetary liability are we responsible for if we if a fire department is not up to a certain level? Can we ignore that or what about the liability part here of the being sued?

They've gotten the word to us. We have not failed that I recall ever to provide service for our community since 1993. We have had some missed calls as other departments in this county have had when the communication system did not come through and that's the only ones I'm aware of that we may maybe failed to provide a service that we didn't know about. Thank you. Anybody else?

Yeah, I mean I feel like we've uh we've been through this for a few months now. Um and I feel like we gave the opportunities that needed to be given. Um you know, after Friday, it's just it was a great time. You know, there was no animosity. It was it was what it was. But at the end of the day, you know, what we've heard for the last few months is what we could do or what we can't do or what we should do or what we shouldn't do. And the state requires all these things. whether you're going to go into a high-rise building or not. It's what the state requires. Um and I just didn't see it. I didn't feel like it was um adequate. I feel like the level of service in that community is is not as good as it could be. Um again, I think they're great people. I think they're great volunteers. I think it would be a great opportunity for them to join forces and and maybe have some some camaraderie with some other guys and not be around the same eight or 10 people all the time on Thursday nights and learn some things. And um that's kind of where I stand on that. So at this time I would like to make a motion that we terminate the contract that we have with Burning Town Iowa Fire Department and enter into a contract with Kawi Volunteer Fire Department.

I hear I hear a motion by Commissioner Breeden, second by Commissioner Antoine. Uh any further discussion? And they're cohabitating with would you say Kawi? Kawi would be the the one that takes over the contract. Now, all of these volunteers that that are with Burning Town right now could absolutely join Kawi, go through their application process and continue on in the fire service. Is Kawi's voice here? They're not. I don't think this one was able to come tonight. You talked to Kawi lately?

I talked to him yesterday. Is is is that okay or is that Oh, yeah. Absolutely. They're prepared. He just wasn't able to be here tonight. So,

our board will meet Monday night. We are a chartered nonprofit in the state of North Carolina. The board will make a decision how we will proceed. Because you cancel our contract does not necessarily mean Burning Town Fire and Rescue Incorporated ceases to exist. The property is registered to the board. The trucks are registered to the boards we own. We also have significant debt. The board is liable for that debt. That debt will be paid for any merger or any consolidation is done because I'm not going to leave my board members responsible for paying a half a million plus in liability. So, our board will meet Monday night. If you want to attend, you're welcome to be there. We will make decision how we will proceed at that time.

But we are a corporation. We do own the equipment. I heard the comment it was paid for with tax dollars. It's the same as if you contract somebody to haul garbage to a landfill in South Carolina and they have a three-year contract and they buy trucks and you pay so much per ton and so much per mile. Just because they bought trucks with the money that you paid them to fulfill that contract does not mean you get their trucks when you terminate their contract. They may sell them to you but they don't have to give them to you. So there is a difference. It is a contract. You just are voting to terminate your contract and if you do that contract's void. It has nothing to do with it. You

don't have a contract anymore. So Mr. McKascal I think that um Mr. Okay. And I'll be happy to work with that. I I think that we're all in agreement that um that equipment um would best serve the Burning Town iola community. The Burning Town Iota community purchased that. Um and so what we need to do is make sure that we continue to protect the Burningtown Iola community with that equipment however that is best served. And that's what the contract actually says. And um you have no contract if you terminate it.

Okay. Well, the contract specifically provides for that termination that all assets, equipment, and real property shall be assigned as follows. One, by the dissolving department to its successor and fire protection within the department's primary service area andor two, to other fire departments in the county through and with the approval of the county's board of commercial. So, what I'm saying is there's some more to that you're not reading. The first part that is follow the dissolution and it's in our charter,

right? And we have a contract though that that likewise provides for that same thing. So what we have to do is we need to make sure that we don't let emotions and and hurt feelings get in the way of continuing to protect the people of Burning Town and that we desperately need those. We need you. We need those volunteers and this board made the decision to follow. And so what I'm saying is let's work together. I'm asking that we work together for the burning town outlet community because you're welcome to come to the board meeting. I just invited you Monday at 700 p.m. Whoever wants to come, you may come and present your point.

Well, and I'm and so we'll work together with you to make sure that we continue to provide that that your community is protected and that we don't get the emotions and and hurt feelings involved. Let's all work together is what I'm asking. That's what I'm asking for. So that let's do that and we'll we'll work it out. I'm just saying you volunteering that you're going to do something other than what sounds like is in the best interest of the community by divesting yourself of those assets or selling it and get rid of the debts in order to to put a hardship in your community. I don't think that's a good idea. Let's work together. That's all I'm asking. I'm not going to leave my board though holding the bag of that debt. I think you I think we understand that and you understand the countyy's got you covered on that. County can afford that. We got

We do. The county can afford it. Very good. All right, let's work together. So, bring bring as a board member, I'd ask for you all to bring next Monday the letter that absolves our board of directors of all existing debt and lease agreements for properties owned by the Burning Town Iowa Fire Department. I'm going to move on right here. County is willing to absolve the board of that debt. There's no I'm going to call this meeting back to order. Listen, we have a a motion and a second on the floor. We're in internal discussion. This is tough. All right. This This is tough. Commissioner, do you have anything else you want to say? What was the motion?

The motion is to terminate the contract with Burningtown and enter into an agreement with Kelly. Any comments, Commissioner Cheryl? No, I've made all mine in the past.

I'll make a few real fast. I feel like I I hate that it's it's drugg out this long. I mean, Kenneth, you've been up here 10 times. And uh going back to the more fundamentals behind this, we're 13 months 13 months in uh probation. I'm not a fire safety professional. So, I consulted many with several hundred combined years of experience and not one had any hesitation or reservation in saying this is the best path forward. And it's it's it's terrible. Last month we were in here and we talked to the volunteers and and uh they all nodded their heads. They all said they'd be willing to support their community. They'd be willing to work, you know, for their community. They they pledged to serve and they had no problem working under a different charter. And just to wrap this up, it's not like Kawi serves from Kawi. This could be the first step in many problems this county is facing with many fire departments. And Kenneth, we talked about this a long time ago. We asked for your boards to get together and collaborate and find a common solution that we didn't have to get involved in. And I feel like we're going on 13 months and my position hadn't changed from last month. Commissioner Breed and Commissioner Antoine, you know, wanted to extend some time. And I feel like they saw what they needed to see Friday night. And uh it's it's it's tough. Really is. It's tough. Any other comments before I call the question hearing? None. All in favor, please raise your right arm and state eye for the record.

I. Any oppose? Please let the record reflect 50. Miss Tammy. Thank you. All right. Item B, discussion on solid waste. Uh, interimm director Jamie Pakoup.

Mr. chairman, I'll introduce her to or introduce her program while she gets started. I'm going to pass down a copy of some bid sheets that she'll be talking about. And I want I want to uh to kind of paraphrase what she's going to talk about. You asked for an update on solid waste last month and we were we're in the process of making some decisions uh going forward. Obviously, we've talked about a sale construction. We've talked about hauling. We've talked about some expenses. as we've got. Um I think this board's going going to have some tough decisions to make over the next 1 month to 12 months on on where we head with some of these and and how we handle that. Uh and she is very uh constructed a very well-designed PowerPoint for you tonight for us to quickly go over some of those things. and and I'll tell you, you know, obviously we had some bids on a sale that that's beyond what our debt service can hold at the moment. Um, so we we were looking at how we could make that work. How can we scale that down? How could we possibly save money somewhere else? Um, some of the things that she'll talk to you about, you may or may not like. So, we we will we will preface that beforehand that you may not like some of these, but we want to put everything on the table for you for you to get a good picture and then I'll talk later when when she finishes about what we can or cannot do tonight. So,

okay. So, just going through this presentation, I want everyone to realize these are estimates. Okay. So, so just a little brief history. Um after phase three, cell one reached capacity sooner than expected, design on phase 3, cell 2 began. A lateral expansion on phase 2 was pursued to give us additional time to construct the cell. Um so a request for bid was sent out in July with bids due in August. The bids received in August were over budget and we had a total of four biders. Um just switching gears a little bit, we'll talk about landfill capacity. Phase two lateral expansion is predicted to reach capacity in July 2026. So based on the tonnage in the past couple months, capacity could be reached sooner. Uh waste typically increases as population increases. Um currently in Mon County, waste is outpacing population. Um just based on that table provided, that just shows the uh annual tonnage and then the growth percentage over those years. Um the total buildout of phase 3 will have an estimated capacity of 25 years and three more built cells and 25 years is a very conservative estimate. Um so we looked at three different options. Um all three are predicted to increase fees. um construct phase three cell 2 which is the big cell, construct phase three cell 2a which is a smaller cell or build a transfer station in Hall out of county. Uh when the cell design began there were two options considered cell 2a or the full cell 2 in order to meet any budget concerns. So after compa um capacity analysis and tonnage increases cell 2 was the one that we pursued just due to space needs. Um, and just going forward, um, when we talk about the estimate on the increase to tipping fees and

availability fees, this is this is what we look at. So about $1 on the tipping fee, uh, is about $30,000 in revenue. A dollar on the availability fee is about 27,000. All right. Option one, construct phase three, cell 2. That is the larger of the cells. It's going to provide around 8 to 10 years of capacity and cost less per cubic yard. Um it's about 12.5 acres and the need to um raise tipping fees is about $15 per ton or $16 increase on the availability fee to afford for the construction of this one. That would be about $440,000 per year over the current loan payment we currently pay for phase three cell one. Um I just wanted to provide you with a figure of that um total cell. So that one's outlined in yellow and 2A um you can see the barrier there in red. So 2A would be the smaller one to the right. Um option two to construct um cell 2A. It's more expensive per cubic yard and the predicted um capacity is 3.8 years. Cell 2A is about 6.6 6 acres and um the need to raise tipping fees just to cover that construction would be estimated at $22 a ton or $24 increase on the availability fee and that would be a five-year loan term. Um that would be about $600,000 per year over our current loan payment. Uh there is an option to extend the loan with an extra payment to about a six-year term. that would decrease your annual payment to about 380,000 over your current loan payment and that would only require increasing the tipping fee about 13 tons or $13 per ton or $14 um increase in the availability fee. However, you would have um two additional loan payments once the cell

is at capacity. However, that would give you time to reassess your fees. And here is just the picture of cell 2 A. You can see it in comparison to phase three cell one which is our first cell. Um and that one is about six acres. So like it's about it's comparable to that one and that one lasted about 5 years. So also when you're doing cell construction not included in either estimate is equipment needs. Uh we estimate about um 2.5 million in equipment needs. A compactor, a dozer, and a recycling bor. the balor would be needed even if another cell isn't constructed. Um so that has a potential of increasing the tipping fee about $12 per ton or about $13 increase on the availability fee and that's based on a 10-year term as well. So option three transferring waste out of county. Um I just want to again preface this slide. This is all rough estimates. So, um, I also based all these figures on prices that Jackson County currently pays at their transfer station just because we can't assume what Mon County might pay. So, I wanted to give you a number so you could compare. Um, infrastructure, I estimated about $5 million for a new building. Our current building probably could not handle the current all the waste going through that building in the current layout. Um, additional trailers, walking floor trailers would be needed. Um, however, that may be dependent on the hauler. I know Jackson Countyy's hauler provides trailers, so I did not include additional trailers in the estimate. Um, they currently pay 37.50 per ton um to dispose of their waste. And their hauling fee is $500 per load, which you can typically get about 20 um 20 tons on a a trailer. So, that's about $25 per per ton.

So, I estimate it would be about $43 per ton increase in tipping fees or $49 increase in the availability fee in order to transfer waste just based on Jackson County's numbers. And again, I looked through the budget and tried to um eliminate anything that I could if we were to ship waste. Um that is a 6250 per ton straight fee just to transfer waste out of county. That's not including a budget for processing waste or postclosure costs. And once infrastructure costs are paid, you may be able to reduce fees if possible. Um, just some comments to those prices I just gave you. Um, when speaking with White Oak, they currently do not have annual capacity left to um, take Mon County waste. You may run into that. Other places, I'm not sure. Um, hauling for Jackson County is 38 miles. Mon County distances would be greater. um they're they were paying a lower fee in Georgia in 2023, but their hauling rate was um significantly higher. If you do just transfer waste out of county, you may have to think about some other waste acceptance guidelines that we may not be able to take. If we do that, um there are potential additional savings in the budget um that you you probably won't know until you actually operate um a transfer station to to realize those costs. So this is the calculation um based on hauling that we used. There's the 6250. You can see there that's using Jackson County's numbers with Mon County um tonnage um inserted there. And then the second one next to it is Mon to White Oak. That's using the distance um it would take from Mon to White Oak using that um that hauling cost, the dollars per mile. So, that would be about an $80 um per ton cost to ship

out. Um I did just list a few additional um ideas we could look at to generate some more revenue. These ideas are um ideas that other counties are doing. Um you can just see here. So, over five tires that are not accompanied with a scrap tire certification, you could um charge for those. You could charge a minimum load. If you just come across the scales, uh commercial mixed loads, that's recycling mixed with waste. If the hauler is not willing to separate, you could charge a higher tipping fee. Um electronics, you could uh charge per electronic instead of weight. Same with mattresses. Um useful material, we currently charge $10 per ton. You can increase that to $15. That would be about a $48,000 um increase in revenues just based on last year. Um you could also reduce um hours to save on money. You could close holidays. Um currently this year that would um be six additional holidays at the landfill would be closed and that would have about a savings of $19,000 closing the landfill highlands transfer and the centers. Um, we would probably still be open the day after Thanksgiving and the day after Christmas because those are our busier days. Um, you could also look at centers on Sundays. You could open centers at noon. That's about a three-hour loss um for each center. That's um savings of 11,000. You could also close the centers on Sundays and that would be a loss of eight hours um per center. And so that has a savings about 32,000. Um, all of these options also have the potential to help prevent outofcount waste from being delivered to the centers on Sundays. Um, and and all of these estimates I gave you are really just wage savings estimates. I didn't include any operational savings that may

may occur. So, decisions right now, um, we really need to accept, reject, or wait on bids for sale two. The lowest responsive bidder was 10.3 million and that was um only construction costs. If you accept the bids and we can enter into talks with the contractor. If you reject the bids, we will need to re-qualify and rebid sell 2A. Um we may be able to lower the qualifications for the contractor to get a better price. Um we may not get the same four contractors who already bid on the bigger sale. Just throwing that out there. Um we will need an additional 6 weeks in order to do this process which is added to an already stream timeline. Um 2A is estimated to take about 210 days to build just to give you a time frame. Um we can also wait until October to try to understand a true cost of shipping um waste out of county or any other suggestions you guys may have. Um and just to tell you the bids are good through November 3rd. Um last slide. Um just to give you a full picture of solid waste needs. Um once phase 2 is at capacity, closure will need to begin. Um solid waste does have a budget for a closure fund to utilize. However, it's unknown if that amount will cover the full cost of closure. We do have time though to consider the costs and revenues before any action will will be needed for a closure. tried to go really fast. Sorry.

So, I'll I'll add a couple of things before we take a whole lot of questions. Jamie, can you back up uh to that slide that says what we need to do soon? So, the good news I can deliver to you is you have a lot of information that was presented to you tonight. We we don't have to make decisions on all of those tonight. Um we wanted you to see the picture. We also wanted you to understand, you know, we we've engaged Davenport Associates, who does your capital improvement plan, to to look at solid waste as a system that can help us develop a business plan for that financially over the course of the next months to years, so that when we have to deal with this, not just this year, but down the road, we have a a structured plan for that. because you know he usually comes in and says if you want to build this building this is the tax rate you got to have and you got to do it over two or three years. That's that's this is the information we have got to get to them so they can develop that plan for us over the next year, next two, next three depending on which direction we go. Um I will tell you we we do have the price on sale two which is the the paper that I handed to you the bid amount that she has there and 10 million and some change. Um, we have a an RFP that's on my desk that Jamie and Lindsay and I have been working on to officially send out to get the true dollar figure of the shipping and hauling and tipping fee somewhere else. So that hopefully by October, if we can cross your fingers, we will have you the exact numbers of that in October. Um, we are under a time constraint because obviously this cell is going to fill up and we have to either haul it come July, hopefully not before, uh, or we got to have a hole to put it in and we've got to make that decision fairly quickly

because the other thing you need to understand is just because we approve it, approve the bid, we're not done. We have to go to the local government commission. We already had a proposal ready for them. We had to postpone that. They're a month or so out. Now, we're going to have to wait until we get the the 2024 audit complete. Is that Did I say that right? Or 2020 25 audit complete. A couple months because the deadline's 12:31 for the 25 audit.

So, so we have to work on their time frame. We we have financing quotes, but we have to get LGC to approve that. Then we got to bring that back to you after after we get that back for you to give final approval on a project. So, so we've got a couple of months no matter what we decide to do before we get final approval before we can sign the document to build anything. So, so there's a little bit of concern that that we need to make a decision at some point which direction we're going to go as quickly as possible. So, tonight there's a couple of things that that I'll reiterate what she's talked about here. You you have the bids on sale two. You you can accept those, you can reject those. Um, you can sit on those because they're good until November the 4th, 3rd. Um, you could choose to bid 2A, which is a roughly a 6 acre sale. Um, the only thing is it it's it's obviously if you look at it by square yard on what the space is, the airspace we're doing, it's a little more expensive per square yard because you're doing a smaller space. You're going to mobilize twice if you do the big sale. But it may be a decision you have to make. We we can also adjust the pre-qualifications and I do have uh if you want to consider that uh McGill who's the engineer on this project redesign some pre-qualifications. Uh we only had Jamie six people bid. Six people pre-qualify on the other bid. were four actually bid

and we only had four that actually bid and and one of the things we talked to them about uh they had a requirement pre-qualification that you had to have 2 million square ft of lineer experience. Um, we asked McGill number one, if we're downsizing the size of the landfill, if you were to only do 2A, um, could they adjust those qualifications, such as perhaps you used a subcontractor for you that had experience with the lined, uh, landfill that that might get more biders to qualify, which might give us some more options. Um, so that's some of the things that you need to think about tonight is do you want to accept the bids as are and try and deal with how we're going to pay for it next budget year. You you can adjust tipping fees mid year. You cannot adjust availability fee until July. Um, my preference would be that we get Mitch and Davenport involved. If we can get a plan going forward, they look at these and they may say, "Okay, well, you know, here's your savings here. Here's what what's Holland's costing us. You know, can we haul Highlands and do sale 2A and save a little money and make it a seven-year sale instead of a fiveyear sale? Can can we go up $2 on the the tipping fee? And I'm just throwing numbers out there. $2 on availability fee, spread spread the the the pain out of the construction of that over across the board and come up with a solution for you. We we'd like to give them time to do that, but but we kind of have to have a little direction on where we're headed with the sale at least now because we don't want to get to we don't want to get to next May and June and hauling is our only option because at that point we've taken some stuff off the table and we have to go a certain direction. So now I guess Jamie now we'll take questions.

Well, I guess in my mind, we need a whole picture of everything that's involved here. If we open this sale at 10,3001,000, how much is it going to cost to close that sale? How long is it going to keep up? So, you know, you talked about savings here and savings there. Well, that's not the whole picture. How much is the value of that land over there that we're destroying, burying garbage in? What can the county, what can the taxpayers do with that land? How much are we saving by not having to buy new equipment? How many employees and staff are we having there now that if we hauled it would not be needed for that purpose. So, there's a lot of missing information here.

And and in that estimate in the transferation, I did try to go through the budget and take out what I thought we could get rid of. I mean, you can't just take out the complete landfill budget because you have closure things in there that you have to continue to fund. Um, so I did the best I could to get rid of all that I could out of that. And like I said, it's it's hard to realize what exactly you could do without until you're actually operating it. So, that was the best I could do with the budget um that I had in front of me. And and right now, this budget is a budget with like no capital improvements, nothing involved. It's it's very slim pickings right now. So, it was it was easy to see the the savings savings that we could do because there wasn't really much in there. But, but I'm not sure about closure. I mean, like we saw this was over over the estimate the construction estimate. I mean, they had it at 7.5 million and it came in at 10.3. So, I don't know what closure would cost. I I honestly have no idea. I mean, we can assume and and we try to plan for that is there's a formula to try to plan for that, but again, I mean, we could be in this situation again closure. I I'm not sure.

And then once it's closed, you still have to maintain that closure for 30 years. So, um 30 years and maybe beyond. They're still trying to figure out.

So, there again, I think we are seeing part of the picture. We're not seeing the complete picture of whether or not it would benefit us by hauling this garbage at these fees based on everything that we're not going to have to do once this is opened at 10 million. Then it's going to have to be closed. What does that look like? You know, guesstimate. And where are the u there there's just more information there that we're missing. Yes.

So, I will say one of the things that Mon County has done that that's very intelligent is you have set aside postclosure funds for years. So, we do have some funds sitting there. So, I don't want anybody to think that all of a sudden we're going to have to borrow $10 million. I don't think to do closure. So, we we do have some funds sitting there. Um and yes, I do agree that we need to definitely get you that price. That's why we want to go out to the bid and actually get people to give us the the exact prices for tipping fees somewhere else and hauling. And we've even explored some other options. You know, there there are there are companies that will buy site licenses that basically is what White Oak is. Haywood County owned White Oak. Um

and and they they operate the permit they hold the permit and White Oak runs the land. But they basically sell the airspace to a company. But then at that point that company sets the tipping fees. They can take waste from other places which why they would entertain taking somebody else's waste. I I don't my recommendation would be not to go there unless that's the last ditch effort because then you take part of the tipping fee decision out of your hands.

I and I'm also not sure that they would want that. It's 25 years capacity and honestly those last three cells are the only place a landfill can go in Mon County um just due to the the studies we did when we were looking at landfilling. So it's only 25 years capacity for Mon County that I don't know that that would be a good investment for a private company to come in and then accept a lot more waste than Mon County. I'm not sure how much they would actually get out of that but it is an option. I don't know if it's a good one but it is an option. Have you had any contact with uh Georgia and South Carolina about um

not yet only White Oak and and Republic uh runs White Oak and they were supposed to get us some contacts um with their their Georgia counterparts that we have not heard back from. Um Waste Management I think is the one that runs Homer or Georgia. So I mean that's our next step would to be would be to reach out to them. Um, but you know, hauling is is going to be a significant cost as well. And and so again, we don't know those costs. So, here's a few of my thoughts. If uh if we pick the lowhanging fruit and charge for charge more for tires and and mattresses, I think the problem is somebody throws them over a bank.

I think that's what we're trying to avoid by keeping our fees low. So, I think we uh to Warren's point about the pre-qualifications, I think if we, you know, remove some of the qualifications with the liner, per se, um and do some active engagement with local contractors, I think we can, you know, remove a few obstacles that they couldn't get over and hopefully get some local involvement. These companies are from way out of town and, you know, some of the cost right here are are and and they're they're professional. You know, that's what they do. They they build landfills. I mean, that's what you're getting when you get that cost, isn't it?

I guess the direction for me moving forward, I think, would be if we only go to hauling, I think we're completely handcuffed to somebody else's mercy. All right. So, I feel like if we can haul revenue neutral, I have no problem hauling on an intern basis while we're constructing our landfill. And that duration could be 5 years. If it's neutral, I don't mind a haul for the next 5 years to extend the life of our landfill. But during that time, I think we still have to construct our backup plan, right? And I think we need to Well, I think I would support rejecting these bids and and uh readvertising.

So, would you would you want us to readvertise the entire sale, too, or 2A, which is the smaller section to try and get the dollar figure more down to a a manageable figure on what you currently have? Um, I just feel like, look, we don't have an option. So, I think we we budget for what we can afford and maybe we can entice a contractor to come in when they're already mobilized. Warren or Miss Lori, could we potentially do the next phase as an add-on while they're on site? No way. Okay. beyond the scope.

You you would have to you'd have to rebid and then you'd have to have another financing package if you did that having a different contractor doing 2B and you could have a potentially a separate bank board. Do we do we bid the whole job again or do we we bid one a we're backing up I mean with with only doing a partial because ultimately we know that um we're going to have to have all of it eventually and a lot of a lot of duplicated costs. Yeah.

Yeah. And quite frankly, I mean, whether we do the wholesale 2 or whether we do 2A, both of those costwise today, based on the bids we have in hand and based on an estimate of what 2A would cost from the lowest responsible responsive bidder, neither one's affordable within our current revenue structure. So, so hearing that, I feel like we have no choice but to reject with the new pre-qualifications. Um, do we have any, you know, statuto issues with rebidding? You just have to state your reasons for rejecting the bids, which would be it's beyond our our budget. I think I could support rebidding the whole job. You want to rebid the whole sale, too? Yeah.

Entire sale, too. And adopt the uh revised contractor pre-qualification guidance. Oh, that's Yeah, that was packet handled out. Yeah. So, meanwhile, do you have a turnkey cost to haul today? Um, no, I do not. Okay. I think it'd be nice to pursue. Yeah, I can only tell you what Jackson County hauls currently, which is 6250 to hall straight hall. Get it out of the county. 6250 a ton. Could we could we operate as an interimm transfer station as we currently sit?

Um, it would be very very tough. Okay. in in that building. It it has fire damage. It's not a building that was meant for that. So, it would be a very very tough I don't want to say miracles can't happen, but they'd be tough. So, do we put out um an RFP for um hauling companies? Yes. And it's on my desk. We we almost have all the tees dotted on it to send it out, which if we get it out this week, there's a real good chance we'll give them time to have it back by the October meeting. So, there might be a company out there that's hungry.

Sure. All right. All right, gentlemen. I guess we're looking for action here. Did you make the motion? No, but I can. So, at this time, I'd like to make a motion to to uh not approve any of the previous bids and to reject all the previous bids and to rebid uh I'm going to say due to financial restraints and adopt the contractor revise contractor pre-qualification

and adopt the new contractor pre-qualif. I have a motion by Commissioner Young, second by Commissioner Shields. Man, you guys are being tough on us tonight. Sorry, it wasn't my choice. These are all right. Any other discussion? Trying to tongue tie me. No other discussion. All in favor, please signify by raising your right arm, stating I. I. Any oppose? Tamance 5. All right, we're going to move on. Thank you, Miss Paku. Lord, we have another one of these resolutions over there.

Item C, discussion and clarification of the terms of the proposed Nana Community Development Club. Mr. Cable, so let lead us through some of this. Obviously, it's discussed entering enter entering into a lease with with the Nanahala Community Club. Uh we talked about some of the provisions in the lease. uh we had to make some changes to that. Uh basically we wanted to to make sure that we had gotten the wording in there specifically as you all had asked to make sure that we met what the board of commissioners wanted to to have in there. So is that correct, Eric? And the changes should be in red. They were in red on my copy.

Yes. And I'm going to that I paged out to get something else. So there was one I think in other words we had um we had different debate going on um last month and so then when I put pen to paper and drafted up the lease um there was one hiccup with regard to and it's going to be paragraph nine of that proposed lease. Um and that was and and anybody we can we can redebate anything you want. Um but again number nine was Nana Hala shall maintain an online calendar with the library and shall communicate and work in harmony with the library and scheduling events within the least premises. The additional language that I was unsure about and would request board approval on um before we submit the lease for signature is if the library needs access to the lease premises at a time that was not previously scheduled, the library is expected to give notice to Nahala at or if possible prior to the time that access is made. So that was the um a conflict somewhat um that was among the board was does the library um needed specifically ask permission or give notice um prior to entering that portion of the building or does the library have access to that? Um well that's up for y'all to decide.

And Mr. Cameron, I will say Steve couldn't be here tonight, but he was going to have his vice chair who is here in case we have any questions for them. And then of course Aby's here with the library folks.

Well, I guess I'll start this. Um, the building, let's turn back the clock here. They had a double wide trailer that was rotted down and they made it work. And then we found the property. We um redid it and we turned half of it to the library, half of it to to the community center. Um and obviously when that was built, uh there was a division wall put in there for it to be separated for a reason. Um, at the last meeting I made the motion. Chairman Young said, "I want this." Um, they they have to have a key. They shouldn't have to depend on someone from the community club to come and open the door. And I agree 100%. However, that division is there for a purpose and it should be acted on and the library should always contact in my opinion the community center before entering upon that building. Um, and I'm going give you back a little history. Many many years ago when the county built Zachary Park on Buck Creek, they built it and here it is. Who's going to run it? I was the one in charge of running that park out there. The county dumped that in my lab. And I will tell you that is one of the hardest things in the world to do is operate a facility that you are not you don't have the authority. You don't have a title to do that.

I've had law enforcement there numerous times by people using that facility and and we had a scheduled event and they refused to leave the property. So when we do a lease for and I go back to the Nana Halo deal, um seems like that the community center, they have to have their own insurance. Is that is that correct? I mean, if they lease it, they I mean it seems like they're obligated.

The building itself would be on our property liability insurance, but they would have a a liability policy and any kind of another policy for anything internally. So that's a in my mind that's a tricky little situation there is they're they're leasing it. They have insurance and if it's someone goes in there that's unauthorized or not scheduled, how does that insurance provide coverage for that? Um, and the other thing is the reason why I bring up Zachary Park is the fact that, you know, those people are in here talking about from the community center. They're furnishing toilet paper, paper towels, plates, spoons, napkins, forks. They're not asking the county for anything. And they're also taking it upon themselves to maintain and take care of that, keep it clean. So, they should be applauded for that part of it. or if we don't lease it to them, we have someone from the county staff, maintenance or whoever goes across the mountain every day and does the maintenance on that building. So, I honestly I think the library should be able to use that, but it should be through the community club and their schedule because it is it is theirs. And I hate that we're in the position to pick and choose from Anahe as to what um what they're going to do with this facility, but it looks like that's the only way we're going to get peace and move this thing forward is taking that stand.

Anybody else?

Since I was the opposition to this, I'll go from the other side. I I didn't vote for the lease first time. I won't vote for the lease a second time. Um I think that what you said is correct. It is a community center and it should be used by the community, not a club. Um in my opinion and it's a county owned property. To me, it's very petty for the building to be open and for the library to be able to look in there and see that it's empty or dark and then have to call and verify that they can use the property that is owned by the county. Um, we have plenty of other places. You know, the a library could take a Google calendar, they could set it up, they could rent it out for $10 an hour or whatever the community building does and cover the cost of the paper towels and everything else. The maintenance workers, I've talked to a couple of the maintenance people, you know, they're they're like, it's easy. We're there anyway. You know, there's it's not a big deal just to go on that side and sweep it up, clean it if it needs to, take the trash out, whatever needs to happen. Um, so I just think that it's kind of, you know, we're we're sitting here debating what should happen to the only available space in the community, you know, over somebody getting a key or not getting a key or having to ask for access. I just think that's kind of um just just not good business in my opinion. I think that uh we should open it up to the community so everyone in Anaheal can use it um and they can schedule it and they can pay the $10 an hour or whatever our community building does and and and it not be dictated by a single club that uses it, you know, here and there once a month on Monday nights and then maybe for a class here and there when when the whole community could benefit from it. And that's all I can say. I tend to agree with Commissioner Breeden. It's a community building. Let it be available to the community.

So, would we want to send a maintenance crew over there just to take out the center division wall? If that's if that's the case, what's the purpose of having it divided?

I don't think you have to take the center division wall out. I think the purpose of having it divided is if somebody wanted to go over there and have a birthday party at 3:00 in the afternoon, it's divided. Go have your birthday party. But the library can still operate as you know as usual. It just continues continues on with business. So I think it's set up fine. I think the library I don't know what you had before but if you had a double wide you probably had more room than you do now. So you've lost some room anyway. So trying to do programs you know with with the folks in the community it's hard to do um when you don't have enough space to do it. So

any thoughts? No, I'm just listening. I know there's two different groups there. I know. I mean, I'd be a little bit curious. Uh the med the library person, I lost her. There she is. What's your read on this?

You're the librarian guru. This thought seems a little bit strangely petty after all the very serious discussions that you guys have had tonight. So, I appreciate that. Um, and I completely understand your point of view. Um, the community club has a really nice space and this was their space and and we're not we we want to share it. Um, that's important I think for everybody. Um, and I think that being able to share that space for the kids, for the adults, for all different ages in that community is ideal. Um, and I I think that notifying the community group when we want to use the space is completely reasonable. Um, my question would be what mechanism would be would be advisable? So like would we email the board of the club, the entire club? Is just putting it on the calendar enough? I'm curious about what kind of specific mechanism that that would look like. And the other concern uh and I really appreciate what you brought up about the sharing of a space and I want this to be and I think we all want this to be a very cooperative and positive experience. And I think you gentlemen especially have a very grave burden of duty in that you have to dictate a lot of how we get along with each other and live alongside each other and that can have a lot of different ways that shows up. So um I don't think having a contract that has every single P's and Q's it would be 18 pages long. So, how can we keep this as clean and pleasant and positive as possible? Um, I don't know. Um, so I I don't envy how we any how you're going to figure this out, but I think this is fine. I think

we can just dictate exactly what the notification process looks like. Um, and then we can kind of see how it goes. Does that sound okay? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's an Nahala community. Um, and I thought we were done with this last time and and um, you know, it is petty and and it's u, but I thought just by the least we were giving them the opportunity to be able to play bingo and and we were done with it. And and so uh

no, I mean I feel like I'm walking up to a set of double doors and I'm walking to the right door and I'm walking to the left door. I go back to the right door. I feel like I'd like to see the community have square dancing classes and basket making classes and birthday parties. And I really don't take this wrong way. It doesn't matter to me. I just want to see it used to the highest potential in that community. That's really all I'm after right here. I to me the avenues are very similar. I feel like if the building's open and nobody's over there, go use it. There's to that's it's a county, you know, facility. I I understand the schedule. So, if somebody's coming in in 30 minutes and you guys are over there, I can see Mhm.,

you know, but I just I really just kind of want you guys to iron this out. If somebody comes in on a scheduled time, maybe you guys scooch back over. But I don't have a a problem with the contract. I think there's benefits because there's a little bit of of somebody who can, you know, make sure the building's in in great standings, but I want the library to be able to use it to its fullest potential. I don't know how I mean, is the contract the best way for this? Is is is no contract the best way for this? Sounds like for them to be able to go forward with their bingo issue, they need a contract. Bingo was a big thing. We talked about bingo for a long time. All right. I hadn't played bingo since my great-grandmother passed away. And I actually used to enjoy it.

So, it's a big thing. I have no problem giving them bingo. If it takes a contract to give them bingo, I just I feel like let's just put this thing to bed. Enjoy the building. It's a beautiful building and it's something Halen to be proud of. And all right. Any action? Anybody? Is this contract? I guess I need clarification on what I on on which one which am I passing I mean am I submitting that? I think we have to call to a vote on the question about number nine. Uh the provision number nine which is the part in red or not the parton red.

Mr. Breeden, is there anything we can do to to bring you to center here to to make this thing work? I just I'd like to see a 50 vote right here. I don't know what to do. How can we make give this the name of Halo? Oh, where is that? Number nine. What can we do right here to make this work? I mean, I think if if Miss Aby's okay with it. I mean, I'm fine with it. I just don't think we need to get so specific that when they look over there, they can't use the room. I mean, if nobody's in there at noon and you need you got a class going on, go over there and use it. It's a county owned property. Use the room. But I also think that if it's under lease, it's under their control. So,

um I'm I'm with the library. We have a tiny little kitchen, if you want to call it that, with a sink about this big. We have uh flower boxes out front and potted plants that we need to water. The club has given us permission to go over and use their sink to fill up our watering can. Do we have to call them every time? No. Listen, use the water. Water your plants. This is the red mark. You know what I mean? I feel like you guys have to be neighbors and and just be neighborly, you know. I feel like you guys can work together. Nah, is not a very big place. Go ahead.

The community club and I thought we had an idea have everything worked out for they do have key more than welcome to come over there. We set up a Google calendar and they put their stuff on there. Then you know if we don't have anything they can use it anytime. See, here we go. So, so, so, so a contract gets bingo for for the community of Nana. So, let's give them bingo. Yeah. And why this then? What is this? What's your question?

Why Why did we even bring this up with the red letters? What is that? Uh back to that again. I mean you want you want to scratch it for bingo. Yes. What? Yes. Scratch it. Scratch the red R. So if we scratch the the the new provision. Can we make Can we make that work?

All I want them to do is to be able to play bingo and the library can have their yoga classes and and they can just work together and be happily ever after. I'm going to move into a motion right here. So, I'd like to make a motion that we execute the contract proposed and eliminate the new proposed red change entering a contract with Anhill Community Club. Second. Second by Commissioner Anur discussion. Would someone read Eric? Would you read that? Okay. What was in red again? Okay. What was in red was Okay, let me read the whole paragraph.

Okay. Number nine, the paragraph, the I think undisputed language is Nanaha shall maintain an online calendar with the library and shall communicate and work in harmony with the library and scheduling events within the least premises. The provision that is on the table if it goes in or or goes out is if the library needs access to the least premises at a time that was not previously scheduled, the library is expected to give notice to Nanahala at or if possible prior to the time that access is made. Take that out. Um, we have a motion in a second as

well just in a discussion. I don't think that's a really an unreasonable ask. What if they go in and use it and all of a sudden the community club has something booked that came up with nothing on the calendar. But that's just a technical um I feel like there's a trust thing here and there's a gentleman gentle woman agreement and let's we want you guys to handle this. We don't want to handle this. All right. All right. So let us tired of going to mom and dad. Let us motivate this motion and move on here. Any other discussion? No. Just handle it. Good. All right. All in favor please raise your right arm. State I.

Any oppose? All right. Five. Miss Tammy. Moving on. update on the boardwalk on the greenway at Sully Marsh. Manager, Mr. K.

Very quickly, Mr. Chairman, there's been some concern about the boardwalk which is uh on the greenway there at the Sulie Marsh, which is Arthur Drake Road in um we've we've had to make some repairs to that. It's it's experiencing some more repair issues. We've had some safety concerns over that. So, I want to make the board aware number one that we are drafting a bid document to do a complete repair andor replacement of that boardwalk. So, I will have you the the dollar figures back hopefully at the October meeting uh for you to to know what that repair andor replacement would cost. We're also going to give you an option. Uh it's good to have options. Um, we have the possibility of putting a parking area there on the greenway near the intersection of Depot Street Extension and Iowa Street. Um, there's a flat area there that's that's very very close to the Barbara McCrae Apple Orchard that's there. Um, if we did that, we could possibly eliminate the boardwalk and then there could be a loop at the end of the greenway there at Arthur Drake Road and put an observation platform there. So, I basically want to let you know that we're looking into the issue. We're going to come back to you with some options for that. Uh, we'd kind of like some input on the parking area versus replacing the boardwalk. And of course, money will be part of that discussion, but part of it will be what you want to see. Um the the bad part about the uh if we remove the boardwalk, obviously we got to build another parking area um and you'll go to the end of the greenway and you'll have to make a loop and come back. The good thing is we put some accessible parking very very close to that u apple tree area that that memorial garden that's there which make it easier for people to get to. Um so there's some pluses and minuses to both of those. Just want to let you know it's in the progress. It's in it's in process and I'll get back to you hopefully next month and give you some

more details on that. Thanks for the update. Any questions? I'll keep the frog board updated. Yeah. And I know uh the parks and recck are working in tandem as well. Yeah. And we actually have to get Duke approval. We we've sent them some drafts because it's under the power line. All right. Moving on to new business. Um item B, discussion regarding revision to North Carolina general statute requiring counties and cities to conduct SBI criminal history record checks for applicants beginning the 1 of October 25. It's Tammy Kezer.

So in your packet was a correspondence guidance from the school of government on this new legislative change. Um this change started out as an addition to a guardianship um legislative act regarding children in foster care. Um and it has gotten expanded um and has now brought under the opaces of that legislation employees who work for city and county governments. that would be working with youth, supervising youth, mentoring youth. Youth is defined as anyone under the age of 18. So, we have a lot of situations um that will fall under that new legislation and we will begin having to do the SBI background checks um on October 1st. That requires fingerprinting. Um so right now um we've gone through the process of signing the agreement with the SBI. We're doing staff training. Um there's some security measures that we will have to put in place. Um the SBI right now today um is two weeks behind. So the background checks that were submitted two weeks ago are still being reviewed by the SBI. So, this is going to delay our um hiring process that we've worked so hard on doing a new application and recruitment process to get folks on boarded quickly. This is going to delay that and there's no estimate of how long that delay is going to be because you got all 100 counties um and then you put your towns in there um that are going to get added to this process. So, um that that is a concern about that. We are trying we're

working with um some of the departments um who think that maybe not all of their staff are going to have to have these background checks. Um so we're trying to see if there's some positions that we can eliminate this requirement from. Um but it right now it's it's a large number of positions that we'll have to have this done. It's not current employees. It's only employees that are hired October 1st and forward. And then the background check has to be repeated every five years. The cost is $38, I think, a background. Um, and that's in addition to the current fee that we pay for the background checks that we do. We have to do both of them from what we understand at this point. So, um, we may be coming back in the future to ask for some additional funding to cover this once we see what the financial implications are.

All right. So, is that just an update? We don't need to take action. Um, I do need you to take action because this requires some policy revisions and it's revisions to multiple policies. Um, so if I can just have your approval to revise those policies as needed um to get this process underway and move forward. Sure. So Tammy, the county does not have anything in the policy now that in the past you would have done a background check on.

We do do background checks and we do national background checks. It does not include the SBI check and the fingerprinting. Um, so we now have to go through this SBI process in addition to what we're already doing. I didn't know there was many background checks, right? All right. So, we need action. Make a motion to um revise those policies as needed. I hear a motion by Commissioner Breeden. Second. Second by Commissioner Antoine. Any further discussion? Yeah, our senator left and we was going to ask him where we were going to get the money to pay for this. All in favor, please raise your right arm and state I. I.

Any oppose? All right. Please let the record reflect 5. Thank you, Tammy. All right, Board of Health, thanks for sticking around. It's been an eventful night and you guys are back up. Item C, um, continue discussion on the board of health. Thank you, Mr. Attorney. So, [Music] I don't think it's on. I've got it to 11C. I think my work here is done.

Well, well, I'll just start by saying I would like to see us continue to explore the consolidated health department option. Obviously, after discussion earlier, it does not look like that would pass tonight. Um, so I think it's something that we can work together with the board of health. Um, I know we have a good board and and we've been meeting quite a bit, but I think it's something we still need to to discuss and and kind of follow up on. And, you know, I know for those employees that were here that that kind of got up here and spoke that you guys will take care of them in the meantime and make sure that their um, you know, their needs are met and and that's just what we're, you know, we're asking to do and I know y'all will do it and that's what we're here for. So

yeah, I think uh what I said earlier tonight still stands. You know, keep everything as is. You guys take care of the employees. You guys have an opportunity to fix this situation. Let's fix it

and let's not remove the other option off the table. Let's just do some research into it and we'll get some advice from you guys as well. If you think it's a good idea, then we'll move forward at a later date. No, I think I'll just say thank you for your time and uh your willingness to put this much effort into this, you know, into this program and and I think these problems have accumulated over a long duration of time and they're they're most likely not going to be fixed in a day and a week and a month and maybe even six months. I hope I hope they are at least for the employees and and the intern. Anybody else?

Keep on moving. Keep on moving. Yeah. No, I just like to say thank you guys for your willingness to serve in this position and um and my main focus was the problems with personnel and it's been very well stated tonight and I I have no reserves on issues with um and we just keep on working together and make things Thank you.

Can I say just one more thing? Um, I would like to say that I started this venture about three or four months ago. I don't know, but I would like to say that I'm I'm proud of what the board of health, me and John, you know, sitting on that board, what we've accomplished in just a few months. I mean, I know we've done a lot of work. So, I I would like to say that, you know, I'm proud of what we've done. There's been some changes and, you know, we'll just keep on plugging along and and try to try to get it right. All right. Thank you. Thank you for your time. So, uh, gentlemen, have you reviewed the consent agenda? Sure. Any conflicts? Any issues? Want to spend money? Of course there is. No, it's all good.

You normally got a list over there, John. I did, but it with me. I need a motion to approve. Motion to approve. Hear a motion by Commissioner Breeden. Second. Second by Commissioner Shur. Any other discussion? Hearing none. All in favor, please raise your right arm. state. I I Any oppose? All right. Let the record reflect 5. Miss Tammy. Um appointments. Mon County Board of Health. There's two seats. I know I'm prepared to take action. Is Is uh everyone prepared to take action tonight or do you want to delay? I mean, I'm prepared. All right. Are we going to be given a ballot or is like we

Yeah, we have a ballot right here. All right, Miss Tammy, we have two appointments. Oh, Eric's got them. I'm sorry. I've got him. He's got him.

All right. So, I've got We're voting for one in general public. The candidates are Ava Ammons, Richard Brady, Philip Gibson, Mark, and I'm going to say Heim HN, Lindsay Henderson, Deborah Prince, Monica Severn. Vote for one. And then on the position, we have a Dr. Michael Pet who is up for um that's also one vote seat. Again, if we have a unanimous decision on the general public seat, then we um do not need to revote. If we have a tie for the top bird, uh we will recast that with I don't know how that'll work. Everybody votes for the same thing. I guess somebody have to probably have to change their vote. [Applause]

Hey, vote for one. Vote for one. Wow.

Just Just circle the one you want up top. [Music] There's only one on the bottom.

Silent, of course. [Music] Oh, I didn't sign my gave you the wrong one. You want me to? But you did right anyway. How about that? You want me to sign it?

We have Barry Breeden. Uh, vote for the general public seat as Ava Ammons. Vote for the position seat as Michael P. Uh, we have Danny Antoine. Vote for the general public seat is Mark Hine. position seat is Michael Tet. Joshua Young, vote for the general public seat as Lindseay Henderson. Vote for the position seat is Michael Tet. For Mr. Shields, we have vote for the general public seat as Ava Ammons. Vote for the position seat is Michael Tet. And John Shur, we have vote for the general public seat as Ava Ammons. And vote for position is Michael Tet. So we have a 50 decision on Michael P on the general public seat. We have three votes for Ava Ammons. So that is a consensus on that appointment. All right. We need a motion to approve.

Yes. A motion by Commissioner Breeden. Second by Commissioner Shur. Any other discussion? Hearing none. All in favor, please raise your right arm. State I. Any oppose? All right. 5, Miss Tammy. Thank you. And I do understand we have a need for a quick close session. Yes, sir. Yes. Under 143-318.11 A3 and Power four. I make a motion we go into session.

Hear a motion by Commissioner Sher, second by Commissioner Breeden. All in favor, please bring on motion. So, I'm glad to see this is 22 in.