Council - Special Meeting

You wouldn't go near the ball. No. Got to get out there. Yeah.

His dad was a baseball player. pitch my mic on mic pitch against Wow. We'll call this meeting 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. Next we have the approval of the agenda. Do we have a motion? So moved.

Second. Favor the motion. Any oppose? Motion carries.

I have a little script here to read and I'm ask you to bear with me. It's welcome to our budget question and answer forum. Thank you for taking the time to be here this evening to learn more about the town's budget. We'll start with a brief presentation from staff on the proposed fiscal year 2627 budget. After that, anyone who has a question about the budget can come up to the podium by forming a line against that wall. But please note, tonight is an opportunity to learn more about the budget and is only for questions on the budget. General statements, comments, or other concerns about the budget should be shared at the budget public hearing on March 19th. Each person may ask one question at a time. After you ask your question, you can have a followup if needed on your original question. If you have additional questions, go to the end of the line and work so others will have their chance. Also, looking ahead, the town will hold its budget hearing on Thursday, March 19th at 6 PM or shortly thereafter. During the regular council meeting at that budget hearing, each person will have the opportunity to speak for three minutes to share their comments. Finally, the council is currently scheduled to adopt the fiscal year 2627 budget at the April 19th regular council meeting. Thank you again for being here and participating this important discussion. Let's begin with presentation. Mr. Hollis, you starting or Carly?

Carly.

Good evening, mayor, council, and citizens. Um, welcome to our budget Q&A forum. We started this a couple years ago to really have an interactive atmosphere to be able to ask and answer questions with council. Um, so I'm going to speak very briefly. A lot of this is repetitive information that's already on the website and things that you have heard before, but I'm going to be very brief. So our total proposed budget again is $50 million made up of both the general fund PAL bill and then building inspections. Our proposed revenue fund, our proposed revenue for the general fund budget is $46 million. State statute does require that we budget by major revenue sources. So those are listed here. Um our major our top three are per property tax, sales and use tax, and then fire fees. One penny is about $750,000 for that property tax line. We are also budgeting expenses by department which is one of the options set by the state statute. Again spending almost 40% of our budget on public safety and then debt streets and grounds is our infrastructure leading it and then all the way down to the bottom um governing body less than 1% of the overall budget. Go over some brief highlights. The proposed budget does includes a include a reduction of the tax rate from 27 cents to 25 cents. Some highlights in the police department include the purchase of seven additional vehicles. These are fully equipped patrol vehicles. So that is five replacements for end of life vehicles and then two vehicles for the two new positions. We are completing the traffic signal generator backup program so that every traffic signal in our fire district will have a backup generator to it in case of power going out. Also looking to purchase a Sable UAS drone and that was

one of our strategic initiatives this year. The fire department budget includes a new swiftwater boat and trailer. Um, that's really to prepare us for those hurricane situations like we saw ourselves in with both Florence and then even TC8 last year. Also includes a new replacement vehicle for the battalion chief, which is the first responding vehicle to any incident the fire department responds to. Some highlights for infrastructure. The budget does include $2.5 million towards the road resurfacing program. $1 million of that as municipal vehicle tax, $1 million from Pelibill, and then a half million from other general fund revenues. Also looking to add $250,000 towards the pedestrian infrastructure capital project fund. Those funds have not identified a specific street yet. So we are hoping to use those funds towards matching grants towards pedestrian projects. Um, so like the Highway 17 project that we did this year, majority of that was paid for by grants and then we had a small sliver of matching funds. So we're hoping to use that $250,000 towards matching funds towards one of the projects on our capital improvement plan. Emergency contingency budget is $750,000 in the current year. capital projects. We are looking to upfit a current building over on the municipal operations center to be a m a fleet maintenance facility. So currently we outsource that. We have to bring the vehicles to Wilmington for tires and oil changes and all of those things. So looking to bring that service inhouse and upfit a building that we already own out there. This budget does include the addition of 10 new positions with various start dates throughout the year. Public safety makes up the majority of that. Two police officers for the traffic division. One fire captain assigned to community risk reduction. Three firefighters that will increase our

frontline vehicle from three to four to meet some NFPA standards. An IT analyst to focus on public safety and keeping those communications going all the time. We're looking to add two grounds maintenance technicians to focus on the beautifification of the town, primarily trash pickup. And that's trash all throughout the town, even in the DOT rightaways. And then one facility maintenance technician will which will assist with adding um Founders Park back online. Our debt did decrease in the current year. We paid off the cultural arts center and then we did add the debt for two new fire trucks that we purchased and now moving forward, we're looking to pay cash for those trucks. We also did pay off the fire truck that was then um unfortunately totaled later in December. So that debt was removed. So this is just an outline of what Miss Boseman already mentioned, but individuals are invited to line up at the podium to ask budget questions of council and staff. Each person may ask one question, receive a response, and then ask one follow-up question on the same topic. We do want to make sure that everybody gets their questions answered. So, in in order to increase participation, if you have additional questions, you're welcome to get back in line and ask those. We just really want to give everybody an opportunity to speak right up front there. Um, so I'll hand it back over to you, council. Thank you.

Thank you, Carly. Okay. If anyone wants to uh ask questions, if you'll go over to the side here, sidewall. My question has to do with pensions and 401k. Basically the town is has to provide 15.1% of the employee s salary who is not a a policeman and 17.1% who is a policeman. That totals $3 million. The 401k contribution is 5%. That totals a million dollar. My question, when was the 401k plan enacted? And had the town looked at other local towns that have about the same amount of people to see if they had a plan and if they have a 401k plan, what are they putting into plan?

Okay,

um I have asked that question and there are towns I don't have it in front of me. Mr. Hollis may have it more readily available, but there are other towns. First of all, a lot of what we do for our benefits is um we look at the North Carolina League of Municipalities, including our salary ranges. They do an annual survey so that we're competitive and that we're in line with the market, but that includes benefits as well. And there are some towns, just as a rule of thumb for me personally, not speaking for the rest of the council, I tend to use three towns that are about at the 30,000 people range. So, you know, I'm comparing apples to apples. Um, they are Newburn, Morrisville, and Sanford, just for the record. That's right.

Um, they don't necessarily match up to us perfectly. Uh, one of them, for example, has utilities that we don't have. Um, one has a much larger staff than we have and one is very rural, but they're close at least in population. Um, what we contribute is not out of the ordinary. We are not the only town by any stretch of the imagination. even within those ranges to contribute with all of our staff. Some do, some don't, but there are over at least over 522 municipalities in North Carolina of various sizes. So again, trying to keep it with apples to apples. We are basically competitive and I can probably get you some of those numbers if you'd like if you just shoot me an email.

Mr. Hollis, you got anything to add? The um the percentages for this current year are 15.1 for general employees and 17 for police. Um part of the question was when was this implemented? Uh it's been that way for at least 15 years with the town. It was before then. It was at least 20 20 years ago.

Okay. And there is a requirement for 401k for the police uh department. And most towns uh that are within our benchmark provide that same uh 401k for um for all employees.

Yeah, I can bring that up. I was waiting for Mr. Hollis to finish.

All right. So, just a list of towns that provide the same um let's see here. Yeah, I'm just looking to make sure I see within this column. So, Hendersonville, Kinston, Laurenberg, Lenor, Lewisville, Lexington, Lincolnington, Newton, Pinehurst, Pineville, Reedsville, Roseville, Shelby, Stallings, Wendell, um population.

So then other ones, Burlington, Chapel Hill, Clayton, Cornelius, Fugquway Quaver, Verina who are our friends right now. It's a bunch of them. Yeah. Let me see if I can Hunterville, Indian Trail, Canapapolis, Kernersville, Matthews, Monroe, Newburn, Salisbury, Statesville, um, yeah, Statesville. Thanks, Sean.

So, those are just the ones in our population range there that do that.

Okay. Thank you. My question is in regards to infrastructure. Um it is a big concern that I have um being of the old part of Leland. Um I've noticed that uh a lot of the newer developments and even the surrounding areas have had upgrades. Um one of the things that piqued my interest was about the heaven highway 17 pedestrian rideways um that were completed last year. Could we have an uh expound on that? Because I go down Highway 17 and have lived in the area. I have not seen anything for pedestrians. Matter of fact, I've seen it become more congested and the lack thereof of pedestrian rightaways. So, if I can and the plus this is a state road, so I would think the state would have some bearing on what goes on there for infrastructure. So the uh pedestrian um right uh project that was looked at for Highway 17 is there at um Plof and Old Waterford Way. That intersection with 17. It's not completed. The the work is ongoing. Um actually the construction of it hasn't begun but the work is ongoing with all the engineering and and planning of that. Uh that is a project that was funded uh with federal dollars through the WPO. Uh we had a match for that amount. I think the amount's around $800,000. Match was 177. Um, and so that's what this 250 is for is to be able to uh create projects like that where we can get funding uh and then match it with whatever funding we have to have. I think generally the

WPO's 20% is what they look at uh with funding pedestrian projects like that. So yeah, you you haven't uh seen that built yet because it's not built yet. Yeah, it should it should go out for bid this summer. Okay. Thank you. Uh my question is a general question in reference to why are we paying $80,000 of per vehicles for a police car when on the average is about 50.

So that's a fully equipped police car. card includes the radio, the MDT, which is like the laptop that they need for it. It's everything to take the vehicle off the lot and for a patrol vehicle to drive. So, the radio alone is $5,000. The MDT is about $4,000. Light, sirens, all of that together is the the price of that vehicle.

And I do understand what you're saying. However, uh I've done research and I actually used to be a finance director for municipality that you named. Uh it doesn't c it hasn't cost that much. Uh $80,000 for for one vehicles is a bit excessive when carrier other places paying between 40 and and 60. I haven't seen anyone paying that much including uh the radios and etc. It just seemed awful high to me.

Yeah. I mean, it's high to us, too. Precoid, that's what we were paying for police vehicles. We could buy a vehicle for $27,000 that we're now spending $50,000 on, like a regular fleet vehicle. Um, we've gotten quotes from state contracts and this is the the price for our our fully equipped police vehicle. Yeah, it's unfortunate for sure. Sir, just as a side note, and today um on Fox Wilmington, there's a um article about firet trucks. It's the same thing. Um there's a shortage of fire trucks nationwide. And the first fire truck when I was on council six years ago was about 700,000 and that same fire engine is like over a million dollars. And so

and I I understand that. I I've said in your seat car for another municipality. So understood. I understand that part. But you know it it seemed awful excessive within the last absolutely. I mean we're talking six years to double in price for just a fire engine. Thank you sir.

There's been quite a bit of discussion in the community about zerobased budgeting and what it means. There are many resources out there talking about what the process is for zerobased budgeting. Simply put, zerobased budgeting is a more rigorous process of budgeting when compared to more traditional forms of budgeting. Zerobased budgeting requires that the budgeting process starts from zero without regard to the prior year's budgets. Each line item must be explained and justified. For example, there may be explanations of increases to headcount, but there must be justifications for existing headcount as well. You can't justify existing headcount or if if you can't justify existing headcount, how can increases to headcount be justified? Additionally, compensation must be explained and justified as well. According to zerobased budgeting, just because compensation was X last year does not mean compensation should be X plus Y this year. Um, please describe how or where where does the uh town of Leland website uh describe and explain each of the line items and the rationale that the that was used to process each one of those line items. Is there anywhere in the website that we can find an explanation and justification for each one of those line items

in accordance with zerobased budgeting?

We have lots of conversations as we're preparing the budget. So, we don't necessarily sit and justify why we need office supplies in writing in a in a formal documents. Um, everything that we have on the website is 10 times what other places are putting out. like we are putting out just an abundance of information on our website. Um we're only required to budget by department and we actually not only show our general ledger accounts but we also show the detail for underneath those general ledger accounts. And so that's where we're doing zerobased budgeting. Those templates are completely blank when when we send them out in September, October to the departments and they're looking at what they're planning ahead for the next 18 months because we do do this pretty far in advance, but they're not necessarily typing out and formally justifying each item. That's more of organic during the conversation process. So, if we don't budget for something, we cannot do it. So, if we don't budget for maintenance on our vehicles, we cannot maintain our vehicles. Um, we're not we're

I ask a followup. Can I ask a followup? If it's on the same by definition requires an explanation and justification for each line item of expense. Just to say, hey, we start off with a blank page and I put a number in there does not satisfy the requirement of zerobased budgeting. So the second question is are we actually using zerobased budgeting or are we using a more traditional form of budgeting saying it was X last year and it's X plus Y this year?

No. So we're using zerobased budgeting. Uh every item has to be justified. It's not formally written out in that justification. But as we go through this with every department, it has to be justified as we talk through this entire process. anything that they put in the budget has to be justified to us. Not all of that is put in writing. The um the the question you or the comment you made about salaries that salaries isn't x plus y. Um we don't decrease people's salaries uh arbitrarily. uh that what they are making uh currently in their salary is what they're making and we're not looking at that as a decrease uh for that. So in in salaries it is X plus Y most of the time.

Only one followup. You can get back in line and do it again. May do that

that too. We're constantly looking at the positions that we have and that's why a couple positions were eliminated in the past couple years. Um we if if a position we're constantly looking at every position, what they're doing, do we need more positions? Um and and that was shown this year when we eliminated the emergency management department and then two positions with that. So every position is absolutely justified and and our our headcount is extremely lean compared to all those like municipalities that we mentioned that are with similar population. So that question sparked a question for me that's not on the page I prepared before I came. So if you are justifying each line item through conversations, but you're not writing this down, you're not producing a record of the justification of each of these line items. How do we know that you've done that? How will the town council members be able to evaluate your budget that you've produced without you providing them the justification for each line item? And how can the public know what is the justification for these various line items that many of them seem excessive, wasteful, or even ridiculous to us? How can we know as the public that you've produced a good and accurate budget if you're not providing the justification for each line item? Or are we supposed to just simply trust you that you actually had that conversation and that your conversation was accurate and good

by asking? We're asking now and we keep asking you for it individually. You can ask us. We don't have time to ask each one of you individually for every line item. You're supposed to provide that information for the council members and for the public to expect every member of the public to ask for each line item individually is egregious and ridiculous. I'm not sure that everyone wants to know that. But but I staff handle it.

If if I may, when when we sat down and had a uh a meeting with the finance director and the town manager, Veronica and I sat in that same meeting for a little over four hours. And that was one of the questions I was asking. Help me understand because what you're providing me is an explanation, but you're not providing me a justification. An ex explanation of each one of these line items could simply be a drop-own box that we read. and and I explained that I want to understand the details of this budget and I was told you're just going to have to trust us. That's not I was in the room and so I heard that and you can say what you want to say but Carly said that

and she said Mr. Pendleton no one asked for this type of detail in the budget and at some point you're just going to have to trust us. She also said and I believe Mr. Hollis said that he was going to add that for you during that same meeting that it would be almost impossible because of the software that they currently use and that they were about to change software and that it might become easier once they do that upgrade to get that information in the detail that you were asking for. But they did offer to do those types of uh drop- down boxes for you specifically. I also remember that's an explanation that it is but at the time it wasn't there and so you were asking for an explanation

here for staff to answer these question but the point I'm trying to make is I asked for justification not explanation we we sat in 4 and 1/2 hours 4 hours 15 minutes of an explanation I asked for a justification and I was told no one asked for this type of detail at some point Mr. Pendleton, you're simply going to have to trust us. For the record, I would like to state that many of the citizens have been asking for that type of detail for quite some time now.

All right. So um just to um for a general ledger uh item take for instance community outreach under the governing bodies um budget here. So, the justification for $6,200 is then itemized out with a founders lunchon, a community outreach event, uh board committee volunteer appreciation, the mayor's citizens of the year award, keys to the town, board committee awards, special meeting events, citizens academy. All of those items are the justification for that general ledger item. Justifying whether we need one of those items or not is a decision that council makes. So that's the justification part of zerobased budgeting. You're looking at those items. So just to justify office supplies, do we need office supplies? Yes, we need office supplies. We need paper. We need pens. We need all those things. Do we need to write a formal document saying that we need those things? That's not part of the budgeting process.

Saying that we need papers and pens. That is part of the conversation we have of the budget as we're developing this budget. We're starting at zero and we know that we need those items. So, we put those items into the budget. Uh just like other items in the budget when we start at zero, we say, "Do we need this item?" And if we need it, then we put it into the budget. And through the council manager form of government, the manager and the staff is responsible for developing that and presenting it to the council that we're running the town through this budget and we're running it pretty lean through this.

Definitely are. Okay. And more then we explain that to you, David. I think the difference is an explanation of office supplies is we need paper. A justification is helping the people understand do we need 10 reams of paper per month or do we need a 100 reams of paper and in the past we've used 12. So if we go from 12 to 100 you have to justify the expense. So the justification is is explaining and defending why you need that much money in that particular GL code. Okay,

it that's certainly a council decision. If you want us to get down to how many boxes of papers we use and how many pens we use, we can do that. But we generally know we use about so much money a year on these type of items. And are we going to have that item again this year? Yes, we're going to have that item again this year. So that's where we start at zero and we say yes, we're going to need that. And this is about how much money we spend on that. All right.

Hello, my name is Trish Farnum and as uh folks may know, I'm with a group called We Live Here. And we support the place we live because it's the place we love. And we do it through four primary uh vehicles. We do it through supporting trees. We support uh litter management, trash. uh we think about uh pedestrian transportation and we think about trails. Importantly and I think especially in this budget context, we also prioritize doing it in a way that brings people together. So I wanted to first of all uh thank the town for inviting this kind of dialogue and this discourse. I think that's always a really important step and it brings up and elevates things that need to be sunshined and need to be uh made transparent. Um, but I appreciate the the the space to do so. I have a couple of things related to our uh we live here focus. Um, Lyn Veter and the town maintenance staff are amazing partners in our efforts. They have supported us to plant uh 40 street trees in the Westgate uh area as you all well know and we have also been uh partners and collaborators in tree distribution efforts in town. So, thank you all for that partnership. I'm excited that there are actually going to be some more hands to assist in that area and I'm curious if you all can expand on some of the beautifification projects that are justifying these two positions and whether they will be any of those beautifification projects will be in our two priority areas of the Westgate District and the Gateway area.

Yeah. So, I I'll take a stab at that a little bit. We we do have money in the budget for street trees. Uh so that's a good thing. That's a good thing. That's a great thing. We have money in the budget for two personnel who will be uh primarily assigned to pick up trash. Yes. And clean up the the roadways. So those are uh two big things that we're doing there. Uh obviously the Westgate area is part of that uh would be within those roadways as well. uh street trees. We haven't determined where those would be yet, but uh budgeting for those just the same. Thank you.

Long Leland, North Carolina. Um, I have a question about the uh Wilmington Metropolitan Planning Organization dues $50,000 and what do we get for our money? And I would hope a council member would be able to answer that question.

Actually, the NO helps with the highways um with the funding for it. They also give us uh grants for different projects along with the North Carolina DOT. Uh, NPO is uh is part of Pender, New Handover, and Broken counties. And uh and so all the money that the NO and the DOT get has to be split between all these three counties and different townships and all. But um they work we they work hard. They work hard in trying to help everyone with their roads. And hopefully um next week we'll have have even do here with an update on the bridge replacement.

If I may, Madame Mayor, the WPO, and this is from their website, the WNO is a federallymandated and federally funded entity. The WNO is tasked with providing a regional and cooperative transportation planning process that serves as the basis for expenditure of all federal transportation funds in the greater Wilmington area. It's mandated by federal law and state law. And so it's not the membership is not optional for the town.

And if you're not a member of the NO like North uh Northwest here in Leland area, they are in the RPO which is rural planning organization. So you you've got all these townships, all the county, they are all covered with the NPO dues and all that we pay. Okay. I just want to make sure I understand, Miss Carter, uh you're saying that that's a federal requirement that we're a member of that organization. Federal and state. That's how transportation, state and federal transportation dollars are distributed throughout the state. It's a it's a requirement that we're a member and pay the 50,000. That's correct. Based on population. Okay,

thank you. Thank you. Add just uh a couple of things to that too. Uh the WPO helps to review the traffic impact analysis for all the developments that are proposed here. Um they um they they also provide us the grant funding like was mentioned here. What else? Oh yeah. So uh and then any kind of special studies that uh are needed in the area they'll conduct those studies as well traffic traffic analysis and all that for the area.

All right thank you. I have a question about benefits. The total benefits in the budget are $5.7 million. And I cannot tell looking at that data what what is in their taxes and benefits is I can understand part of the tax would be FICA taxes, but I don't know if there's any other little taxes in there that that the uh town has to pay. However, I'd like to know what plans I'll say medical plans, insurance plans, or anything else like that does the town have and do the employees pay anything for that? Do they defer any any of that? So that we the the town does not pay for all of it, but the employees have a part part of part part payment in there. So that employee benefits line includes um

closer to the mic. Sorry, that line item for employee benefits includes FICA and Medicare, unemployment, life insurance, sorry, long-term disability, medical insurance, and HA contribution, any um dental, vision, workers compensation. That's all included in that line item. We are currently part of the state health plan. Currently part of the state health plan for our medical insurance and employees do pay a portion of the benefit. It is actually dictated by the state health plan how much the employee contributes to the plan. So

it's newly this year based on salary. So, different salary bands you pay for your medical insurance based on your earnings.

Um, and then also something that I think we've discussed a little bit here, there has been a sir charge added to our state health plan medical insurance of 2.4% of all employee salaries. So, we are currently lobbying to try to get out of the state health plan because that makes that's an additional half million dollars that we will have to pay for insurance. We cannot opt out of the state health plan without legislative action. So, once you're in, you can't get out. So, right now, we're trying to get out because our medical insurance as part of the state health plan is significantly higher than that as part of the private market. So, that sir charge was supposed to start this previous July. they delayed it to next July or this July, I'm sorry, in 2026. Um, and so that line item did go up significantly this year because of that half million dollars. And we have to pay that 2.4% on all of our employees salaries whether they're in the state health plan or not. So again, that was legislation that was passed that we are um also unhappy with and are are looking to try to avoid. So, basically, I'm going to follow up for a second that there are 237 full-time employees and I think it's seven and a half or something part-time employees. I'm assuming part-time of all of those employees, how many of them are in the plan, out of the plan of the 237?

So, of the 230 of our current staff right now, I believe we have 210 positions filled. eight of them are not in the health plan currently. So the other difference is both vacancies and then the new positions for next year. So of course we don't know whether they will opt into the plan or not. Okay. But currently of our full-time staff that are currently hired right now, we have eight people that are not part of the state health plan. Okay. Thank you. Carly, if I if I might point out also what you said, you have eight people that are not in the plan, but we still have to pay that search charge for those people that are not in the plan.

Right. That's correct. And we can't dictate how much the employee pays for the health coverage. The state health plan decides that as well. So this year, July 1 of 2026, they dictated that we now charge employees based on their earnings. Um, I've never heard of that in the private sector that people pay for health insurance based on their earnings. Um, we found that to be odd. Um, but so it it's different per employee how much we're paying and how much they're paying based on their earnings, but we don't get to decide how much the employee contributes. That's set by legislative.

A follow to this gentleman's question. As a followup to this gentleman's question, what percentage on average does the town pay for the health benefits versus the employee? Um, I can get that for you, but it's again it's different for every employee for every band, but I can get that for you. I'm hearing it's about around 60 40%. That's for the employee. The employee would pay 60%. I mean, I'm sorry. The employer, we would pay six.

Okay, I'm corrected. It's about 60% that the employee is paying, 40% the employer is paying. Okay, Miss Hag, just a follow-up question there. We don't pay for dependence, do we? We pay a portion, but and then that amount is also set by the state health plan. They give amounts per there's like 16 different categories now based on the different salary bands and then they they dictate or tell us how much to charge. Okay. Um back to benefits. I heard you say LTD. Do we also have short-term disability for for employees? Okay. Thank you.

Okay. This is kind of a followup with what we're talking about. Um there is a con a counterintuitive result between salaries and benefits for nearly all of the departments that is puzzling. For example, local government retirement LG and employee benefits are increasing at a rate greater than the rate of growth for salaries and wages. So for example, So for example, salaries and wages grew at 17 a.5% year-over-year for information technology. However, LG ERS and employee benefits and taxes increased at 25 a.5 and 17.1% respectively. The same phenomenon occurred for most of the other departments. However, one would expect that salaries and wages versus related expenses would all grow at approximately the same rate per year. Can can we explain why the pension plan and employee benefits are increasing year-over-year at a rate greater than salaries and wages? Are you paying something new within those areas? Something different uh something additional?

No. So for elders, for the retirement pension system that we're required to pay in the current year's budget, um general and fire were to were 14.35% and the police were at 16.5%. And again, that's set by the state. We don't make those amounts. In the upcoming year, those have increased to 15.1 for general and 17.1 for police. So that's the difference in elders. While the salaries are increasing, the percentages are so as a so as a factor, how is that changing from year-over-year?

So, orbit the the state retirement system tells us what percentage to charge. So, again, with zerobased budgeting, we take what everybody's salary is, calculate their increases, and then we use the new percentages to calculate what the pension contribution will be. Those factors have changed then this year versus last year. They change every year and have since I've been here. Okay. Every year the state sets new pension percentages for both general and buyer and then police. And how much do they ordinarily change by? Is it usually a material amount or an immaterial amount or

it's it it's been significant. It's been very slight. This year was again about 2% increase. Hm. And part of the part of the issue, Bob, is that life expectancy has increased dramatically over the last 30 years. Therefore, we anticipate I say we I participate in orbit, not elders, but another one. And as you can imagine, we need to put more money away every year to pay that increased life expectancy. Okay. But as a factor, just for all of the operating departments, elders went up $400,000 year over year. That seems like a very, very large number.

We're not living that long. We're not living that long. Yeah. Like, well, maybe I'm looking at this wrong, but No, you're not. You're not. You're correct. So our salaries are increasing and then the percentage on top of those salaries is also increasing. So while while the number 10 is getting bigger, the 10 is going to 12, the percentage is going up as well. So yeah, the number is growing and it's required by the state to contribute to that. Okay. But it's compounding over time. So it's the the percentage is always going to grow faster for the elders than

so this is the slope that we're going to be seeing for the next handful of years is where these benefits are going to be increasing at a rate greater than salary increases year-over-year. If if the state continues to do that then perhaps yes that yeah this again the state sets our right now sets our health insurance amounts and also sets our retirement amounts. So those two things are currently out of our control.

Okay. Thank you. Upon looking at the the current budget, um I was looking at the governing body overview. Um as some of the other um speakers have said, um the problem with what's posted that I have from public knowledge budget um is, you know, those line items aren't broken out. So I don't know what's stashed in each of those line items. But in governing body um it does mention travel meeting and schools um the dues and it's looking as though it's a 34% increase. Could you break that down as far as what are we spending in travel and schooling? That seems a bit excessive. So, if you go to the town's website under the budget page

and you go to supplemental information and then you go to templates, the breakdown of those travel of that travel, meeting, schools, and dues is $123,000. Here is the breakdown for all of those numbers.

So, these are quotes for how much things are going to cost. So again, the Wilmington Metropol Metropolitan Planning Organization dues of $50,000 that was increased from $26,000 in the current year, but that is a number that we get from WMO that says this is how much you need to budget for. This is how much we're going to charge you. So again, like when we're doing the budget, this is blank. We're we're putting in all of the things that we need. We're presenting that to the council explaining what each item is and then if council tells us we don't want you to do that then we would remove it. So, but in this template you can see the breakdown of every single general ledger account and where the money is going.

If I could make a request on the line on the page on the web page that it not say template um because when a public looks at that they're thinking what we're using to break down the budget. Okay. So, if I can make that request publicly that that be done. Try to keep the naming the same. So, if you go back into the supplemental information, we have this for every other year as well. We break it down.

Attached to supplemental because it's not intuitive. It might be for the department and the town, but it's not intuitive to the public. and if that can be placed on there and even attached to a budget template or something up there can be even attached as a link uh to go to. But um going back to my concern about the travel um I feel like that is a bit excessive for for that line item. I think that there's some things that we can scale back with even if it's not WPO. I think that's a little deceiving to call it travel because the amount of money on this bring to a conference the the you have to pay for the conference, pay for the hotel, pay for the meal allowance, but majority of this governing body is dues. So if you read through the line items, each council member gets $2500 and that includes registration, hotel, and meal allowance to go to a conference. So that

how many people must go? So in this case, there's five council members. So they each get $2,500. But if you look at this, like $10,000 are for the mayor's mayor's coalition dues. Um $28,000 for the League of Municipalities. That's our insurance company. So we're required to pay a member. It's similar to Farm Bureau where you have to pay $25 to be a member and then you can get their insurance. So that's what the league of municipalities dues is. The school of government is where majority of our training comes from. So we pay them a fee dues to be able to ask them questions and get updates and then attend their classes. So it it sounds like it's a lot of travel. There is very little travel. Sure.

We have a very strict travel policy. We don't travel out of state. Um we the amount of money that here that's actually spent on travel is pretty minimal. But even these days a webinar can be $3 400 that are required for certification. So um it just seems that line item is a bit excessive even if it's broken out. I mean I work for a global company. we scale back and you know you you attend virtually you don't go to a hotel you don't need to you just you get a small allotted I mean that just seems a bit excessive I feel like this is a want list and not so much of a it needs to be in the budget

actually Miss Blake we don't always spend that money but it has to be budgeted so that's also a bit deceiving so if I get $2500 but I don't go to any conference they still have to put the $2,500 in the budget for the beginning of the year. The money is not lost. It just rolls into the next year. Sure. But I I still think that there are definitely items in like this in the budget, which I do appreciate the template that showing me that, but you know, I feel like there are some items in the budget that are a bit excessive that need to be re-reviewed. Thank you.

Thank you. Well, I don't know if I'm ever going to get to ask my question number one because Shondaanda sparked me to go towards my question number three. Yeah. So, um, first of all, talking about how she mentioned about the templates, I also did not know what that was and almost didn't click on it and I was thinking, well, they don't really show anything on here. Where is it? And then I said, well, let me see what these templates are and I clicked on. I'm like, oh, that's where it's at. Okay. So, talking about the travel expenses, that's what they're listed under, not just for the governing body, but when I went along and totaled it up for every department, it came to a total of $469,916. That's almost a half a million dollar. So I looked at each department and I saw engineering has 103,530, administration has 32,100, finance has 22,950, planning has $24,750. Um, even parks and recreation is going to get in on this deal. They've got $9,890 scheduled for them. So, it seems like the taxpayers are footing the bill for a lot of travel and education and dues. It seems like we're sending people on vacations and paying for their educations and paying dues for a whole lot of things. Do we really need to or don't we? Maybe a justification of line items could tell us something about that. But we want to know is all that really necessary? Um, you look at all this education. Well, don't we expect our employees already know how to do their jobs before we hire them? And as Shondaanda mentioned, can't some of it be done by Zoom? Well, I'm looking at

that total figure of almost half a million dollars. And I'm remembering that 1 cent of the tax rate equals $720,000. So, if some of that was eliminated, we might be able to reduce the tax rate by another penny. So what is the justification for all of these travel expenses not just the governing body? How much did we spend on these travel expanded travel expenses for the past three years and how much do you project to spend over the next five years? can tell you that some of the travel that we do in the education that their staff does, the uh you have to keep your certifications up. You have to take the courses and if they're doing it because they work for the town, then that's why the town pays for them to go.

I used to have them in in a job where I had to keep my certification up, but I paid for it myself. Nobody else paid for it. did the same in mine. But I uh but when it's in a government, you gota there's ch things that you change daily that they have to be on top of. Is it required by law that we have to pay for that that the town has to pay for that? That's my question. Is that required by law or is that just something we do as a benefit?

Because other townships, other municipalities do it and it makes us competitive in order to get the best people. Some of these folks have many certifications, national certifications, and those are continuing education requirements. Just as lawyers, we do have a staff attorney have to have so many hours per year to maintain their bar license, we have folks who are certified flood planners, ex certified zoning officials, etc. So some of those classes while not required for us to necessarily pay for it, if the city of Wilmington is paying for it, if the Bowling Spring Lake is paying for it, it would behoove us to pay for it if we want to maintain the best people. My last question on that is can I get a job?

So let let me uh let me clarify some of that. So 180,000 of that is police and fire training. uh 105,000 of the number that Miss Florian quoted is dues that are in the governing governing body. Uh so you take those two numbers out of that uh and the amount spent for the rest of the staff is fairly minimal. Uh there is certifications that are required for the jobs that people do. And so we provide training and continuing education for those certifications that are required for those jobs uh that people do. And it's not it's not that we're sending people everywhere to do these things. We do a lot of that stuff online. Like Miss Hag said, we we have a pretty strict uh policy on travel and conferences and training and all that. So if it can be done online through um webinars or whatever, we do that. If it has to be done otherwise, we do that. If somebody goes to a conference, they also are getting training there. It's not just going to the conference for vacation. Uh we're pretty strict on that. So the dollar amounts there are pretty minimal. If you if you count in if you take out the governing body and you count the police and fire and all the other staff there for the proposed staff, that amount for training dues, all of that comes to $1,400 $1,461 uh per employee for the town.

What was that number again? So it's 1461 if you take out the governing body. Okay. Thank you.

So my next question is swiftwater boats and drones for the town. Um and correct me if I'm wrong. It's my understanding that the county will provide that service to us in terms of drones or swiftwater protection if we need it. Uh so my question is this. Why would we pay twice? Once at the county level and again at the municipal level. The cost of one of these boats is $125,000. That's one with a so-called double stack trailer. I don't even know what that is unless that anticipates a second boat. Um there's also a PP&E that's required. It's for this swift weather. another $32,000. I don't know if that's an annual repetitive cost or or not. And then there's training. So, I mean, I'm not thinking that that's a bad thing that we have that, but that's something that you get when money is no object. So, I'd like to hear justification for this. Why the county can't use their assets to protect us instead of us including it in this budget. So you are correct. Uh New Hover and Brunswick County do have a swiftwater team. Uh we also are swiftwater certified. So unlike structural collapse trans rescue hazmat when we're flooding they're also flooding. So they're not able to get to us. That's the justification of the soboat. Um we're not able to pull that USA team from I say Wilmington to us to if we're flooding quickly like Florence event. um when a hurricane comes, usually 24 hours out before you get federal resources when they bring it in. So that's why we're doing it. The double stack is two boats, three motors. We're

able to deploy out and rescue uh multiple people at one time. All right. When you say they're flighting, you mean the county? The county. So when the countyy's flooding, we're flooding. Everywhere is flooding. Yes. So why can't we still utilize their rescue boats? They'll be utilizing down south. um depends on which call comes out first. Um you can count which way out at that time. If they're if Wilmington's flooding, they're going to be dedicated to that area. So,

well, cyclone um 8 a year ago, you might remember that the county was actually separated into five little islands and so they physically might not be able to get to us. Particularly, I mean, we're the fourth largest county geographically. If they're doing deployed in ash on a good day, that's an hour away from us. And if they can't get to us because they're on a deployment, that could be life or death. We've had to use swiftwater rescue at least twice since Florence and it was to actually rescue people whose unfortunately the water was up to their second story

and it was just by it was by go. Well, no, one was because it was from I believe Missouri. FEMA had prepositioned a swiftwater rescue team here in the town for Florence. Thank God because they had to go to Stony Creek and rescue people. The county could not get here. All right. Well, I could I could go on, but I think and they came with all the equipment that everybody that we would need to rescue people and everything. They actually came and asked to set set up in our park. They had generators and everything. We told them no. Come in town hall and and use town hall. So, we had people sleeping everywhere. I got you.

And to elaborate on our swift order abilities over the last two years, I've been here a year now, we have about 20 personnel um certified in swift order now. Um we have been state certified for swift order and this is just another resource um to be able to do something quickly. Um, you know, we might not use it all the time, but one call, you know, a year could result in 20 rescues. Um, so it's not when or if, it's when, right? Um, just the ability to get resources from other places when that uh significant events going on, it's going to be tough and uh I think that's going to help us rescue people faster and uh that's that's the justification for it.

How many boats do we currently have? So, we currently have a river boat, um, which is a johnboat for the Brunsw River. We used it twice during the snowstorm. We also have another, uh, modified swift water boat. The issue with that one that we currently have, it is a metal V-hole boat. So, when you're doing J turns to pick people off and drag them into the boat, it's almost impossible. So, if you flip it over, it'll take six people in swift order to get it up. Uh, these boats are lighter. Uh, two people, maybe three people it'll take, you can turn that thing back over. If y'all seen during uh uh the hurricane that hit the mountains um last year, Alen, uh New Hover flipped those over. They were able to rescue that boat out. So, same same setup as that. Um we're able to if we get in a bind in a swift order incident, we're able to flip that boat over. The current one we have will not do that. Um and currently only one boat, one motor. So, if a motor goes out while we're trying to make rescues, um we're we're out of water. So, uh, this gives us a chance to have three motors, two boats, uh, multiple rescues, quick deployment, and, uh, we go to one neighborhood, branch out and go.

Uh, last thing, Miss Carter, just recall that they shot down your proposal to update the flood maps, which would make these swiftwater rescues a lot more likely. And mayor, you I I I hear you, but we're

this is more or less just a followup to what's already been discussed. And I appreciate Mr. Hollis bringing up the advisory or or the compensation methods that he uses to determine the compensation ranges. Is is there any reason why you can't post that on the town of Leland website so we have a record of who of what you're doing and how you're doing it? You said you were using some municipal site to figure out what the what the salary range should should be.

Yeah. So we we get some salary study information from the that uh that they release. Uh we don't own that information. Um we're we're essentially able to look at it, but we can't pub publish it. So

I took a little different tact. I actually subscribed to salary.com and just ran my own analysis. Now it's probably not nearly as suitable as the one that you're using. But just choosing one of your small departments like HR, which has an average compensation of about $93,000. And if you just divide by the four people in HR, you come out, I'm I'm sorry, um which has a salary of $374,000. If you just divide by four people, it comes out to $93,000. Salary.com for Wilmington has a generalist HR level two person with a salary range of 66,000 for the 25th percentile and 82,000 for the 75th percentile. Um the question is our HR comp is 114% greater than that 75th percentile. So how are we ranking the four people in the HR? Are they all managers? Are they all senior supervisors? Or how how are we der how are we deriving their compensation band? So again we look at salary surveys based on the position. So uh in that department HR department we have uh various level employees between those four.

What are the levels that you have? We have director we have a manager uh we have a benefits uh coordinator HRS and benefits coordinator and a HR specialist. So we have two Indian chiefs and two doers.

No, we have we have a director and then we have which is a worker as well. Uh and uh we have a manager who's responsible for certain aspects of HR. We have uh the coordinators who who's responsible for other aspects and then we have specialists who's responsible for even other things. So it's divided up the the amount of work there. Okay, that's its crazy. If it helps any, some of the older surveys from a couple of years ago are available online. I just checked from the North Carolina League of Municipality. The one the current one is behind a wall that you guys are using,

but but there are some available online and I think that'll give you what you're looking for to compare apples to apples and see that we're in a range that's not outrageous for municipalities in North Carolina. curious why we have to be so topheavy where well I'm not sure about the topheaviness but if you're wondering about the salary bands themselves by do well that's directly related to the position

by do categories and it'll tell you by towns so this is you you can kind of get really into the the weeds if you want um you'll see what types of folks they have at those other towns as I told you I use as a comparison just to make sure kind of a sanity check thing as well as give you an idea of what the ranges were a couple of years ago and And you can throw in inflation and towns have uh directors, managers, and coordinators in a four-person department as well. And some of them do. Do we know which towns they are? Not off the top of my head, but I can probably get that for you if you want to shoot me an email.

Yeah, I'll go ahead and do that. We we also publish the the pay scale for all positions that's approved each year by the council and those pay scales are based on the uh salary surveys that were available to us. We asked how much was spent on travel expenses for the past three years and how much do you project to spend for the next five years? But that's okay. I'm going on to my next question. Several of the people before have talked about salaries and benefits. During the great 2024 70% tax increase crisis, the biggest area, the biggest bone of contention was the salaries. Um, which also included Mr. Hollis's salary. People were up in arms and they had a lot of questions about those salaries. So, when I went online to look at the budget to u prepare to ask some questions tonight, I wanted to find the salaries. I couldn't find them anywhere. So I don't know where these other fellas found that information. I wanted to ask you where is that information on salaries, the salaries that are part of this year's budget because salaries are the and benefits. Salaries and benefits are the lion's share of the budget. And yet I couldn't find it on the website anywhere. So I wanted to know where is that? Where is it? And have the council members seen it? Why can't the public see it? required to budget by department. We break it down further than that to do general ledger count and then the templates to justify those. If you look at the balanced budget presentation,

this is a breakdown by department of each general ledger account. Where is that? I didn't see where you clicked on that. I looked under those templates. It's not on the templates. So, supplemental information. And again, this is all just information that's come out. But if you click on the here on February 19th when we discussed it. So here's the salaries for each department, the year to date, the budget. To read it. I didn't want to remember a discussion. I wanted to read it.

All right, let's stay in control. in this in this presentation is the current year's budget, the year-to-date amount as of that date, and then the proposed and then the percent increase and then the dollar percent increase. So, that's this presentation looking at next year. Okay. So, that's located scroll that up. That's located under um get down so low. That's located under proposed balance budget presentation.

Okay. Um, just to make a note if for the future if there could be a way to make it a little easier for the public to be able to find it because that was not I couldn't find that. I didn't didn't know to find it there. I was looking under those templates. Our whole website is being redone so hopefully it'll be much easier to use. the report.

I have a request for justification for two two line items. Um, and why do we need to spend $1,000 on online subscriptions? So $5,000 recruitment that's for advertising for jobs. So where where are we advertising?

So we advertise in a variety of places depend on what the job is. Uh so um in general uh a lot of jobs are posted on Indeed uh that you know but there's no cost to that. We we post on the league. If we're hiring for an engineer, we'll post on um the engineering uh the engineering association websites. No cost. No, there is cost associated with those. Um it just depends on what the position is and where we're trying to hire. Uh,

with so many free online advertising services available, $5,000 seems like a lot of money. How much have we spent? And it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to spend that much, but be being show they've got the money in order. Okay. And why do we need to spend $1,000 on online newspaper subscriptions? So, I was just going to point out just as an example, uh, we were hiring for a planner. We posted on the APA website. It's $360 to post there. So, there is an expense with posting for particular jobs that we're targeting.

Okay. So, the uh the subscriptions for the news outlets, is that what you're referring to? Right. I mean, so many of us I mean, you probably have your own subscription at home to the Wingston Star News, I would imagine. Why Why are we paying $1,000 for these things? So, is that where the public notices are put?

Probably the same reason we pay for it at home. If take for Star News for instance, you can view a couple of uh articles uh each month, I believe it is, but once you reach two or three, they block you out. So then they've got this firewall there. So to be able to read the news, you've got to have that subscription. And so that's what we're paying for is to be able to see that and read those articles. Okay. A lot of times those articles are about town business and uh sometimes there's a need for us to to read those and perhaps correct them. My name is Gary Pile. This is the third meeting that I've sat through where we talked about adding two staff to pick up trash. And without any knowledge of salaries that we're talking about, but based on everything we've talked about tonight, I'm figuring with labor burden and the cost of their salaries, we're looking at well over $100,000 a year, by the time you put uniforms on them, two guys going to need a supervisor, then you're going to need a truck, and it's just going to get out of hand. So basically looking at a five-year range for these guys, we're probably looking at well over a million dollars. Has there been any thought to subcontracting this out? Because the advantage of subcontracting it out is when they don't perform, you can get rid of them. When they're government employees, I'll die before we get rid of somebody. So that's a big advantage right there. And if we don't need them, we can terminate them. But no, we're going to add two staff, which adds to the percentage that

we're going to add coming from the state, retirement, 401k. I'm not going to go through it all, but we can see this is a big money for two guys picking up trash. And my point is they better be picking up trash 40 hours a week, rain or shine. Yeah. Yes, sir. So there the the cost uh to do that to hire these two individuals is not just picking up trash. They are going to be picking up trash, but there there's also other duties that we'll have them doing as well with the town.

So there's currently two grounds supervisors and then they have a crew. So, this is adding one position to each crew. It's not just for trash pickup. It's also for um Founders Park. We now have to staff the weekends and holidays now that the splash pad will be open and that the bathroom facilities are open over there. So, they won't need a supervisor or a truck. It's and it's not going to be we're going to hire these two people and they're going to go pick up trash. It's increasing the size of those two crews so that they can do more together. So, that one person won't be picking up trash all the time. it's that crew will go pick up trash or that crew will be maintaining a park um or or so we're just adding to one person to each crew in order to add the service of trash but then also to upkeep Founders Park. I apologize if I didn't mention that that that was the split duties. I think I had felt repetitive because I had said that in a past meeting.

With all due respect, one of us is missing the point. I'm trying to show how much money we're talking about for two more staff that we may or may not need that we may or may not be able to justify. Oh, we certainly trash. We certainly need them if if not trash for Founders Park. Again, this is now a 7 day a week operation now that we have the park back open, the bathroom facilities, and what will be the splash pad. So, we have to check the water on that splash pad twice a day um 7 days a week, not just Monday through Friday. So, the it's a split role where they will be upkeeping Founders Park and then we're adding the service of trash pickup. So, is that worth $250,000 a year?

Well, that that's a good question for council because council has asked us to to put this service into place to help beautify the town. Mr. pile. Um I' I've received a number of not just um emails, but phone calls from people complaining about trash.

Um as well as the the infamous little signs that pe at least one resident should be thrilled a year um because he has gotten me probably at least once or twice a month because he sees the signs on 17 and wants to know why they're not being removed in a timely manner. So, this is something that has been going on for a few years and that I know that I've forwarded those to the staff and other council members and ask if there's something we can be done. Having other residents ask for that kind of pickup and then having to man and staff and make sure that our new bathroom facilities and our park are safe over the weekend kind of justifies those two additional people on the cruise that they were talking about. But this is something that other residents of Leland have asked about. So,

I've lived here from 2018. The trash is outrageous. I think we ought to look at figuring out how to get people that are throwing trash out the window. Couldn't disagree. I couldn't agree with you more. I absolutely couldn't agree with you more. And I've been out there with a little uh reacher picking up trash on putting my life in my hands with a vest and the whole deal. So, I I still question if it's not better subcontracted than the staff. This gentleman makes a really good point. I mean, we we look to hire two people and he talked about how much their salary, their benefits, and everything else is going to cost the town and and we we all know that once you hire somebody, we're we're not going to get rid of them. They're yours.

So, so at what point did we decide it was better to hire two full-time employees versus hiring subcontractors to come in and do the same work? I think we could have found contractors to it at a substantially less amount of money. Mr. Vader,

good evening. Uh, currently the town Leland owns approximately 102 miles of rightway. Okay. Within those rightaways, of course, our neighborhood streets, collector roads, thorough affairs. Where does the majority of the trash come from? Mostly on the highway NC DOT roads, Highway 17, 74,76. All right. The town of Leland does not own those rightaways, but in conjunction, NC DOT asked, we asked if we could pick up trash on those rightways because we get calls almost weekly. Pick up the trash in the town. Pick up the trash in the town. We don't own it, okay? But we use our staff to do that because we take pride in our town. So, we reached out to NC DOT and said, "We want to pick up the trash. Will you let us do it?" And they said, "Yes."

Okay. Of course. Of course they'll let you do it. I mean, that's if you ask you can pick up trash in my yard, I'll say, "Yeah." You know, currently NC DOT hires a subcontractor. Yeah, they do. Right. Four or five times a year. Is that enough? Once a week? Not hard. It doesn't work. We cannot be. But that's the point. If NC DOT isn't hiring full-time employees to come in and pick up trash, why is the town of Leland hiring full-time employees? That's my whole gentleman's point. Why wouldn't we do contractors,

you know, retirement, 401k, medical insurance that we can't control? It's just, you know, it's an endless pot of money and it gets worse and worse and worse. So it look projects it out 10 years. It'll scare the hell out of everybody in this room. Yeah, we agree. But we don't like trash in our rideways. I don't like it either, sir. To do something

Yeah. So we looked at hiring a contractor to do that, but the contractor is essentially a full it's going to be a full-time job. It's not going to be pick it up once a month or whatever. is picking it up every day, all day throughout the entire town. But not to interrupt you, the last three meetings, that's what we've talked about. Two staff to pick up trash and only pick up trash. That's the way it was presented. Sure.

Now they're working at the park. They're doing other things. They may be working at HR for Idaho. There was only four guys there. So it just seems if you want full-time people to pick up trash at a reasonable cost, I would think at least explore subcontract for what they do the three or four times a year that they do it. Uh and this is a significant cost to pick up the trash just on the main roads. We're talking about picking up trash on a lot of different roads. So the adding the capacity to the town to have two additional staff members and then they can be deployed through the crews to do that u it's a it's an ex expensive endeavor and it's a big endeavor to do that

and and as you know when you have a contractor in the construction business so as I could write that scope right but as an employee they have more more of a um latitude because they're under the um the um we can get that amount because we we have had it from the NCDO2. We can get that amount and how much it would be to do that continually. I I just don't have that number. Okay. I just all I wanted is somebody to explore the concept. Right. And just so you know, it's not hard to fire anybody in North Carolina. Yeah. Anywhere.

Yeah. So do um if you call them and complain about the trash, they'll tell you to get one of your civic organizations to go out and pick up the trash. I'd like to call that resequence the lights on 17th, but we'll worry about that. David address that. Madame Mayor, did we ever look at the possibility of sharing that expense with our friends in Belleville? Because for example that area on 17 has frontage space that and I I know we've all talked with Mayor Bost about the about the need for that to that trash to be reduced.

We've not had any meetings uh with him since Mayor Allen passed away. But before Mayor Allen passed away, it was a discussion between the two towns on what we could do together. Yeah. Thank you, Gary. Yes, sir. Could would it be possible for us to to have that conversation with them and see if they'd be willing to sharing any any of those expenses? Absolutely. Staff has hasn't done that. We haven't reached out to them. Okay. Maybe we maybe we should talk about that and explore. I'll work with Chuck on that.

Uh before I get to my question, I actually want to state make a statement. I have called DOT myself, have had them come out within a week and pick up construction material in a bed off the side of the road. So, it's not beyond someone to be able to do that and get DOT out there to do it. You just have to know who to call because if you call the tree a DOT, the engineers, there's about 50 people on that list and you have to get the one right person. Well, I was able to do that. Uh my question is regarding maintenance. Um I and my family have actually worked in landscaping uh for about 20 years. So I know how much things cost. And looking at the landscaping and the grounds to upkeep Westgate Park for mulch and putting mulch in Founders Park, could I have an explanation for that? because it doesn't seem like that is something that we need in our budget. And when it comes to seeding sod, you'll have to keep reeding. Um I'm not sure that that is a good use of money of taxpayer money. Um one of the line items for this year was $11,000. Could I get an explanation for that? Why is that needed? Is that something that we could cut from the budget? I understand mulch is expensive, but we can use straw and other things out there that are least expensive. And you don't need to use probably what it states here is a a mix of bedding plants and mulch for $13,000 in Founders Park.

And that park has not been maintained and had beautiful trees out there. So, I'm really not sure why there's a need for all that. Can you introduce yourself for us? I'm sorry. I'm Lyn Veter, public works director. Uh, currently we mulch all three fire stations and we mulch we mulch town hall. We we're going to mulch Founders Park and then we mulch also our sign. Um,

that's not included in this line item. What it says is founders park bedding plants and mulch is going to cost $13,000. I think that's a bit excessive for a yearly budget seeing as how the tr the the plants that are over there are mature trees and that the shade itself lends itself for coverage. Straw can be used as bedding. It's a lot cheaper than mulch. It doesn't wash away. It's more eco-friendly and soding just seems a bit waste.

Yes, ma'am. We we do mulch over at Founders Park and of course it just came online uh recently and we're going to have flower beds and of course the uh restrooms around the uh amphitheater. There'll be mulch beds and of course we have a couple other areas also. So, which we do that twice a year, but uh we we think it's more attractive for a park, brand new park. We think the mulch is much more attractive than pine straw, but of course, you could use pine straw, which is lesser and doesn't

mulch floats away and it doesn't tend to lend itself for long-term uh sustainability, it would be better to use the pine straw. So, that would be my suggestion. And as far as sod, I I do believe that that will not hold in that ground, especially if you don't have the pH. The pH around here for Sandy Loom soil is very acidic and it won't hold. It'll just be something that you'll spend money on for $13,000. Thank you. Lim, while you're there, um we don't pay retail for mulch, do we? We mulch our we make our own mulch or or both. We don't we do not make our own mulch. We do purchase the mulch and of course we get three quotes for mulch.

We have talked about it. Do we have the equipment that is necessary to No sir. Okay.

Question because you you are reopening Founders Park because that is twice what we did last year when Founders Park was still under construction. Well, that that's not just for Founders Park. That line item that's m That's not for Founders Park only. This says mulch. It says plantings beds and Founders Park. It's for all of the beds that we have throughout the entire town. So, it's the mulch that we're using everywhere.

David, can we see it on the see exactly which one you're referred to? and second page there. That's

Yeah. So that's townwide. So it's plantings, beds, comma, Founders Park. So it's all those areas that we have. David, is it poss what's what's preventing us from being able to mulch trees that fall on town property or is that out of the question? Got to have the machine equipment to do that. And and mulch is not just shredded u material. There's, you know, there's more to that than just that.

Ready now. Okay. Okay. Um I had a question about the money that is budgeted for repaving. I didn't make a note of the exact amount, so I don't have that in front of me, but um we've heard over and over that there are number of streets in the town of Leland that are not paved at all.

There's very few. I would love to know where those streets are and I would like to know if any part of that money would be used to pave those streets and if not why. I would think I'm going to tell you that I grew up on a dirt road. So I know what it means to grow up on a dirt road. It means you're nothing and nobody. And I think every one of our citizens is somebody. And I would like to see every street in this town paved. And I I believe and I know many other citizens agree with me that we should not spend one penny on repaving anything until all the streets in this town are paved.

Can can you tell us what road you're referring to? No, I don't. But the mayor can she knows what they are. Well, not every road is a town road. So the private road there No, no, I'm talking not every road in the town of L in Leland is a town road. North Carolina, you have private roads, municipal roads, state roads, and federal roads. And so, if folks don't want their private road paved, then there's nothing. It's private. It's just like going on someone's property and deciding that you're going to do imminent domain and pave their road for them. So, there there I'm sure Mr.

What you're saying, let me May I So, I'm sure Mr. Hollis can go and explain the process, but for someone to bring their road into the town so it becomes an official town road, there's a process. So, so I think right now there's like three or four.

There are three town own roads that are dirt. We have a project right now to pave those pro those three roads. They are in the engineering phase. There are many there may be many roads in the town that are that are unpaved, but those are private roads. So, we would have no authority to go pave a private road. The three roads that are unpaved right here, here's the project update for that. We were we received $3 million in appropriations for this project. So, this is the timeline that we're looking at to be able to pave those roads. And a lot of the the time delay in that is designing the storm water for those roads.

Are you able to tell me the name of those three? It's three. Did you say it's um it's it's goes. It's Graham, Appleton, John Sneed, and Breeman. I apologize. So Graham and Appleton are really one project because they're because they're together. That's over off of Village Road. Uh John Sneed is off of Old Fatville Road here and Breeman is off of Landell. It's on Landell Road that people think is in the town and they think we should pave them, but they're not in the town. They're just in the county and county don't do roads.

Clearly, I'm only talking about any roads or streets that are in our town owned by our town, not private roads or anything like that. I'm very happy to see this because when I had heard that there were unpaved streets in our town, I was absolutely horrified and I've been trying for two years to find out where they were and what the story was on that. So, um what did it looks like are we hoping to have something start this year? Is that

Yeah. So, the it's through going through the process of design right now. Uh we're working on the the storm order phase of that. So the design should be completed here in the summer and permitting finalized in the fall. That's great to hear. I will get that information out to people. Thank you for telling me all that. Thank you. And just a follow-up question. Am I right that it's much easier for us to get grants to pave unpaved road? uh the funding that we received through the PAL bill uh and through the motor vehicle tax is used primarily for p repaving existing roads.

Okay. So if a road is unpaved, it might be a wiser strategy for us to obtain a grant for that. Yes, sir. In this case, it was appropriation from the federal government for this. Uh and because they were unpaved roads, that's what sparked the interest there. Representative Brower was able to help us. And and any roads that we pave under grant or otherwise, the ones that you're referring to, those are going to immediately go into our 5% or um annual repaving of 5% of the roads, the 20-year project that we have. Is that right?

Yeah. So, these roads are already town roads, but they're dirt roads or gravel roads. And so when we bring them up to standard, they would then be part of that program that we've put forward. P is paving the greatest expense or is the waste or is the storm water runoff the greatest expense? Uh it it depends on each project. Uh there's a big expense with both of those shared with us. When were those annexed in the Leland? 1989. No. Uh 2000.

Breeman Lane was 2001, I believe. Uh John Sneed is part of um kind of original Leland. Graham Drive and Appleton was uh the second annexation. I don't know when that second annexation occurred. In the 90s, right before Walder became mayor. So that was about 2005. It's 2026. Why are we just now getting around to paving these? Yeah, I don't know. But we are getting around to paving them. I don't know why they weren't paved long ago. Been working on this for 20 years or or are we just now starting to work on it? Because looking at your timeline, it just looked like we started fairly recently

in the spring of 25. So I'm just wondering if they were annexed in 2020 or or even before 2000 what were we doing for the prior 20 years and why didn't we

basically until they started having problems Frank they didn't they didn't want that no one go and doing anything to their roads because they didn't want people driving down them after so many years of u having to pulling dirt and all they come and ask the town to help and we started graveling the I I know I had just joined council when u we met with Representative Rouseer. Part of it I think was cost and trying to secure the funding and uh Representative Rouseer was able to get appropriation added to uh one of the federal budgets to help us assist us with the design and some of the implementation that you see here. But even that process for him took a couple of years. Madame Mayor, do we have any other roads other than the ones that we've seen here that are town roads that are still unpaved?

I don't think so. I think those I think he cut he named them all.

So So Mr. Pendleton, you bring up a good point. You know, as we've uh grown as a town, we've also grown with resources to be able to do different things. Um when I started back years ago, the town didn't have any funding to do to do anything. they didn't have enough funding to to pave the roads that they had, much less go out and try to pave unpaved roads. So, we've come a long way to get there. I know that with this funding, uh, we've been working on that funding from the federal government for years now to be able to get to the point that we could do this project. At the risk of kicking a hornets's nest once again, I need to better understand why we can't implement the basic underpinnings of zerobased budgeting and explain somewhere on our website the explanations and justifications for our budget. Just for my own edification, I'm not sure why we can't do that. we can put as much information as needed out uh at council's direction. So, if they want us to start counting everything along, we can do that and and justify that. Um I mean, if you go through these items here, uh

Mr. Hollis, those are just numbers on a page. That's not zerobased budgeting. Zerobased budgeting is saying I don't have my glasses on so I can't see what that says, but there's a line item with an with a description and a dollar amount. Why do you have that dollar amount associated with that description? So, the second one is new position police officer support licensing for $2,500.

Yes. The question is why do we have why do we need a a police officer for support and licensing? Um what is that going to do for us? $2,800. Okay. So justify explain it justify it. Move on. You can you could do that in a separate section within Thank you.

Yeah. So let's just take a few items here and look at these. So agenda, minutes, video management. So that that's a software that we currently have that we use to create uh our agendas, manage our meetings here. Uh all of council has access to that. Uh what justification would you want us to produce? Okay. Well, you just said it. Okay. So the explanation is it's a piece of software that manages the agenda and the m and the minutes minutes and video conferencing of our meetings.

The justification is is that we do this twice a month. You have an agenda meeting and then you have a council meeting. That's the justification. So it's pretty easy for that one. But the others are not Lexus Nexus. Okay. I know you have a lawyer and I know he wants Lexus Nexus for sure. Uh but how often does the lawyer use the the Lexus Nexus? Okay. How often does he really need Lexus Nexus or can he go to the library, get out a subscription at the library and get Lexus Nexus if he's using it once a month? Now, I know Lexus Nex Nexus because I've used it is pretty damn expensive. Okay,

this is the cost of Lexus Nexus for the year. Um, and and so I'm going to throw this back to council uh to uh talk about these items because giving a description for what something is isn't necessarily what you're looking for. I don't think when you say justify something because these are no, there's an explanation and a justification. They're two separate and distinct things. The explanation is we have a town lawyer. He needs a research facility. Lexus Nexus is his research facility.

Okay. Town lawyer, research facility. Justification. You can't expect the lawyer to know what the rules and regs and ruling and rulings are without a research facility. Okay, there you go. It's two lines. I don't understand why you're fighting this. I'm not fighting it at all. I think it's fairly apparent that some of these items are why what they are and what we need them for. So, I don't I don't know.

Just disclose it. It could be a two-line explanation and description on justification. That's all. These are very very easy things simply because I've used these things. Sure. Okay. Um, but for things that I have not used, I have not memorized your template. So that I'm sure that there are a ton of things in there that that I know nothing about that I would need to understand better. And I'm sure most of the folks in here would need to understand better. Why? Why do we have this? And who is it being used for?

I mean, how difficult could that be? You told me you're going through that exercise. Anyhow, document the exercise that you're going through. So, we certainly can give more description of these items if that's what council wants us to do because no, that's what zerobased budgeting wants you to do. No, zerobased budgeting is do we need this item and how much does it cost?

Go online. There are dozens of services out there that describe zerobased budgeting. Dozens. Okay? Read what it says. The basic premise is that you explain and justify every line item. That's the basic premise. And and and I I think we do that for council. I think we have told council everything about this entire budget uh and justify that.

Okay. So, you want us to do this all the time for every budgeting season. Take two hours out of out of your day and out of the council's day because you don't want to make a notation somewhere on the town's website. I'm not saying I don't want to do a notation. I'm not saying anything like that. I'm saying that these things are apparent what they're being used for. No, they're not. I know what Lexus Nexus is because I've used it for many, many, many years. Okay. But I could tell you that probably 90% of the folks in here have not used Lexus Nexus.

David, this is pretty much what what we talked about when we sat in the the long budget meeting. And I I'd suggested putting a drop-own box under each one of these so people would understand. Now there's to this gentleman's point, there's an inherent difference between an explanation and a justification. An explanation aims to make something understandable without necessarily evaluating as it is good or bad. A justification seeks to demonstrate that the action was right or necessary. Um, Councilman Pendleton, could you pick an item and just give us give us an example? Well, I just told you about Lexus Nexus.

Okay. And the justification was that two letters. Well, you can't have a town lawyer without giving him a research facility. Correct. Okay. That would be a waste of our money. Okay. If we hire a lawyer and don't give him a opportunity to do his job. I understand what you're saying that you want a justification for every single line item. Now based budgeting does okay based budgeting which there are various there are a few variations of it I think we can both agree but it does yeah there are actually there are a couple of different techniques but what the common factor of it is that it does require an explanation it does require a justification as a premise

okay so but there are different ways a few different slants on it as you say now um can we do a drop down menu. We did at least when Mr. Pendleton and I were together, we did discuss that it would be labor intensive, but we can certainly Well, you got IT folks here who could figure that out. I'm not an IT person. I know nothing about how to do this.

Understood. But the explanation that we got that evening was that there's going to be some new software. I believe we're we're transitioning. What was it, Carly? Please refresh my memory. So what we went back and did after that meeting was added the descriptions into this. So it I I I hear what you're saying that justification is different than explaining what something is. But when we went to go through this and try to actually sit and justify it, a lot of it is very easy to understand what it is. So it would felt repetitive. So if you look at this it it would be I mean this document is already very lengthy already above what's required by state statute but to sit and justify why we need financial management software or why we need budget software or why we need fleet tracking software that that is we are explaining to the council what we need in order to provide the services that they've requested. when we explain to them what it is, it's their decision on whether they want us to move forward or not. So, in these individual meetings, we go through every line item, I'm sorry, answer the questions on what each thing is, explain what we're using it for, talk about all of that, and then they come back together as a group and tell us if they don't want us to spend money on one of those things. in the council manager form of government. Again, it's it's the budget officer's job to provide just department summaries. We have gone way further than that with this and then to go back and have different drop downs for all of these items. I I don't know how that we would do that effectively. It feels like if you go to any municipality in Brunswick County, no one is giving you this. No one is giving you GL accounts. So, we're we're three levels into this now, and it it feels like the more that we give out, it it's it's never going to be enough. So, like

So, Carly, are are you saying that the constituency should not know why? Should should not know the why?

Absolutely not. What I'm saying is I think that this forum is used for you to ask the why on the couple of things that you may not understand or or the budget question or the website, but majority of these things it is it is labeled very clear what the item is and and we went back after our individual meetings and added more detail to try to just give as much information as possible. So the dollar amounts are majority quotes from our vendors, especially when we're talking about IT software, but we really went through and put a very detailed item on what all of these softwares are because it was it was a little confusing. If you see clear view AI image detection, you might not know what that is. So we went back and added facial um recognition tracking. So

the reason I'm having a problem with this is because what I what I had to do in a Fortune 500 setting is very very different than what you're doing here. I had to write write up a complete explanation of every person in my tax department. every person what what they did, when they did it, why they did it, and justify the position through an explanation, how that feeds into the corporation, and then how that feeds into the 5,000 tax returns I I had to file during the course of the year. And then we hired Challenger Gray and Christmas to do the salaries. Okay? So, I had no input into what someone was going to pay. Challenger Gray and Christmas said this is what you're gonna pay them.

Um so my my experience with budgeting apparently is

yeah so private sector and public sector are very different. So the the public sector is required to budget by department project or fund. We choose to dep to budget by department. We then break out and give the detail for all of those general ledger accounts. A couple years ago, we started breaking out and giving these templates which are every line item in our budget. When we're talking about salaries, maybe we weren't clear when we explained that a little bit, but so we had a company that came in and gave us the compensation plan. And so I think that's approved every between April, May or June every year. So every year council Oh, he said it was some sort of a government or government organization.

Yeah. So in order to build that compensation plan, we use data from the North Carolina League of Municipalities. So what that survey result is is it tells you for anyone that filled out the survey in our population range and it will say what their minimum, what their maximum, and what the actual salary is, and then the number of positions. So we weigh those with our plan and make sure that they're comparable to other municipalities that are our size. So I feel like we we strayed a little bit from this, but then there is a plan. So we're we're talking about that minimum salary pay grade and again that's on our website. And so if a police officer comes in, they might start at that minimum salary. If they then have 10 years of experience, they get one step into the pay grade for every year of experience to be able to move them into the pay grade. So we have a a detailed formula on how that that compensation is calculated and it came from a third party.

Okay.

As far as these justifications go, I again I I want the public to understand this budget. Like that's why we're doing this meeting when when I when we did go back and try to scroll through these things. We did add a significant amount of detail into these templates. I I appreciate that you don't need to memorize the templates. I'm not asking you to memorize the templates, sir. obviously, but if the the intent was that if you review them and you have a question about something that we're happy to answer it, but to and and in the future we can look to try to improve actually documenting the the justification. A lot of our justification again is internal conversations that are constantly happening. And so for me to sit down and write a couple notes or pages about why I need financial management software seems obvious or or redundant, but I can recognize

a couple pages you know, just like on Lexus Nexus, it's formally presenting it to the public. We we have a a whole lot of conversations year round about the budget. We are extremely conservative in our budget. We are extremely conservative in our spending. All of our purchasing requirements are all way below state and federal requirements. um would take with that is that my from my recollection if you add up all the expenses or budgets for boots it came out to about $100,000. It came out at $24,000. That's far from 100. I believe it's $16,000

minus the police public safety police and fire. Yeah, I believe it's $16,000 for boots. Um these are steel toe boots that we are supplying to our frontline workers. 24,000. It it it is a goal for us for our employees to be safe. I I think yes, we do provide boots for our frontline workers. We don't want them getting injured. We don't want a workers's compensation claim. We want them to be in good footwear where they while they're filling your boots and how long do the boots last and what grade of boots are you're buying and so on and so on and so on. So, they're they're allotted an allowance and then they it's dimminimous in the whole scheme of things and that's why I didn't even want to talk about it. But uh the

I think we can agree that there's a difference between Fortune 500 budgeting and governmental budgeting. There are different schools. There's that's why there's a difference between MBA. In the other case, you pretend to do it.

There's a difference between MBA and an MPA. And there I I would be happy to share with you an article from the government finance associations officers association on zerobased budgeting. federal government has um and other state governments have not exactly used the pure zerobased budgeting for a number of years for that reason. Um we unlike the federal government can't run um just run a budget. We have to have a balanced budget and so that creates some other issues which makes it more like zerobased budgeting. But of course there are some differences but right now this is what we have. Um, we can certainly look at perhaps figuring out a way to do better at justifying each line. If you have a question about a particular line, if you shoot me an email, I'll do some research and get get that with you or we can meet.

I understand exactly what you're saying and to to boil it down an explanation. It's just telling people what it is, what each one of these line item is. That's an explanation. A justification is why do we need it and is this the right amount that we're spending? Okay. So, when we look at each one of these items, I don't care what it is. Do we need this item and is this the right amount? That's the justification. Okay. Want to add? You want to add something?

I did want to. A lot of what we're paying for is software. Do we see any consolidation in that industry? For example, I saw that like planning was using AutoCAD. Um, and then I saw SketchUp somewhere else. I know they're very similar. I'm sure they may need both of them, but are we sure that we're not are not paying for the same thing twice in two different departments?

Yes. So, we've got different users for different softwares. Uh, engineering has AutoCAD. Uh SketchUp is in I think the parks and recck planning I'm sorry planning. Um so we look at all these softwares. We look at all of them. What who's using them? How many license we need? Do we need it at all? Are we using it? Um we go through all that.

There was a house bill 142 that was uh introduced. it did not pass that was um implementing zerobased budgeting for the state of North Carolina. So, it's House Bill 142. If you Google that, you can see it in the North Carolina budget and Tax Center. Um and it talks about a costly budget approach doesn't guarantee better outcomes for the public's money. The complexity of zerobased budgeting leads to higher costs that undermine supposed goals of efficiency. um zerobased budgeting developed in the 1970s as a tool to cut public funding was largely abandoned by the 1980s and more about House Bill 142. So, this is something that has been batted around quite a bit in state and local government and state and local government. Again, that's why you have MPAs versus MBAs. And so, you know, we can continue to to agree to disagree and um move forward, but for right now, um we can look as a I guess as a council and see if we can going forward find a way to implement this without it being overly burdensome and and timeconuming. Thank you, Bob. We will look at trying to do a little better job of what you are asking us to do.

All right. I have a quick trash comes out of the back of contractor's trucks as opposed I don't see people throwing their McDonald's bags out the window anymore. That was back in the 60s and 70s. So, I would urge our chief uh to do a enforcement. I'd like to know when the last time a ticket was written for a trash flying out of the back of a contractor vehicle. I'm going to guess it's been a long time, but that's not my question. My question is clearly 350,000 you said for a fleet maintenance uh facility. Is that what's in the budget? That's correct.

Okay. Was there a study done to see if it's more efficient to bring all fleet maintenance inhouse as opposed to subbing it all out? And if that study's out there, can I get a copy? There was. So, we don't have a formal study on that. No, sir. That's all I have. All right. Thank you. But David, how much are we paying to get cars washed every every month? Yeah. So, it's not just the wash, but it's also the the maintenance, the the oil change, the tire change, things like that that we could do in house minor uh repairs.

I don't have that number right off. Okay, my question is about the infrastructure. Um, going back to the projects, um, and thank you council for bringing that up. Uh, the roads that were unpaved. Um, however, there are roads that are paved that have not seen any updates for quite some time in the town. Um, Lee Drive was one of those uh roads, I believe. Uh, just last meeting, money was being allocated to help with the drainage on Lee Drive. Um, and there's other roads like Lee Drive that need major updates in drainage repair, but the money, if I recall, there wasn't enough uh from a budget standpoint, and a request was made for additional funding, but then the additional funding went to Brunswick Forest. Um, I have a problem with that since Lee Drive has been a part of the town of Leland for over 20 years. So, the the grant funds weren't redirected from Lee Drive. They were redirected from Old Fateville Road right up here. And the project was going to go from an original $1 million to about $4 million. And this is a DOT road. It's not a town of Leland road. So, when we asked the DOT to help fund the difference, they said no.

So, the town prioritized a townowned road um that was also on our CIP to to fix that was more aligned with the budget that we received the grant for.

Thank you for that. Is there anything being done for uh because I've looked on DOT and there's no projects projected in the local area uh that I could see. Um, and maybe they haven't updated their website, but that's where we go to look for updated projects within the area. Um, is there anything being done for Lee Drive and other roads like that within the town such as Lanville Road that needs to be widened? We've got large trucks going down a major road with our children who can't pull over on the side of the road when the traffic gets heavy or when the fire trucks, which are massive, come down. I've been pushed off the road myself.

So, we don't have a project for Lee Drive for any um improvement there. What what improvement are you

lacking? Um, we understand that a lot of the roads, especially in the new developments, and of course that's the developer and we aid that developer with the bonds, but there are a number of roads that don't have striping are more like cart roads. Um, roads of that developers have found that they can build on that are there in the town, but the roads that beside them also are being in disrepair. Uh but mainly the roads that we've seen in our town and around that are in the town that need major updating. Drainage for Lee Drive is one of those. Uh Lanval Road, which I do know was a county road, but and some of the developments are in Leland, uh is becoming almost impassable with major fire trucks coming down and dump trucks. road is a stateowned road and um I have been begging for years to have it widen just like it took years to get finally we're going to be getting a stoplight there at Village Road and uh Lambville Road because it's terrible with school school buses.

You would find those projects, Miss Blake, on the WPO the stip the state transportation. The DOT does not list the WNO projects. The WNPO. Last I looked for 10year scope, there was nothing projected in this area. Again, the state transportation improvement process program is on the WNO website. All of the NC DOT projects for all of our counties that are part of the WNPO are listed prioritized by the state. Remember I said that was a state and federal transportation dollars. So, they get a certain amount of money. They divvy it up by priority. Why has it taken 20 years for some of these projects to even be posted? Question.

Why are we giving money to developers before we're looking at our own people? Thank you. Question for for the WPO. They are a public entity. They have public comments and they meet the last Wednesday of the month at 3:00. Um I mentioned at the last town council meeting that there were residents there to speak on uh NC17, four of them, and they were passionate. Unfortunately, they were all four from Pender County and they had some of the same concerns that you've expressed and others have expressed here.

Uh, also, um, we are working on Baldwin Drive to go in stripe carbon gutter in there. So, that's that's one of the original streets. Drive really needs it because there it's just a dome. It's just a scooped out hole. there the other day. I don't recall. Okay. But I'll check it again. Boseman, if it was in the best interest of a town residents in Leland, why wouldn't we petition the state to take control of Lanville Road radio state road?

We petition the state to take control of that and Leland take that. I mean, didn't we do the same thing with the the former? You mean you want us to take control of it for financial reasons? We did the same thing with the former Kod road. It was NC DOT road, but the town of Leland took control of that road. So, how much did that road cost us and and repair work? And if we could do it for that road, then why wouldn't we do it for Lanville? Because that's a heavily traversed road and uh it connects two major thorough affairs.

We we could ask him. They probably would happily give it to us, but I'm not sure. We We probably need to do a really serious cost analysis of that before we jumped on that. I'm just saying it's it's not it's not unprecedented and we already did it once. We did it with Kod Road because it benefited a certain segment of people and now this would benefit the residents of Leland. Well, actually, Lanville runs in and out of Leland on Lan Landville Road runs in and out of Leland. Even the part that's right behind Waterford and Magnolia Greens. Yep. Holly is not in the town of Leland.

There's a there's a few other little town road or town jurisdiction on Lanville Road. The road runs in and out of you. Okay. Before I ask my next question, I Mr. Hollis stated that um they had justified each line item for the council. I had a question for Councilman Pendleton. I wanted to know if every line item was justified to you to your satisfaction.

It was explained and then they did a very nice job of explaining each line items and for a long meeting. We we Veronica and I sat through and got a good explanation on each one of them. We did not get a justification in terms of why we needed that expense. Is this the right amount and how much have been spent in prior years. Thank you.

Thank you. Um, my question is during the great 2024 70% t tax increase crisis, I attended the budget Q&A and one of the citizens attending asked the question, what is the total amount of debt that the town has? Um, Miss Hag said that she needed to go and check her laptop. She went and got that and then came back and put something up on the screen. But what she put up was the amount of debt service for that year, not the total amount of debt the town has. And that's still a question I have. What is the total amount of debt that we owe? I believe I went over this at the January meeting under our foundational items. So, the debt can be found both in our audits, but I put it here. Oh, I'm sorry. I think I passed it.

So, here's our outstanding debt. And this is on the budget website. Can you just say Oh, it's 26 almost 27. Okay, let me write that down. 26 989. It's also a separate tab. You you mentioned, Miss Florian, that you hadn't really um gone into the tabs on supplemental information. There's a line there that says um debt for 2627. That's just the budget amount. That's not the outstanding that she was requesting. Okay.

I have one last question. And before I ask that, I would like to observe that um speaking of Lee Drive and other towns that um streets that are owned by the town of Leland within the town, not ones that are out of the town or private ones. I'm thinking that the $8 million that we gave to the developers of Jackie's Creek to build a street on their property might have gone a long way towards um taking care of that project. Also, the money we borrowed to expand on this building probably would have helped out a lot. But my last question is this. So, the finance department has proposed to lower our tax rate by 2 cents. In the two years between 2023 and 2025, property taxes increased dramatically by roughly about 50%. So, that small incre small decrease is welcome. Each penny of the property tax rate equals $720,000 of expenses. Do you feel that within this current budget you're proposing that there could be found $720,000 of waste or excess that could be eliminated from this budget and that could lower the tax rate by another penny or two? Various people have asked questions about $13,000 here, $5,000 there, and other amounts. Do you feel that there could be found $720,000 that could be eliminated that could reduce the tax rate by another penny?

That's really a question for council. I mean, if they want the tax rate to be lower, then we can go back and look at things and determine what services could be uh reduced to that amount. There's no service I want to do away with

there. There's no service I want to do away with and we need a reserve. We unfortunately live in a time when we live in climate change. And um I I know that's a nasty word for some people, but if you realize that we were just reimbursed for Florence a couple of years ago, we pay upfront. Thank God we haven't had backto-back storms, but we've seen what has happened to our neighbors in the West. There were towns that did not have a reserve, that were not prepared, and they are still living with the horrors of trying to get back to quote unquote some resemblance of normal. We don't want to have that happen. It sounds alarmist, but I think it's just a realist approach.

Yeah. Um, our friends up in the Asheville area every week is sending people to Washington to try to get more help so they can get back up and going. which uh which brings me to, you know, First Baptist Church has sent an emissions team the 25th through the 28th to Barnersville to help out. So, all right. Anybody else got any questions?

I'm kind of confused by the statement that uh Mr. Hollis just made. He said if that's the direction of council, we'll be happy to go back and look at it. But if we use zerobased budgeting, then we've already got the lowest cost possible in each one of these line items. They've already justified them internally. And we need every one of those things. So how could even at the direction of the council, even if we told him to lower it by another penny on the property taxes, something would have to go. Yeah. So what I It seems a little bit confusing. We would have to what I said was if council directs us to do that I'll go we can go back and look at it and tell you what services we would have to reduce.

Okay council anybody else got anything okay hearing none. Do we have a motion to adjurnn to second for the motion? Any opposed? Motion carries.