Town Council - Regular Meeting

like to welcome everybody out to the department head meeting. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All council over agenda. Do I have anything that needs to be changed? If not, do I have a motion to approve the draft agenda? I make a motion to approve the J draft agenda. Second. Second. All right. Any discussion? All in favor? I I

Does any member of council have a conflict interest or appearance of a c conflict of interest in regards to any items on the agenda? If so, please state at this time. Sean, I do not. Christie? No. Katie? No. Billy? Nope. All right. Public comments is open if anybody has any on that. Yes, sir. Come on up. Is this one up? Tell you what, give him that mic right there and just clip it on there. It should work. Hold. You can just hold it, sir. Yeah, go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Tony Marino, 802 Riverside Drive. As the council begins the process of reviewing the proposals for the 2627 budget items from the various departments, I hope that this body will continue the actions that has demonstrated these first few months in office and scrutinize a request on the basis of mustave versus nice to have. This council is likely aware that the previous 2526 budget contained over a million dollars in capital expenditures benefiting various departments. These expenditures contributed to a 15% increase in year-over-year spending from the previous fiscal year. Your responsibility to fiscal constraint and bringing relief to the citizens should be the new norm. Adopting some benchmarking between our community and neighboring communities may also be a benefit. The council should not view increased revenue growth as a green light to spend on discretionary items that may just be on a wish list.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. Anyone else on public comments? All right, we'll move on to our department head presentations. We'll be starting with building inspections. Mr. Carrie White, you had the floor, sir. Thank you, Mayor Town. Come on here. So, uh, what our department, uh, it's not like I'm on, but anyway, u, is a vehicle, uh, is what's on the, uh, in the PowerPoint here slide. Um, we that's mighty small, is it? Okay.

Can y'all read that or you guys got Okay. Okay. Sorry about I didn't realize the font was so small on there. Um this is our um vehicle the 20 uh the Ford Explorer the 19 uh which is uh obviously um out of fully depreciated and uh in our past we have currently uh once they fully depreciate which normally is around in our department is normally six to seven years uh we'll take it out of the uh take it out of the the fleet and uh actually uh being it has such low miles uh able to move it over to another department um without any being penalized uh being the uh vehicle was bought with uh permitting inspection money. So um I've got here in the uh staff report and I'll just kind of read it to you here. U staff is requesting to um approval to replace the fully depreciated 2019 Ford Explorer uh with a new uh 26 uh Ford Explorer SUV. uh that it will be fully funded uh from the actual building inspection uh department budget far as permitting fees uh revenue. Uh department continues to experience u stable permitting activity as you all know from our reports monthly reports. Uh and this uh revenue is obviously restricted to our department as we all know. Uh the current vehicle is obviously has reached its um its lifespan uh far and being fully depreciated. Um, we're requesting uh $38,800 and that is also uh to include the actual uh decals on the vehicle and also uh floor liners cuz we a little rough, you know, with on the inside there and most of them come with carpet now and not vinyl. Uh and the uh MSRP is 42 260.

I had actually put on the back sheet there. Um can't hardly see it. Sorry about that. But anyway, this is bought under state contract. Um, and that is our purchase price of $37,668 delivered uh to to the town. U, we um have always uh had Fords. Uh, you know, it's kind of, uh, you know, uh, I guess, uh, some people like Chevrolet, some people like Fords, but, uh, I've had both. And, uh, we've had great service out of, uh, out of the vehicles out of Ford since I've been here. Uh, we're looking at, uh, moving that vehicle uh, I I spoke with Mr. Clayar about moving it over uh, to the planning department because we do not have a vehicle there currently. Uh it's always uh that they've always used the town's administration uh vehicle. Uh but Amy has to use that vehicle and other folks that go out of town for schools and training. So I felt it was best uh last year uh we had moved one up to fire. I think we moved it up to fire and may or either public works or vice versa. And then the year before we moved one up to public works or fire, I can't remember. Sorry about that. But um so I felt the need probably to uh the vehicles in great shape and would probably serve uh uh that uh department well uh without having to uh go into the general fund to purchase a vehicle and u if you got any questions I'll certainly be more than happy to try to not asking for any positions obviously uh only got we'll just say two pages here but u we still got our position still funded of what's there so we're not asking for any any additional positions to be funded in our department.

Thank you. Um, and thanks for thinking about that, moving it over. And can you elaborate, Carrie, just for folks that may be watching how basically your department is self-sufficient? A lot of people may not realize that. Anyway, just elaborate a little bit on that. Yes, we uh we have a uh statue that was uh uh came in uh I can't remember the exact date back during co

and uh so basically was uh at that time when it came in effect uh we had to uh departments that were uh basically u together so to speak I can speak of planning and building inspections um we uh come to it that they needed to be uh divided uh separate budget uh with separate budgets and uh so and under the uh the statute basically that all permitting fees uh that is taken in is to be uh spent within a department for building inspections uh building inspection employees uh their vehicles uh whatever it takes to run a department. And so that's um that's why we uh basically uh we don't have to really dip into any of uh any other type of uh of tax revenue uh general fund to operate the department uh the department uh self-sufficient uh in in in that uh in that means.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions on the uh vehicle plans or No, I thank you for explaining about like I call it the enterprise system that all the money stay in your department. So, we're not using regular taxpayer dollars. If you built a house or you had add-on to your house, those monies are put in a fund and that's how you fund your whole department. And I like that we're using your old vehicle to go somewhere else. I think that's great. And I'm glad you got the liners cuz y'all were in and out with mud here. We are. Uh and we'll we'll even wash it for them when we send it over. I

I have a procedural question, Mr. Mayor. Go ahead. When we know that we like something like I think we're all hearing that we like Mr. White's um request. Would you like for us to say yes, this is good so that our finance director knows to keep those items. And then if we don't like something, somehow we've got to have communication. The way we've done in the past is just write your notes and then of course you know we can get together oneonone or whatever sort of decide and then it goes back that way if you got any questions for any of the departments you're able to go to them and work it out where everybody get their information instead of it being back and forth in here and then not have correct information. But I think this one is a no-brainer that we definitely

I think this one looks really good. I mean I I would suggest if there if there's a consensus so if there's a consensus that Carrie there's no other questions, then we let him know. If there's something that a department head presents to you that you have further questions on, just relay that back to them and then they can come back at the next budget meeting with your answers. Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you. This never asked period past since I've been here has never really asked for anything unless it was absolutely necessary, which is it showed that in the position that he's had a chance to get and he hasn't used that. So, I think he does very well with his budget and works for it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, we're good. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up will be event.

Hi everyone. No, it's not. So, in my department, um I'm I'm a a want department because um none of uh my events are things that are necessarily needed. There are things that we like to have in town. Um so, I'm looking for direction from you as to what you'd like to see to continue. Um what you would like to see to change. Right now, um my budget presentation doesn't include any sponsorships. Um, in the past we've always budgeted for everything knowing that we're going to be looking for sponsorships and then that money would just um not be spent or the sponsorships would go to the general fund and we can apply them as necessary to the events that they're sponsoring. So the first page I've just divided what comes out of the accommodations tax fund and what comes out of the general fund. Generally, all of the advertising and banners for all of the events, the bus service for Sunset at Sunset, the summer concert series and jazz in the Park would come out of accommodations fund and the general fund, um the holiday lights, any promotional items that we would offer, our annual calendars, all expenses for Sunset at Sunset other than the buses, the Greenwave Festival, and the uplighting of the trees in the park would all be coming out of the general fund That doesn't have to stay that way. It could certainly switch. That's just how it was last year. So, if you're looking back at last year's budget, you would see that.

So, I started with our largest event. Um, and this is Sunset at Sunset. Last year was on Saturday, October uh or was on Saturday, October 4th last year. It will be on Saturday, October 3rd. this year from 10:00 a.m. to 400 p.m. And what I've shown is what the actual costs were last year and what the request is this year. Um you'll see that I'm actually asking for less this year. And that is just um due to the fact that we're going to severely reduce the number of t-shirts that we purchase because we haven't had huge sales with those. So rather than having things like t-shirts sit around and having to find another avenue where we can sell those things, we'd rather just order fewer. And that would allow us to order instead of the five or 600 that we ordered, it would be about 150 that we would order and that would be including the people who were working and it would leave us about a 100red shirts to sell at the event. Um, no other changes. Um really the lights for the overnight security are something that we um always provide because it's such a large event. We like to have the vendors come and set up their spaces the day prior or at least drop off their items just because logistically having 100 plus vendors and bands and food trucks um come in and try to unload and get that all um taken care of and be ready to go at 10:00 a.m. Um even if we started at 6:00 a.m. we still wouldn't have enough time. And um so we like to try to get everyone in with their uh goods the day before and then we have a police um overnight and we have uh light towers that we rent um because it would really be the only time we'd use those and so we rent those each year.

Did you say that you have police presence there overnight? We do. Yes. So, I'm I stay until 6 PM on Friday and then I return at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday to relieve the police and I have police there from 6:00 p p.m. to 6:00 a.m. And there was a couple of additional things like the aquarium um for the ERC display and the grid wall for the ERC display that we wouldn't be um that we wouldn't be purchasing. And we did do a giveaway for treeboard last year, but it wasn't super popular. So I don't know that we need to do that again this year. So

with regard to the police, if I can add, we have tried to do a very early morning drop off with all of the vendors and it required probably at least four to six police officers to make that happen efficiently. It's much simpler to have them set up the day before uh and bring their product if it's able to be stored overnight. Have somebody there on usually overtime to make sure the product is secure. It's much more efficient to do it that way.

Sure. I'm glad that we have law enforcement out there to to watch over it since they're there and do we really need to have the lighting out there? If they're there in the front of the park, I don't think somebody's going to come from boat to get anything. No. But could that be something? I I don't know. I'm asking, do we need the lighting? Is that a security thing? I do. I And it's okay if we need it. I think we do most.

I know that we need it because when we're get there at 6:00 in the morning, it is dark until after 7. So, could we We have We usually get five and I would defer to Matt on this one as to whether we could reduce that number to three or four. Um, it would just be uh it would be a question that I'm not I'm not sure of because it's how they're positioned in the park. Okay. And also, if we do any additional uplighting on the trees, that would give more light. And I know when I've worked at a vendor before, I have the lights I hang at my booth to for lighting because of the early morning you're there. So, it would be great if we could somehow reduce that light. Sure. We can take a look at that for sure. Yeah. Um, I

Oh, go ahead. I see a lot of um fees in your proposal for your different events. Yes. That you have um parking attendance. Yes. Have we looked at any other option that we could utilize that maybe cut down on that? Because like for the sunset at sunset, it's $1,000 and we definitely need to have some crowd control with where to park, where not to park. Yes. But have we thought of an alternative to that that

it's something that um that the chief and I have been discussing and it's going to involve um conversations with all of the local businesses just because I think a lot of times we do it um to make sure that the local businesses are being taken care of and having someone who's always there for every market or every concert. They know those people. the people know how what spots they need to save, where people can park, and they know kind of the rules for each for each location. So, I do believe that the businesses like it, but there may be another way, and it's something that we're looking into um for next fiscal year just to see if at least for some of the events we could do something different. Super.

So,

I was going to add to that um at the end of her presentation because it just wasn't very loud. I was going to add to that at the end of her presentation because the other events are going to show parking attendance as well, but it's something that I'm already looking into because there are businesses that don't give us any parking at all. And to have somebody stationed at that location, I think we could replace it with a nice sandwich style board. You know, the the collapsible ones that tell people that there's no event parking. mention on the sign, if you park here, this is where you can pick up your car because it's going to get towed. I think that's pretty impactful. Um the businesses that such as Island Breeze, a sign's not going to work there because they won't allow us to park where the businesses are in front of the businesses, but they do allow us to park in the overflow. A sign's not going to accomplish that. Um I think we'd have to have a person there, but for the businesses that don't allow us parking, I think we can replace it with a sign. I have already talked to a couple of those businesses to get their feedback on it. Um, but I'm open for I guess the feelings of counsel before I get too far into this. But I think we can save a good amount of money. I think what was the amount that we spent last year in parking attendance? Over $20,000.

It was I think it was like 19,000. So for all of you, even if we can cut that number in half, um, you know, the the cost to buy the boards, the size and full color, they're probably We have the boards actually. Sorry. We have the boards that um from Sunset at Sunset that you can actually just peel back and we can put just get a poster which I can print on the plotter. So perfect. So it's like a three-foot foldable collapsible sandwich board. Yes. With plastic. And so yes, we could do that for this.

That would be a nice savings. Yeah. especially for the businesses that aren't able to offer the parking because there are some that we do have, you know, or some that like Dave's that are so close that we need to that might be one we'd want to consider um still staffing. Um but for places where they can't offer it, then then having the sandwich board, that would definitely alleviate as many um as much parking fees as we have. And we do have some of the businesses that allow us to park there. I know Island Breeze, the Holdens, Clarice Holden, allows us to park there for free, right? Yes.

And we should have her as an inind sponsor. I mean, we should advertise that because that's huge for her to allow us to park free. We have a banner that's being made that's going up to thank our sponsors for last year and it'll be at the park. Oh, wonderful. So, we'll have it up and we'll leave it up for, you know, for a few months. So, people realize that there's uh, you know, the local businesses down there are very helpful to us and we couldn't do things and have events if they weren't so helpful. So, and I would what um Katie was mentioning the the inind if if um the Island Breeze continues to allow us to use their parking lot for parking for free,

I would like to see them as an ink kind sponsor on every event whenever we do the banners for those specific events. Absolutely. That on there. And um the um regarding

Can I I'm sorry. Can I add one more thing before we segue out of the parking attendance? I just want to be sure the council understands what they can and cannot do, which is why in my opinion, if we can eliminate them and go with the signs, I think it's beneficial. So, the parking attendants monitor the lots. And Mr. Arnold, if you pull into a parking lot and the attendant tells you, "Sorry, sir, if you're not shopping here, you can't park here and go to the market." And you say, "I don't care. I'm going to the market." There's nothing they can do. they can notify the business owner who then the business owner it's on them

to contact a tow company and have your vehicle removed right so excuse me so for them standing there it's kind of a toothless tiger but it brings attention but I think the sign would bring the same amount of attention and it's substantial savings substantial yes I think it will be

yeah I like yeah I do explore that as much as possible um the other um thing I had was regarding the transportation $6,300. Um, I know I've been many times and I've never used transportation to get there. So, um, for our other I know it's a large event, but we have a lot of other large events as well that do not offer transportation, so didn't know we could consider not doing that. Um, what are the hours? The hours that you're operating the bus service.

We start at 9:30 and end at 4:30. So the events from 10 to 4 half an hour before and a half an hour after. In the past we've done two parking lots. Um this year we cut that down. So instead it was 8,500 for the buses. So we were able to cut it down to 63 to 6,200 this year. Um we had the lot next to the uh planetarium which Kelly Stewart was wonderful and let us use. It's sandy and so there's areas that we don't want people to park in because we don't want them to get stuck. So there was a lot of um a lot of caution tape and stakes that had to go into the ground. So Seaside Methodist has always allowed us to use their lot, which is wonderful. Um last year when we used it, it was about 3/4 full for most of the day. Um so it was used absolutely. Um you know, we've thought of some different options. Um there's other places that have large lots. However, it's also a busy time at some of those places. Um Saturdays at Seaside Methodist are good because they aren't having services, so it works out well. But that doesn't um necessarily mean that it's a nice thing that we offer. Is it 100% essential? No. But I do think we get a larger portion of people that come here. Do you know if the service that we we use and I'm I'm presuming that that's the same vendor that you have in your budget this time

it is. Do you know if they track like when their really heavy times are I can't imagine somebody at 9:30 not parking I mean I think what they do I don't know you correct me if I'm wrong. They go to the park and they can't find a park and then they're directed to these alternate locations. It would be nice if we knew when they were the busiest and then carve it down a little bit to see um so that we're not spending 65 what is it 60 6300 $6,300.

Just just a thought you all that we could maybe look at to see if they capture when they're heaviest and then narrow it down to that. And another thing that we could possibly look at is we normally have three buses running and that way we know that there's always two circulating because one will be on a break and so we always want to have two circulating but if we brought it down we could have two buses and people might have to wait a little bit but it would save us some money. It's just a thought.

Absolutely. I'm open to anything. Yeah, I had priced out about eight different bus companies um when I started and this is the least expensive and um I order mini buses and often they can't provide those so they end up giving us these beautiful aironditioned coaches that we don't pay for but that's what we get. We pay for a mini bus and uh and those are the things that we get. So I've looked at trolleys and things like that to try to find something that was a little bit less expensive. I tried to find school buses um because I thought I mean for a shut a shuttle they they would be fine but I haven't had any luck with that. So okay on t-shirts yes

I think we have over $6,000 of t-shirts left based on the budget stuff from last year. Yes. So my recommendation would be that we do not order any more t-shirts. So I didn't know your take on that. We've got a lot to sell. We do um

are not dated or anything. They are not. Um, I think that I would say that what I would like is to keep the money in the budget to purchase the t-shirts knowing that if we still have enough t-shirts left that we won't use the money to purchase the t-shirts. Um, I'm will be uh selling those at all of the markets and last year we sold a lot of t-shirts. Um, so we were able we have got we used uh basically the prior years. So hopefully that will be the case, but if it's not, I agree with you. I don't think that there's I don't think we should be buying additional t-shirts if we still have some to sell.

So inventory on top of inventory. Well, another option could be too if a t-shirt was designed. I know in the past you've had contests for designs and various things. Um there also could be a t-shirt available that people could order online from a t-shirt company directly. So we don't have to put money up front. Then they can order directly. The link can be there. They can order in advance. The the you know have have them get their t-shirts that way. So we're not sitting on thousands of dollars of t-shirts that are possibly some are the wrong size, some are the wrong color. Um with technology, we could still offer a new t-shirt but not cost the town money. Absolutely. I'd be happy to look into that.

How much money do we make at Sunset at Sunset or do we is it a break even? Um it is last year in um last year um we between it cost us about uh cost the town $11,000 in total. Um we had $18,000 in vendor fees um for people that were um exhibiting and we had uh approximately um $6,000 in um sorry our budget was $11,000. So, we had a the total credits were $1,800 um sorry $11,550 in vendor fees, $700 in merchandise sales and $5,900 in uh sponsorships.

So, you said it cost the town $11,000. Yes. And that's coming from the general fund, not the accommodations tax. that on your first sheet and general fund includes all expenses for sunset at sunset other than the buses. Yes. So about 6,000 from the general fund and about five 6,000 from the um from the uh accommodations tax. Can you email us that later, those actual figures so we can make sure we've got them right from Absolutely. That'd be great. Um

the other one is advertising of 3,500. Tell us about that. The reason that I increased that is because in past years we've uh received an inkind donation from focus broadband where they were able to use um they gave us a donation where they put the spots um for sunset at sunset on the ATMC their u merge TV which they um are ceasing so there will not be any merge TV so they won't be able to do that. They might be able to do a sponsorship, but it won't be um of that size because it's an inkind donation. So, um I feel like there's going to need to be some way that we're going to have to advertise it. In the past, we've advertised on two radio stations and in the beacon um and of course all of our social medias um and all of the uh putting out a press release and and getting it to all of the outlets as well. So, we've done those things, but I just wanted to make sure that we were taking that into account that there won't be that donation from Focus this year that um was gives us a lot of publicity.

Yeah, we did last what was it Monday night we met and didn't we do something with advertising that we wanted to do that all online? I know that was for bids and for um job postings and that sort of thing. Is that what you're thinking about, Miss Bachelor, going along with that line to curb some of the advertising to be in line with what our decision was Monday night? I think we would love to curb our advertising because we're spend every event we're spending we were our budget was like $8.95 if I recall. So about $900 per event, which is a lot. And then um the

the I feel like with press releases with technology, if we do press releases to the newspapers, a lot of people read them online anyway. So they look at that. I feel like our social media, our um sunshine list, email list, getting that out. These are large events that a lot of people plan their schedules around to attend. So I really don't feel like people personally I don't feel like people will not be attending Sunset at Sunset because they don't know about it because it's very heavily advertised through lots of I mean it's known in the community as an event.

It is. We do have a good portion of people who do not embrace social social media, right? Um and that's why I think if nothing else, so we normally put an we do an um an ad in the beacon for we did it for the green wave last year, we do it for the holiday market, holiday tree lighting, and sunset at sunset. Those are the events that we would act that we would advertise for. We don't advertise for other events besides that. So, um I I think we could lose the ad radio spots. I I don't know that that's huge, but I do think that an ad in the beacon for those that aren't embracing of of social media might be something that we want to consider.

Well, the other thing is you've got $1,900 2,000 basically for signage and banners. So, to me, if you live in Sunset Beach, you're going to see those banners all around town. I mean, they're at the roundabout. They're on the island. and I'm there by the entrance to sunset. So, just feedback on that. I feel like if the people are here, they're going to see I mean those signs are pretty big and um um so just just my feedback. I let others speak on that, but

we do have we will have the four signs that we um have and those I do have to budget for those because sponsors are included and since sponsors change every year, that's not something that I I always have to have a new sign printed. Um, and then we also offer as part of the sponsors package, they get a sign for their booth that acknowledges them as a sponsor. So, um, that's where that that's the reason that those stay high. But yes, we have

to me that's money better spent in our community of people that live here and are, you know, obviously visitors are going to see that when they're, but I do think a lot of people come here for sunset. You know, they they try to c if they're a property owner or a visitor, they schedule that weekend to try to come be here because it is a great event.

Absolutely. Other questions about Sunset Sunset? Okay. Um, holiday lights. This is kind of where I'm looking for for direction from you. Sorry. Slide focus. So, for the um for the holiday lighting and what we want to do is where I'm looking for direction. Um I know that there are certain things that we don't want um that we had last year. Obviously, the lights in the trees were not great because we have a squirrel issue and we they don't like them. and we had to replace probably I think eight strings two times over the course of the month that they were up. Um, so the the request that I'm making is just a number I put there to kind of match the budget and once I backed out the things that I knew we weren't going to do like the food and the beverage, um, I already have um, food trucks that are interested in coming. So that I have all set. Um, we have the Christmas tree for the gazebo. So, all of that is taken care of. Um, on the next page and can you can see some of the items that we might have a possibility of getting and this also shows what the costs of those items would be. Um, so generally um this would be to do the roof lighting um and to do a 20ft tall tree. We had a 15t tall tree last year. that are the tree of lights and then to have the sprays lit up on the walls of the on the pillars of the gazebo. Um we had spent that $1,500 on

the tree trunk wrapping last year, which is something that we don't want to do this year. Um he had some ideas um from the the lighting person from doing either the toy soldiers, which are about 6 feet tall. We could do a large Santa chair because I do believe Santa's going to be attending the tree lighting this year. Um, and we h or a large star that we could have and we could do those underneath the gazebo if we wanted to do something like that. But the last year we had the selfie station. I don't think that was taken advantage of. So, I don't know that that's something that we want to do. Um, if we flip one more page, if we're looking at more of a traditional kind of large tree that looks like a tree, those trees, um, I've been pricing them. They're $18,000 to purchase the tree. Um, and that's an actual like the forms where they it's the forms that you stack one on top of of the other. It's artificial. It's not a live tree.

It's not. And it's not a artificial tree like you would picture um like a home artificial tree. It's basically large concentric drums that fit on top of one another um that light up. So if we were going to invest in something like that, it would be $18,000, but we would own it after that. And then we could, you know, I could certainly do the decorating of that tree as long as Matt can provide me a Well, that seems like a lot of money for a lot of money.

And that's where the lighting, the tree of lights with the strands of lights is a much more economical solution if we wanted to go that way. If we want to rent something like that, it's about $15,000, which is a lot. Um, and I I don't think that I feel like the tree of lights, if we do make it a little bit bigger and then we do we're going to do a little something more with that tree that's underneath the gazebo, um, it's going to get put into a wooden base um that is either going to be like a present or a drum or something like that. We'll paint it and make it look cute and that way it will not um, tip over in the wind, which we know is an issue down there. So, we'll be able to have that and we can do something there. My other suggestion is if you flip over one more page is down by the uh memorial, we can purchase a number of these sets of deer which start they're between three and six feet tall. And I think down by the trees um in kind of where the oak trees are down by the veterans memorial if we had a few some sets of those that we could we can connect those ourselves. These are bright LED ones and they um are a natural retan. Um I think that they'd look nice in the daytime and it would almost look like a little grove of deer kind of down in in and amongst the trees and it would help spread out the lights. So my my thought would be to do the gazebo. We'll decorate the tree like we did last year. Do the tree of lights and then do some of these deer. and that kind of keeps us in a lower price point as far as the lights and the money that's being spent on the lights. Um, of course, I will certainly look for sponsors for that as well. Um, we had wonderful sponsors this year that took care of the costs of that for us. So, thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. And we would uh we would do the same for this year. So, again, the price is in here. However, I

would still look for sponsors for the holiday lights. Can you talk more about the It's I think $4,500 for a star and then a gift box um is $4,350. Can you talk about like just tell us more about those because that's a large expenditure for those little items. Those are and I my recommendation is these are things we could get. I don't feel like they're I don't feel like it's worth it.

You're just giving us I'm just giving you options so that we say we like this or we don't like that. that way. You can tell me yes, we want a tree, an actual tree. Um, you know, that was the other option is to plant a large tree that's going to grow and become the town Christmas tree, but that would be great for Christmas, but it won't be great for concerts or other events. So, I don't know that that's something that we want to do. And we get back to the squirrel issue. the squirrel issue to me eliminates that. Yeah, my when we talked I my thought was a cut live tree, a large one, but yeah, you're still run the possibility of wildlife getting up in that tree. I actually had somebody last year that has something to do with tree and said they would be able to get us a tree

if we wanted a big, you know, a bigger tree that they would get into. We could certainly do it and then decorate it and try it and see how it goes with the squirrels, but have we thought about putting some kind of deterrent for the squirrels? I mean, like in my garden, I put hot pepper and sure cinnamon and black pepper and it backs them up. Now, I'm not suggesting we do that.

Um, but I mean, is there some something that we can do that's squirrel? One of the issues we found is that the squirrels are they get at at it both ways because they can come from the branches above or come from the ground below. So I think we can put some deterrence. I don't know how much it will do and I don't know if a a cut tree where we place it there would be a difference would make a difference that they wouldn't really come up on it. One of the differences might be is where the lights are located in a in a pine tree, a Christmas tree, versus the trees that were wrapped. So, the lights were tightly wrapped around the branches right where the squirrels were climbing. Yeah.

Whereas with pine, if they're further out and the branch starts to give, the squirrel may not make it all the way. I don't know. I'm not a squirrelologist, but um we could try it if that's the direction of the board to see. I I mean I think that would be a better look than the the what we had previously with the friend or gentleman that you know get a tree. I I think a live tree is nice and if we got somebody in the community that wants to that helps us with a sense of place when people try to donate things. Wonderful. So you could put some large larger bulbs on it depending upon the size of the tree and then try to research if there's some sort of

repellent. Are y'all crazy about the star and this um gift light up gift? Are y'all crazy about that? Too expensive. It is. And I feel like we can get more bang for for our buck if we did something like the deer where it sort of spreads the lights out in the park. We can also they have the almost like the candy cane lights that go over the archways over the walkways. So, you're kind of walking through the archways. Those are great. It's just tough when you're doing a market um to have those archways because they're going to end up being between in the middle of someone's booth when it comes down. So

tree would be the simplest thing as far as anything that people would want to use for pictures, you know, for Christmas cards or whatever they do. Centerpiece for any Christmas thing is going to be the Christmas tree. Absolutely. More than it is just a little framed out thing like we had last year out with leaves. Right. Absolutely. There are some, I think, options where we could maybe get a star or the gift box at one of the commercial places close by, Lowe's, Home Depot. Cuz if you look at some of the stuff they have in the holidays, that stuff just gets bigger and bigger and bigger every year. So, if you think in terms of what, you know, the part where we're going to put something like that, we may be able to find something on our own versus the cost that's coming from this commercial vendor.

Well, even on Amazon, I know last year I priced the tree. the tree that was just the tree like this that had the lights only that was the frame and I mean you could last year buy something for that for like $700 and you own it. Mhm. And I guess my question was last year at the budget meetings it was said that whatever we paid for now I don't know the details because I don't have those now but it was discussed that whatever we paid we would own it but they would store it but am I correct that the what was decided to do later was not to purchase it just to rent it so we own nothing.

Correct. The idea was that we would not purchase something to own it because we wanted to be able to do something different each year and we didn't want to own something and have the same look every year. So that's why we were doing rental things and that's why that was the decision that was made. And to me, the hooks are already up there. And I know last year I took or December, I took detailed photos of how they that was done

because to me is that's something that we could buy those lights and put them up. It would save us not paying the, you know, lots of money for the lights to go up. question. I guess we got to talk to public works about and we talked about that a little bit ourselves after kind of doing a look at what we could improve on for this coming year and save money as well. Right. And just being able to get um making sure that we can get those um commercial um commercial enough wide is what I'm trying to say. We don't want light little You can buy them. Yeah, you can.

Yeah. I just want to make sure, you know, that would be something and I'm happy to price that out if that's something that public works thinks that they could do. So, yeah. And our landscaper may be able to get us those at a cost at a wholesale cost as well since a lot of landscaping companies do that now as well. Sure. Um, and you got parking attendance and advertising in here and you heard the discussion so you know where we are on that. Yes. Okay. Great. Before we go on to the next part, do you want to come back on this or is there any direction that you feel comfortable giving now as far as a budget? Well, we got the tree, so we don't need to buy the $18,000 tree. We don't like the star. I mean, we like it, but we don't want to spend

See if we can find an alternative star locally. Yes, sir. Or on Amazon. And the star goes away and the um illuminated gift box goes away. Sure. Yeah. I think if we had community groups come in for example I know you had had um um you know to do do ornaments do singing do carolling do you know the carolling was very hard with you couldn't read it for one thing and I think if we sang songs the verse that everyone knows sure

would be helpful and then if groups sing have them sing their songs that maybe are different verses that not everyone knows by heart type of thing because that was a lot of copying and you know and um I think if we had some of that um can make it even more

holidayish I think we're going to change children's groups the program's going to change and we're going to do um we have uh and we've spoken with a children's group about singing. We have another group that we've spoken to about doing some sort of dance. Um, we want to we're going to bring um Santa's going to come in on a boat that we're going to decorate. Um, and then uh come in and we'll have a chair for Santa so the kids can take pictures um with Santa at the at the event. Would the council as far as giving direction, would the council be all right with maybe say going in with a request of $5,000 for this budget and then anything else we need in there, we will get sponsorships for whatever.

Sure. just having that just to put in our budget that we can work off. Not that we got to spend the 5,000. Hopefully, we can get all everything done, but just something to give you a direction to go with. Maybe go to five on this and then we can go from there. I think that's an excellent suggestion. Yep. Great. Thank you. I'm Yep. Go ahead, Miss Amy.

Great. We can uh switch over to the green wave. Um, knowing that what we discussed as far as the signage and banners and parking attendance, um, the signage again would remain as just $80. That's just to buy four new stickers that I can, um, sticker on to the actual banners that I already own to change the dates. Um, and parking attendance will be as it goes, whatever the parking attendance will be. And then the budget's mainly just music and trash additional trash cans for the event. And I'd still be able to look at um getting sponsors for the music. So

that's good. Mr. Mayor, um I like your suggestion of doing a maximum. We do we want to have a just to give just to give guidance to get us started maybe like on this one. um with with the parking attendant deal now that we're talking about going to the signs looking at that and we'll put in something maybe here maybe to say a thousand instead of the 1210 we can work off that I think we can definitely work from there just just to get our budget in line where we can kind of look at figure it out where we want to be sure

jazz in the park this was something that we've been doing twice a year I think that um I had heard that when we had discussed that we would do it once a year and that it would happen in the ing. So this um is the budget for one event this year and um basically left the budget the same for next year and again hearing what um you know as far as what the parking is get on this one maybe I mean that's 4354 max is that for one band work off that's for two bands. Okay. How much is one band?

Um well so the bands normally play together. So there's one six piece band with the singer and then there's the 18piece band and so they are it they all come together as one price and that that includes the sound system as well. So Mr. Mayor, did you say 4,000? 4,000 workers y'all for a budget number just just to go. Yes. Yes. Then we like I said hopefully on everything we going to get sponsorships and we're going to put this money back into our budget but just to make our budget work to get some numbers going work off that and know what our budget is to try to stay in it if we do have to pay for perfect

that the parking attendant number should reflect probably 250 because if the 48 48672 yeah correct in the previous year was for two events. No, that's for one event. That's for one event. Okay. I'm sorry. So, and the budget, the band price, it's all for one event. I broke it down. I understand. Thank you.

Um, the ERC and the tree board are the next two pages. Um, I just kind of have placeholders in here for each one of these things. They are looking to be able to do four workshops um for the ERC. One um workshop will focus on each area. coastal waters, a recycling and green lifestyle, shoreline plantings, and coastal wildlife. Um, I just wanted to put in some numbers, not knowing what the details are. So, we put in $75 of promotional materials, whether that's some flyers that we need to have printed or things like that. Um, some speakers require an honoraria, most don't. So, that's money that we if that if they don't require, we wouldn't spend that money. um workshop supplies if we required any supplies. Um based on what the speaker was going to be talking about um you know if they're talking about one thing that they're talking about is doing like splitting grasses like the shoreline grasses where you have a large grass and you can split that up into eight grasses because they grow so well here. So whether we need to buy two grass plants and that the speaker can show how they're going to be splitting those up. That was one thing that we discussed. Um so I just wanted to put in kind of a round number of uh of $200 for that. So each one of the workshops I've budgeted $525 and it's the same for the uh tree board. They would like to do two uh workshops. one of which would be something that wouldn't cost any money and that would be a walk-in talk in the park just about the trees in the park um and kind of do a tree identification um for those. And then we could also do a class that's on tree and plant care such as pruning and mulching and the right time of year for that um or tree preparedness for storms that we could do prior to hurricane

season. So, that's the next page of this as well. And they're all in the same price point because I don't really have a great answer as to exactly what it's going to be. When you've got the total for the year, it looks like that's just the workshops, nothing else included. Is that correct? Like when when I look at the ERC page, page 10 of yours? So, the green wave I had budgeted separately. This would be for workshops that they want to offer to the community that they would do at the community center. So they would like to have four workshops throughout the year, one each quarter.

Okay. So like the promotional materials and the honoraria for speakers. That would be just if we were going to have a speaker that required an honoraria if we because I don't know who their speakers are going to be, but there's a possibility that they could be that speaker coming could require an honorary area. Okay. I guess when I look at the the totals here, they're not adding up for the list. Like it's got total per workshop 525. Four workshops, that's the $2,100. So that didn't include $525 times four is is how I got to the 2100. Okay. So that's the four workshops. The total

each of those are for workshop. Okay. Yeah. So that's that's what we had. And again I thought it might be separate speaker somewhere else. I wasn't sure. Sorry. It's a placeholder and ob we would not if the honorarium was not needed it would not be spent and but it would never exceed the number that we got. that you said. Thank you. If I may,

the I I met with some members of the of the ERC yesterday and they were eager to want to help raise funds for different things they want to do. And I was told that previously they were prohibited from asking or soliciting for donations. Um, I gave them different direction and I encourage them to do that. And unless the council objects, um, I want them to continue full speed ahead to try to offset some of the costs to the town by, uh, helping fund some of these things.

In in regards to these two events here, I mean, these are workshops, both of them, whether it's the ERC or the tree board. We're looking at 3150 right now in this budget. Can we go ahead and narrow that down to a 2500 just for the budget thing base and then hopefully like I said they're going to raise the money or have the sponsors and then we can go with that just to give our good solid numbers to our budget to work it forward. Absolutely. That be good with council. Yes. Well, you know, we've already diminished our budget already. Um when we did the these two What number are you thinking? 2500. 2500.

Yes. Basically. And that what what I'm looking at is the things for the speakers. That's something that we may not do anyway. If we go ahead and knock that off, you know, I mean, it's that's if if we have, you know, we can always give a certificate of, you know, framed in a lot cheaper, right? But u I mean, I'm just trying to give some good solid numbers for us to work in the budget. Like I I think it's fairship on everything. We need to have people who do not need an honor area to speak at our at the workshops, right? So in the past did they require that?

Um this isn't something this is would be a new thing that this that the group would be doing. So um this is they just wanted to make sure that I was that it was being considered as part of the as part of the budget. So we wanted to put something together. Um, but I think if we take out the honoraria, um, and leave the rest for now, knowing that if we don't need it, we wouldn't spend it, then that would give us a solid number, like you said, of the 2500 if we were going to do that. Yeah. And I'm also would be okay. I know we have some nice merchandise that we could pull out a few things to have for these possible events to gift our speaker for absolutely their time. Um,

yeah, we can put something together for people if that's um if that's what we do. But I can go back and remove that number.

And then the last thing I have is the continuation of the uplighting project that we have um in the park. Last year we uplit four trees in the park. Um, the four trees that we uplit are sort of in the center of the park. And these four trees are, if you're standing on the street, it would be to the left, kind of between the memorial and the trees that we had uplit, and they'd be more in the back. And then I think that we would want to do four more trees the following year, and then the project would be done. I don't think we need to uplit any more than that in the park. Sorry.

Where are the other the last four? Where would those go? Will they go in front? So, the ones that we're that we would be doing would be closer to the water from um for this year is what I'm requesting. And then the other four would be closer to the street. Yeah, I guess I was meaning more closer to the water like the inter coastal, not the not the back where the fishing pier's at like towards the water. Um are there plan to do any that way that direction? I can certain we can look at it. I think it would it would be worth it to look at. Right now the ones that I we picked are the ones that were the most natural continuence of where they already were. So that way it wouldn't look like we lit four here and we lit four here. We wanted it to kind of blend more.

Yeah. Um we do have the ability with these lights to be able to change them um into really any color we want and pre-program it. So, when it's uh breast cancer awareness month or when we're doing um when it's Fourth of July or we can do red, white, and blue, um every tree can be programmed separately with separate colors or they can all be programmed the same um with different colors. So, we have that ability as well. The lighting that's out there now. Yes.

Is this going to be the same color light? Um meaning if it's, you know, some have a little bit of a yellow tint. I I wouldn't want us to get a little bit of a yellow tint when the others doesn't have a little bit of yellow tint. I would want to make sure that everything out there is this exact same lighting. Is that important to you all that it's the same? Last year there was kind of a hodgepodge. There was multicolored lights, there was the LED lights, and then there was the white lights. It was So it was from the road looking at it. It was So the ones that happened on the road were not Yeah. Yeah, that was something completely separate. I can

and I and I understand that it was just it was not cohesive. Look, when we're spending last year, I think we spent $16,000 total with the uplighting and the you know, sure the up and the uplighting is something that we will have and it's on every night. So, it will be a permanent addition to the park. Right. Um, so that would be that's really the one item that uh I'm asking about that would be an actual something that would remain um at all times as opposed to something that would be brought in just for for an event. Do you two three gentlemen do y'all like the way that it will change colors like for for breast cancer? Okay.

Yeah, I like that. But I don't want it to be because that's a girl thing, you know. Yes. The biggest thing is the uniformity of the color.

Absolutely. And this this company is who did the lights the last time. So it would be a continuation of having this company do the lights this time. So that's the same color, the same product. Um and we'll be able to pull the lighting um right from the 911 memorial. So it won't need to be trenched or anything underneath the sidewalk like we had to do last time. But it will um it will all connect. And my only concern on the lighting placement of which trees you're selecting is you do have the memorial light. You know, you have the business lights there at Bills and then you have the memorial lights, then you have the lights that are on closer to the gazebo, then you have the gazebo lights, and then you have nothing on the right side of the park at all, which is close to the inter coastal waterway. So, that was my only concern. When you look at it from the road, it looks like the park is just from the left over. Nothing to the right is lit up at all. So, I don't know. I don't know. Also, if there's a way where that shelter's at if you

I don't know. I'm just throwing it out there. It looks unbalanced from the road. So, people don't really see it lit up, right, in its entirety. Um because to me, down by the water is just beautiful, you know.

Absolutely. And that's another area that we could certainly look at lighting up. I just I tried to limit it to just doing four trees. So these were the ones that in looking at it with the lighting designer that he felt was to would make it the most cohesive where it would look like it was done but not you know it would look like phase two but not that it was um a completely separate event that happened. So that's that's where we came with those lights. And then the town calendars. Um in 2025 we purchased far too many calendars. You can see we spent $24.85 on those. Um last year we purchased 14 it was $1466. Um we purchased $250 calendars last year and we sold them all before the end of December. So, my suggestion would be to do the same thing and be able to purchase that same number of calendars. We do the contest. Um, when I do the contest, I think last year I got about 700 photographs submitted. Um, so it's popular for all of the people. Um, I have people who are visitors as well as people who are residents who submit. Um, and we try to um, pick different people every year, so it's not the same people in the calendar each year and try to do different things, but I think it's a popular um, item that we do and something that the residents really like to participate in.

You said, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. I was just going to say on the calendars that we bought last year, powers our sales, did we sell all of them or We did. We sold them all before December and we we sell them for pretty much what we make plus sales tax. We don't make any sort of it's not to make a profit or to make any money for anything. It's just really something that we like to do um for the residents. And they were what? $12. Is that right? Yeah. Yep. They were $12 for one or um three for $30.

Um and again there my only take would be if we order a small number, you know, like the year before, don't order too many of them. Um, could there also be with the vendor, let's say if you ordered 200 of them, could you then be a link with the vendor that people could order them online if they chose to get one? Obviously, once you run out, it may cost them $20 or $25 to get it, but they still could get one, but then we wouldn't be stuck. I know when I was first sworn into council I somewhere out there from 2024 that I pulled out of the lobby because there was a huge stack of them and I'm like we don't

we tried to well for those people like the pictures and a lot of people will take the photos and then frame them and use them for art for their because it's their you know their beach house or something like that. So um because they they had gone the year had gone past we try to give those away to people so that at least they were being used. Um, but the 250 was a good number and I could definitely work with the vendor to um to see if we would be able to have a link or something where people could purchase them if we ran out. They'd be able way we're not having stock to help and also our staff isn't having to sell them because and they have to write receipt, you know, it's not as simple as hand me $12. It's a process. Absolutely.

So to me, if we could even get staff out of that and would be lovely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the last uh thing I have are the concerts. Um every year we have approximately 15 concerts. LA this year we'll have 16 because we have the addition of the July 3rd concert and next year counting the weeks between Memorial Day and uh Labor Day we will would have 14. So, it would just be a matter of if we want to go an additional week to get to the 15 number um or start an additional week or do it a week prior 31st. We may we always start that last week in March,

right? We always start the last the last Wednesday in May. So, um and that's this is the the 50,000 is the budget that we normally have um for the concerts that we're able to that we're able to work with. So, Yay on the concerts. Yeah, I think we can stay under that budget. We was able to work this year to get the extra one in. Sure.

And do it so we can negotiate because these guys will negotiate. I know what most of them get paid when they're doing two-hour venues. And they they will negotiate. We don't have to say this is what we pay, this is what we're going to give you. What will you do it for and work with us so we can continue to bring you back to review it. And I appreciate all your help getting that taken care of to get everybody in on that number. So that's plenty. I think that's plenty for what we get and we might get some more out of it because we did mention about working in running it a little longer for our citizens that are here all the time in September. Absolutely. And September is such a nice month. People do like to have things going on. We get the most we can for this great

to provide for our towns. And there are some local bands too that are, you know, that I know that play at places like patios or stuff like that that do things for charity where their donation goes to a spec, you know, they pick for that concert where it goes to, which would be a way for us to have more music because everybody loves it. Um, have we ever thought about those bands that you're talking about? Like, you know, when you go to a concert, they have somebody that opens up for them. Yeah. Have we ever thought about like while doing something like that to give exposure to those community bands because we all have a lot of friends, people that live in our community that play in these bands. Sure.

And I'm sure they would like the exposure and I think they would probably just like enjoying that. So, have we thought about We do at some events like at Sunset at Sunset, we'll have we'll have more than one band. So, we always I I always do a local band first. So, we've done um we had sea and sand, but then this year we did Brunswick Stew um and and so that was something that was good. I don't know. I mean, it would really be up to you. How do you feel about extending the length? That's virtually impossible because most of those bands come in and set up. They have to be willing to share their their sound system. Well, it's not even just I mean, even as much as drums, I mean, they bring their most of their bands start setting up four o'clock, so it's hard to get that in. And I was thinking

but in our regular events we could you know that's something we're able to work when we have all day things like that's like I said sunset on sunset. Yeah. You'll have a start band then you'll have another band. So and has that ever been looked at making them more than two hours because I feel like everything here ends really early. Didn't know if that was ever I mean because some bands what they're getting paid I know towns they play in where they pay that amount and they play for longer. I think most of the concert series with the concert series that in Brunswick County with through the summer I feel like most of the concerts are two hours and I think so that is what has been done. Could we do longer? Know I mean I always tell the vibes there keep it going. Yeah.

I mean you've been to enough shut down at 8. So I didn't know you know it would be up it would be up to you if you wanted to to extend something. If you'll start throwing 20s down I'm sure they'll play longer. I want to be sure that we have um a consensus on the calendars just so that she has direction. I like the calendar.

Okay. And then with the uplighting, it seemed like there was definitely a consensus on those changing colors for the seasons. Green for St. Patty's, red, white, and blue for the fourth. Um, Miss Bachelor, you talked about perhaps more lighting down closer to the ICW. There's been monies that we've cut from her budget just sitting here today. Do we want to leave it as it is with the four lights, the multiolor lights, the same style that we have there now? Do we want to up it to six? doing up to eight so that we can do more now versus you know four this year next year and then maybe if we're trying to achieve a look

get a price from it if we're trying to achieve a look all of it come back bring that to the board before next thing just to see since it's going to be there because a lot of times when they do it separate they're going to pay for they're having to come and say same thing get us price let's work and to me to balance it across is really my thing because I feel like you very small part is lit up. But when you look at it from the road or just in general, right? All right. I will definitely look into a price to get him to finish the project so we can um have it look nice and complete but not like an airport with too many lights.

And the only other thing was the first one, the events for the sunset on sunset, we're going to look at the bus and the parking. So that was one that may come off the original numbers that's in here. And that's something you can reach out to the council once you get some answers. All right. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. Right. Next up, public works. Mr. Matt, Miss Vicky is also y everybody's got copy of this.

This one I think I don't Right.

Good afternoon. Afternoon.

So, um obviously you all know that in our department we do multitude of different uh projects and u maintenance around the town. One of the biggest things this year is street repair. We recently um got a road road survey um back in January um of the conditions of all the roads that the town owns within Sunset Beach um paved and unpaved. So the the top ones that came from this list there there were five. Old Point, Clubhouse Road, Seatrol Drive West, 27th, and 36th Street. As you see on this um PowerPoint that I only put three roads for the time being. Um and these are some u bigger concerned areas according to the survey and um viewing sideline viewing. Um one of them that's not on there is clubhouse road. I know it's a big road. I know it's traveled often. Um it was the cutthrough road when they closed off the Calabas Bridge and it's it's in bad shape. Don't get me wrong, the reason it's not on there, and I will gladly take your um experience and go from there, but there's a lot of buildings still on Clubhouse Road in different developments, big trucks, concrete trucks. Um my idea behind not putting that on here is the fact that that road isn't built already for that kind of traffic at weight. So, in my opinion, we would be if we tried to mill out the road, for example, and repave it, who say who who knows how long this building is going to go on, right? So, it could be two years, it could be another 5, 10 years. So, then we're going to do it all

over again in a number of years. So, it's a big expenditure for that road to mill it and get it to where it needs to be and then possibly ruin it again. Um some of it some of the some of clubhouse road can be um seal coated um crack sealed things like that but from old Georgetown to Rice Mill is the biggest area that's it's in bad condition don't get me wrong but I just feel as if we would be kind of wasting money in a way to do all this and have to do it again in a number of years um before all the buildings completed. May I ask a question about the survey because I don't I don't think we've seen the survey

you have it just because I asked I wanted to see I guess we'd all like to see that I can send that to you. Um on that survey how did they prioritize the roads? Did they talk about um or I know they're not talking it's would be stated. Is it the the frequency that the roads being traveled? Is it just strictly the the condition of the road? Yes, ma'am. Strictly strictly condition. So, it's cracking um alligator cracking, oxidation, um chipping, things of that nature. Traffic itself was not mentioned in the survey. The volume and are those in this survey, again, I haven't seen it, so I'm sorry for asking.

Are those roads that have already been paved because, you know, we've got a lot of roads that aren't paved. Are they when when they scoured or surveyed our town, were they just the roads that were paved or was it every single thing that a a vehicle would travel on? Yes, ma'am. It is every road the town owns, whether it's unpaved or paved. Yes, ma'am. Not a question on that because when you look at the report, it has them all rated and then it has the ones I know to be dirt roads. What I call dirt roads are a combination of all kind of things. But um

it has them separately listed out. So to me those um those streets are not in consideration of the ranking is what I'm looking at. Correct. is that so to me they weren't considered and to me they should be considered they they have data on them so to me they need to rank them um yes ma'am as

I believe the reason behind that is because um we have never paved these roads unless it's been petitioned by homeowners on these particular roads all these roads are highlighted in yellow which the rest of the council will receive an email today with the road survey um so I believe that's why they weren't aren't ranked because what we do in house is we'll we'll refresh them with the moral structural base and then grade them, water them as we need to, right? Um, until folks decide to petition to get their road rocked or paved.

And I think that's something from a public works perspective we would like to get out of having to water these roads and do all this work to them because that is costly as well and time, labor, materials, everything else. So, for the street repairs that you've listed here, you've identified three streets roughly $350,000. We know that $200,000 comes from power bill monies. So, we would be looking at $150,000 um out of the general fund

for the streets because we have no more money in power bill money or is there a fund somewhere that we don't know about that we have money that's um I guess a collection of power bill money or each year are we exhausting those? So, we will what we what I can do is get with the finance director and find out if there is cuz I know in the past we have not used the entirety of the 200,000 that we're allowed every year, right?

Um, so I don't know if there is if it's building up or not. If it is, that's great for us obviously. Um, but we can I can check on that. I think we need to know that as a council if we have money in power bill because we know um the Suns Street Boulevard that I call the town parking lot. We know that that used two and a half um years of power bill money but do we do we have it somewhere else? Is there a pot of gold somewhere? So I would at our next meeting please bring that to our attention. I will. Whatever whatever it is. Okay. If it's zero tell us it's zero. If it's half a million dollars that'd be great, right? or whatever it is.

Yes, ma'am. I will. Um, like I can pull that now. You want me to run and get it or you if next meeting's sufficient so you have an idea? Well, um, you probably need to stay in here for all of this. I'll stay. But you know what would be good is in your administrator's report maybe in April. um because that that meeting will be prior to our next budget meeting so that we could at least have that number so we can be thinking as a council because as you all know we're looking at this for the first time, right? Um today so

the other part of this is 350,000 for these three roads. Um it is not I don't have labor in that because different companies are going to charge different I don't know what percentage to kind of tack on the top of that or not. So that's based off the milling and paving and striping traffic control things of that nature. Um a typical traffic control. So again that's all on the contractors who would So 350 is not the number we're looking at. It might be half a million dollars. It could be or more. could be less as well. I I base these numbers off higher off of um past projects. Okay.

So Matt, a question. I do have the report and when I look at it in the report, it's the cost estimate and this was from McGill. So is that the cost estimate they're giving for just the milling, no labor? That is all. Yeah, that's that's the entirety that's like the entirety of the job itself. So for example, Clubhouse Road is like $4.3 million. It's believe 3.8. 3.8. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So that is the entirety of Clubhouse Road. Labor. Yes. Labor. So these figures are Yes. Okay. Okay. Yes.

And they they definitely went on the high end of all these numbers. Um we can find contractors to this for far less. And did you say Clubhouse Road is 3.8? Is that what you said? right now. I'm adding up these two five right here.

This is also a time when I take direction from you all. If you want me to look further into Clubhouse, I gladly will. I mean, don't I know it needs to be done. Um, and we can patch here and there to make the road a little bit more reliable, I guess. But in my opinion, which I'm I'm not an asphalt professional by any means, but I just feel like we would be kind of wasted money if we if we took it all out and then put it all back in a couple years from now. Can Who will keep the road maintained the best it can be without re spending the 3.8 million on it? Who who will that be y'all filling potholes? Will that be outsourcing it out? So

I think whatever those costs are, if we're not going to do it, we need to make sure we're allocating those funds to keep that road. I mean, that's a main thare for Sea Trail, for others, for everybody, and you know, right, you know, a large resort in our community. Go ahead. Well,

so in what we've always done is, I mean, smaller potholes we can maintain in house. Um, I would say 4x4s, 4x4 section we can kind of do. Once it gets above that, it's doesn't make any sense for us to keep going out and trying to fill these in. Um, it's better for a asphalt company to come in and patch them. And, you know, we have a few areas around the town that can be patched. Um, so they're more prone to coming out and doing four or five jobs instead of just one at a time. And we get more bang for a buck that way. When we were asked by our finance director um what we wanted in the budget, were there any things we mentioned or I mentioned and you all agreed that we should be looking at prioritizing our road and setting up a capital fund

for our roads or y'all have time to think about that? Absolutely.

And I think now is the time that we need to give some direction on that. Is that something that we want to do? Because if we don't start beginning to put money in a fund, we can talk about it up here all day long and then next year we can talk about it all day long, but if we don't start putting some money back each year to achieve I mean when you $3.8 million, that's a lot. Well, we know it's a lot, but but where are we going to get that money? We can't keep peacemailing everything. We've got, in my opinion, we need to have what do we want to do this year? What do we want to do next year? What do we want to achieve by three years? what do we want to achieve by five five years? Um, you know, we may not be sitting up here in five years, but we would like to be able to hand off here is a plan that would because we've not been given anything on this. Um, I'd like for us to strategically think about earmarking money. So, I don't know how to move forward with that today,

but you're I'm seeing nods

that we all want to do this. I have a suggestion and previously my previous experience so for example just going to throw out a number if Matt's budget is $5 million and at the end of the fiscal year Matt spent four the expectation when he was given five was that he was going to spend five comes at the end of the year he said I did better I saved some money I got some grants I got some donations I got a $1 million carryover we take that $1 million and we put it in the CIP for roads so the police department's the same way. If we have a $5 million budget, we spend four, give me a million or half a million in my capital to help buy vehicles and so on. We could do that with every single department. Um, there's going to be some things that I'm we're going to talk about when we get into administration that talk about exactly that. So, that's just one suggestion.

I like that suggestion with the thought that we hold the line. um you know, come April, May, we need to pretty much say unless it's absolutely needed, don't just go out buying stuff because I know in the in the end of the year, I mean, I've sat over there on that side and I've also managed towns where at the end of the year, we've got all this stuff we want to buy. Well, if you wanted to buy this stuff, you should have told us back in the beginning of the budget year. I think we y'all may need to hear from us that we want you to hold the line come April, May, and our our finance world calls that a frost and then we have a hard freeze. We're used to that, too. We've had those things.

Okay, very good. Um, you know, doesn't get into the weeds. Like if I need a set of wiper blades, I don't have to get the mayor to approve. Sure. But um there there are some options. I think now if we take every penny of the carryover and allocate it into a CIP, that could have an impact on our next year's capital. But historically, we've we've done well. Departments do very good at managing what's given to them. And there are carryovers in every department each year that could be considered versus funding the CIP upfront,

right? And I guess I would even try to take it a step further. Um, not just what's in public works, but what's the overage for the year across the board because I feel like we really need to focus as a town on these road repairs and our storm water and facilities majorly. Um some some areas are have been more funded than others, let's just say, but um it's not we don't want to fund anybody, but we also need to get a handle on this stuff and we are fortunate that there are funds, but we need to keep funds due to the nature of where we're located if there were to be a bad storm or something. Um, and I think this obviously this document that has lots of great information in it um is um you know telling the cost add up real quickly when you even look at the top 10 roads in the whole town based on this. It's we're talking major money. So, but we need to work on funding this as a group effort.

Yes, ma'am. So, on to uh streets again. So, you you talked about the unpaved roads um and how much it takes for us to maintain them. So, um as of right now, we we've watered roads since I've been here, which is seven and a half years. Um and before that, we had watered some of the unpaved roads um to keep down on dust and help grade out. It's a lot easier to grade when roads are wet and things like that. But three of the bigger areas are Marlin, Selfish, and Dolphin, which are located on the island. Um, so I just kind of want to bring this up to you all. Um, you see that in the report that right?

Like I said, I'll send it to you all today. But one thing with these is u the roads when they when it rains and there it it goes straight into the canal, right? So we're we're dumping sediment back into the canal that we've just drenched.

Um, no one's happy about that. Okay, here you go. Um, so like I said previously that petitions have always been made to do these roads, but it's a town road, right? So I don't know where our authority is to say, "Hey, we want to pave these roads or if it needs to go to a petition." I don't know how that is. I But in my opinion, we need to kind of if there are roads, we need to take care of them how we see fit. Um, and that would involve at least putting rock there if nothing else. Um, or paving them because what's happening is this sediment is getting in um to the causeway, building up. And also too, if it is a drought, the dust are up and everything. It's just an environmental hazard as well, right?

Um, the roads are rough walking across citizens and tourists alike. Um, ruts everywhere, trip hazards, things of that nature. So, I think if it was a a little bit more stable, then be better fit for the entire town.

Well, thank you for bringing this up because um I I don't live on the island. I I live on the main, but when I go over there, it's always dusty. Um and it's uh runoff, as you say. So, I've asked I asked a lot of folks and they the answer always is the way the developer set it up over there on the island um that you have to petition the town. And you think about the developer. Um, not really a developer over there because if if I buy a lot over there, I do just like I do on the mainland, I find somebody to build my house unless I'm in, you know, a neighborhood that's already has that. So, I don't know where to start the discussion, but it's not fair to do for one side of town and not do for the other side of the town. And you know, this is a huge expense,

but it just doesn't seem fair if if I lived on, give me a street. Um, if I lived on Marlin Street or if I lived on Fourth Street, I know Fourth Street, or any of those other streets over there that are dirt roads or sand roads, whatever we want to call them, that I've got to petition my town to say, "Hey, I want you I want to do this, but oh, and by the way, I've got to pay for it. I personally have to pay for it." whereas another area in town has a road that the people that lived on that road didn't have to pay for that. So, I just we need to think about being fair and you know how conservative I am, but we still need to be fair to our citizens and I don't see that it's fair the way that it's been set up by the developer. The developer has been gone a long time and we just it seems like each year it's just the same the same the same. In the immediate time though, we do need to reduce the dust because it's very very dusty over there. Um, and you have in your proposal to do some water spraying.

Um, are we not water spraying now? We do. Oh, we are.

So, what what what it is is that we have a fire truck that we commandeered from the fire department years ago that was out of service. Um we have reconfigured it to um distribute water on these roads. Um it's a oneman job. Um but we get out there every so often, especially when we have the time to get out there during the summertime. It's obviously the worst. Um try to do it at least every other week. Um so right now we are in the process of um selling the fire truck um because there's no other use for it. Um besides that, so in the presentation that I have, we have three different options you guys can consider. One of them is the purchase of a water trailer. It's an 800gallon water trailer. Um it's pump fed. So one person gets out, start it up, and they just start driving. And it's an evenly distributed water coating on these on these roads. And um not only on the island, but there's three other roads on the mainland that are also um gravel and marl based. Um the other option which excuse me that there's not a picture of it, but that is the size. Um but the the picture of it is u sorry the total of it would be 14,500 to purchase that trailer. Um option two would be a rental. It's a 500gallon water trailer. same same thing as a picture that you have in front of you. Um, but obviously a little bit cheaper, do it every couple weeks. Um, and then the third option would be to look for a contractor. I don't know. And we would have a designated time for them to be out there. These other two options, we can kind of get it and do it whenever we absolutely need to. Um, contractor may be a little bit different because I don't know how many contractors are just water roads mainly. It's probably going

to be a landscaper or something of that sort that's already busy during the summer. Okay. Well, well, why don't we designate every every other Wednesday, for example, um to come out. Well, okay. Now, it's a drought, right? Hasn't rained. Someone calls about dust. Sorry, next week they're coming out. So, um but that is an option to consider as well. So, I just kind of wanted to give you all three different options as to what you think we should look into. Well, you know, we're going to ask you, how much do you think the revenue will be taken in if you sell the apparatus that you're using now? I don't know what it I don't know that we know what it looks like or how much what's it valued at?

Um, what I've been told is that firet trucks in general don't typically resell very well. Um, that sound about right? Sounds about right. I have it for 5,000 10,000. I have it for 5,000. 5,000. And I think we have a couple days left on the bid and I don't think we've gotten really any bites. No bids. Okay.

So, I mean, we do have that. I mean, if it if it stays, then we have that, don't get me wrong, but um it's just this this particular uh apparatus would be more beneficial. Um, and I'm not saying we have to buy it, but I think it's just an evenly more evenly distributed water um, on these roads because what we have is, like I said, we fabricated ourselves. Um, and it's it puts water out, but it's not evenly distributed. So, we have to go up and down, up and down streets multiple times to get the entirety of the road, whereas this would just take one swipe and it's done and over with. Would you venture to say that it would be more efficient with time for the staff? What you just described to me sounds like it's more efficient. It is.

Even though I don't know how much efficiency we need to re to recoup $14,000, right? Well, that's why I also put that rental up there. Yes. And and the rentals, you know, Sunb Belt rentals. A couple questions about that. On the I see one's $800, one's 500. So, I know you're going to have to fill it up when you're doing that. But,

you know, on the money side of it, I look at, you know, $8,600 $8,700 is basically what you're looking at a year. In regards to that, on one that we buy, do you have any kind of numbers on what the maintenance is on keeping that tank up? I mean, if you know, if it's cracks or hoses, things like that cuz if we renting something, I would think that if anything like that happen, that would go back to the rental company. It would not be another expense. And if we did buy this tank, is this something we looking at getting two years down the road, four years down the road? So, we can measure that kind of stuff out. And then again with the contractor, I mean, I just don't see why we can't check with the contractor just giggles of it just to see what it would cost

to come back and regard this. I mean, you know, if it's something that we need and it's going to last for a while, I can I can understand it. But, but if it's something that we're going to deal in putting more maintenance into it and things like that, then maybe it would be better just to lease something or rent it out, you know, by the month or whatever. Absolutely. Yeah, we can.

And I agree with that. And I think also the whole storage thing, as we know, we're limited on storage to store things. And I feel like we as a town need to look at all these roads that are dirt roads that are on the mainland and the island and they need to be converted to not dirt roads. Um and um I would like I would like them to be added into the street listing prioritized so that everything get every street every citizen every street gets a fair shot on their priority on the re the road list so to speak or the road spreadsheet that we have because we like we've said we we've got to tackle these roads and get we can't keep putting this off. It it's expensive but it's got to be done. So that's would be my recommendation is that we add those, you know, then if that is the case and council wants to add them wherever they fall. And obviously we can't do everything at one time. We got to have a plan across years to do. But if that's the case, then do we want to invest 14,500 into a watering truck? Are we going to use it for anything else? or do we use the the retired fire vehicle a little bit longer based on where the roads fall out? And to me, if McGill has evaluated these roads, which they did, it should be a quick update their spreadsheet to include those roads into our overall and then we have that data and can make you can make decisions on your recommendation for that. And hopefully we as a group can all come up with more funds to make all of that happen to get some of these addressed sooner than later.

And I'd like to for you to explore what the mayor said because I just did some math on my little calculator here. It's $14,000 for a bite. If we rent it for one year, it's 868

86.88, right? And then we don't know what the contractor would be, but in two years we would have it paid off. um with the thought that if we don't need it any longer, maybe we can sell it to get back our investment on it. Um I don't know what a contractor would be and what kind of is it going to be the same thing that we have now with a landscaper putting out water that's not evenly distributed as you're saying that's kind of happening now. We're not kind of happening now, but what is happening now with the way that you have it? Yeah, I mean we'll definitely look into

and it's not just for um the island, it's for the mainland. It's for all over and it would be a good I think the 14,000 would be a good investment if because you all let's face it, we're not going to at our time we're not going to be able to tackle all the roads. We're not going to pave all the roads. We don't have that kind of money. So I I would love to say we're going to have all paved streets, but we know we're going to have a lot of dirt roads. Um, but I I look forward to seeing the numbers at our next u meeting to see where we are with this. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. I know it's much needed.

Absolutely. Um, so switching over to storm water. Um, in a meeting that we had in November, I believe it was, you brought up storm water about metal pipes.

Can't stand metal pipes. I'm assuming you can't either. Um so one of the one of the areas um that has metal pipe and it is um deteriorating fairly quickly and it was not on our capital improvement plan previously. Um but it's at seatrol drive east and I got numbers and everything to replace all this with reinforced concrete pipe and HDP pipe along the rideways. Um so totaling $60,000 that's labor included. Um, also these are the three that I'm looking at pursuing this year. Um, obviously if there's an urgent matter that comes up, we would have to take care of that first. But, um, also rideway drainage. Um, a lot of the roads around here, the water's not able to get off the road how it's intended to do. The shoulders of the road are are built up. They need to be kind of cut cut down where the water can run off. Otherwise, it's just sitting there and it's again deteriorating our roads. Um, so we have 85 for that and then catchment 37 which is um it's actually been on the 10-year plan. Uh it's in we're in year seven now, year seven, year eight of the 10-year plan and this was projected at year three. Um there is a problem area over there. Um, and what needs to happen is this infrastructure has got to go in the ground. Um, it's been pushed back for years and years and years. Um, so we need to kind of look at that and I'd like to pursue that this year.

Where is that exactly? Um, great oak circle in Mil. What is it again? Great Oak Circle. Okay. And Miloo the intersection. Matt, do you all have a a camera in your arsenal that you can go look at all the pipes? You know, when we did the storm water mapping plan in 2017 that you referenced, that firm had that cap. We didn't have that capability at the time, and that's pretty much what we paid for them to go in, use those that camera system, go in there, you know, eyeball everything to see this is going to not last. In three years, you got to replace this, which you have here that was identified in 2017 that needed to be replaced and it wasn't

right. Do you have that capability now that you can do that so that because my next comment may be do we need to renew the storm water plan from 2017 since it's nearing completion now? I mean we're looking at a budget for 2017, excuse me, 2027. So we do have that capability. We do have a back truck and a camera right

in our um maintenance position or maintenance department. Um, and it's actually it's saved us the vac and the camera have saved us a lot of money throughout the years. Um, so we can provide that service as far as checking all of our storm water systems. Um, in regards to the 10-year plan, for example, um, we can ident, I don't believe we need an engineer to help us find our problem areas. Um, we see them enough. And what we look at from data every couple months that we're investigating these lines is that we can kind of make that determination ourselves, right?

So, we can bring up a list. And like I said, these are this is the central drive is one that's been on my mind for a couple years now, honestly. Um but the rideway drainage is another one. But yeah, we can we can put a list together ourselves. I think that would be good for our council um for us to look at it. Not just for this year, but maybe like next year. What do we need to be thinking? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Arnold. Five years. Do it. you know, for this year we have these, then next year, then the next year, then the next year, then the next year, so that we can kind of be looking at what needs to be so we're more strategic at what we're spending our taxpayer dollars on and that we know that this is coming up. Um, and I think you would like to have that you're seem that you want it to be earmarked,

right? So, if you could do that, I mean, I don't think that needs to be in this budget year, but just philosophically, I think that we would enjoy seeing I don't know. We'd enjoy seeing it. We would like to see that. Yeah. Um, thank you. Yes, ma'am.

Moving gear. Uh, beach erosion. Um, so everyone knows that these beach accesses, there's a lot of new beach accesses um that have been recently built over the past four or five years um and and previous before that as well. But um the newer ones, like I said, the four or five years. Um so we have three in mind. excuse me, that are um on our list. Two of them were actually part of the budget last year, 7th and 32nd Street. Um we didn't get grant funding last year for them, so we did not pursue them last year. Um we would like to pursue them this year. Um we have to get the we're in the works of getting grants right now with prices and everything like that and submitting all that information. Um so hopefully we can get something back from it. Um if not um without the grants you and that $485,000 to repair three different walkways whereas just for comparison 37 street access itself um was right around 400 by itself. So we're looking at three for the price of one actually. And um just that's our overall plan as well. We don't have a 10-year plan or anything like that as far as when we're going to do these. We're out there every single day and we see the the the deterioration of these walkways. So, we know which ones we're having to repair and spend more time on than others. Um, so with that, each erosion on line item would be $485,000 if approved with the potential of grants.

And when will we know about the grants if they're received or not? I think typically it's a couple months after it's submitted. So hopefully by the by the end of this month before we meet again in April, we'll at least have submitted everything and get some response back as to how long it would take.

Okay. And I know I'd asked y'all about the because I had been told previously, you know, sometimes what you're told, you don't know what's true or not. Asked y'all about the beach access plan because I had been told that certain ones were in line to be um you know, approved upon. Um, some are have, some haven't. Um, and um, y'all sent me some stuff, but it sounds like what I had been told was not fully accurate that there's not a plan. So, to me with that, just like roads, we almost need a plan and put some dollars with it to see what we're looking at and look at grants, look at whatever we need to You're referring to the continuation from the sidewalk to the walkway.

Well, no, that's a separate thing I was going to mention. This is Vicki sent me the beach access which shows um you know from the the strand all the way to um Main Street, the sidewalk there at Main Street that but the other issue is I was told that with some of the access points on the beach that the ones that have been upgraded that have the what's called the handicap viewing area which to me it's not fully handicapped. You can get out there and then view the ocean. you can't get down to the ocean, which to me is a little strange to call it that, but I have been told that those areas from the sidewalk on the south side of Maine to the start of the boardwalk for that access point that that had to be done with the pvious material

um quote paved with the pvious material. So there again, um I asked you was that you know was asking for guidance from y'all on that because that's what I've been told by several folks that were involved with some of that. Okay. So um you know if so do we with the grants do we need to do that still? Was that ever in the plan? That was kind of my question there. Um um as far as I'm concerned it was never in the plan. It was in the very beginning stages of this um of this project. Um, you know, for years we've talked about continuing continuing the sidewalk on every access all the way up to the wooden walkways, whether it was ADA or not. Right.

Um, I think it's a great idea. Sure. Um, but as far as um required maybe, yeah, you're looking for I I don't know that for a fact. Um, that's something that we can obviously talk with some engineers. We have a different engineer that maintains our own Well, and I had been told it it needed to be um that needed to be done as well as there needed to be a handicap spot by that access point. Okay.

So, but like I said there again, I've not seen any documentation of that, but that's what I've been told. Um, so curious and I was also told a ranking of when certain streets were going to be done their act their their boardwalk and that has not came to fruition. But that's why I was initially asking what what when people ask me where do they where's the street fall on the schedule and um and you may want to also send that to the rest of council um so they can view that as well. That document Vicki just sent me when I asked about it. Um, I'm obviously asked that a lot because as y'all know these pictures you shared, there are many beach accesses like that where the sand is just every time the wind blows it's caving in and residents are messaging me, why isn't this cleaned up? And I know y'all are out there doing it, but it it every day it can just get back that way where you can't really walk up it and then the

the plyboard I call it on the sides, you know, it's it's like the plyboard and the decking stops here and the sand's up to here. So it just caves right back over. Yes, ma'am. Um if there is a if we do get those ranked or rated, I think that could be also helpful to have a plan going forward how we attack that. Sure. And thank you for bringing that up because I've been on some email threads um asking the question and folks telling us that this was required and why are you not doing it? So um I don't think you're asking too many questions. It's good. I mean, you're asking

I mean, people are hearing us and and they know that they've sent us emails. They know they've called us. Now, they can hear from you that that was not required. And I I think that that's good that that now that now we all know. Thank you for asking that. Right. The um question about the beach erosion. Yes, ma'am. Um before you had said you had some quotes and it didn't include all the labor. just does this is a final turnkey price. Uh I it's not 100%. It's not 100%. Um what I have done is th the last price we got for last year. I've actually tacked on 10% to that to make it and that was pretty close.

Those those numbers were with labor, equipment, material, everything. Um any other questions about that? Sorry. Thank you. Hey M Matt, go back to the way you have those up there is is like seventh the worst and 18th and 32nd. I just want to make sure. Yes, sir. Okay. Yeah. Um 18th Street for example, it is uh fully engulfed in a in a dune. Um you really if it fills in um it's really hard to walk out there. You're walking up three and a half, four feet of sand to just get onto the beach itself.

It stops right in the middle of the dune. All right, community center. Um, so with limited space for storage, as you all know, for us especially, um, we've actually looked at, um, since we've purchased the community center a few years ago, um, we looked at using that as a layown storage yard, not only for our department, but for other departments as needed. Um, it's a sixoot double panel wooden fence. um two entry points, entry exit points, one at the front, one at the back. Um we actually do have two quotes for that. Um so far, um one of them is uh $17,794. And I apologize for not having it on there. Um and then that's with no warranty. The other one is $32,000. It's a minimum of 15-year warranty for termite and rot. and then a three-year worksmanship warranty as well. So that's the difference in price. One comes with a warranty, one essentially does not.

Can you say those one more time? Because I think the prices Yeah. So the first the first option is $17,794 with no warranty. And the second one is 32,000 minimum 15-year warranty um on termite and rot and then a three-year mark um workmanship warranty. What's that second price? 32,000. You know, the community center was donated to us by the sunset. What is it? Seaside C. Yeah. Sea trails HOA. Um, and I'm sure you want this fence to I mean, they gave it to us, right?

But we still want to honor the way that it looks and if we start putting equipment there is we don't want it to look like a junkyard. So, is the fence there to preserve that look so that we're because they gave it to us. Yes, ma'am. We don't want to have something and then it looks like a junkyard over there. the fence will be tall enough where they the folks that are living in that area when they're coming in and out of their development they will not see correct an eyesore right okay that was the purpose of this and also for safety security yes ma'am mainly for us is our our trailers our bigger trailers that we would need storage for instead of them being in the parking lot next door

there'll be other items there that will be stored yes there can be um whether it's police department um equipment or um the fire department equipment. It can be utilized department. Do we have camera system there to watch it or I don't believe there's one on the backside. No, there

there's no camera there now. Um but the the previous administration had got a quote to fence in part of our parking lot here at this building where you can see a bunch of unsightly stuff as you travel to the beach down Sunset Boulevard. And we thought we have this, this is a big lot over there. And if we can preserve the way that looks for the neighbors that are around the community center by this double panel wood fence, take some of this stuff out of the parking lot here and move it there. It won't be visible. Traffic volume down Station Trail is not as great as Sunset Boulevard. And we can clean up this lot and put some of that stuff here. Um, cameras Uh, we could ask Allan to or our it to uh quote something out, something we didn't think of, but it would be behind a lot

and stay there. And we probably never want to expand back toward there because of the way that that building is constructed. Um, it's not um, I'm going to say buildable to build out behind that. So, I guess we need to think about that. we would not be building back out there. It's It's not suitable to do that. So, that's that area that's out there is just really sitting there looking pretty and we're trying to put the fence around it to preserve our equipment. Yes, ma'am.

And I think um if you could send us a photo of the exact fence that's going to be put out there in the gate so we can see it, what it's going to look like. And then um it's 6 feet tall. So you're they still could possibly see things that are above I mean some of that equipment is going to be taller than six foot. Right. Right. It all depends on what we put out there. Yeah. Um obviously if we put a bathroom trailer out there then yeah they're going to see over. But if it's our typical trailers and some pipe um then they will not be able to see any of that. But there wouldn't be any smells out there, anything like that or Absolutely not. Okay. Not created by us.

Okay. Well, good. Um well because I think we need to also have that put up on the website with your stuff um that you've submitted so that residents can see it out there when they look. Absolutely. Okay.

All right. So next area is also the community center. Um we were asked to kind of get some quotes together for a um paving the community center parking lot. We have it broke up into two sections. We have we have reached out to multiple contractors and have only had one come back and meet us out there and also give us a quote. So, this is what we're basing our numbers off of. Um, but I have it I have it broken up into two sections. Like I said, the red section is the entrance off of Sea Trail U Station Trail. And, um, for the front part of it would be just right at $25,000, $24,980. Um, and what that would be is the removal of the rock that's there now down to uh six inches, put a structural base in there, road base, and then overlay it with 2 in of asphalt. Um, it would be striped obviously. They would keep the six handicap spots in the front that are currently there, parking bumpers, and then on the side section um up to the end of the building and potentially the fence would be the other section of asphalt and that totals $16,890. Um again they would have to um grub out the vegetation, put a road base in and overlay it with asphalt 2 in um again with the striping of the parking spaces and um the parking bumpers.

So is it 42,000 to do all of it? Yes, ma'am. And it's uneven now. It is. And we worry about people tripping on because it's dangerous and it's uneven. $42,000 is a lot of money. It is. Another thing, if you look at this map, the way we've when we have events down there and when we have, you know, even just like we just had the voting, if you if you only pave this part, there's so much property there that has in the past been where they pulled part, it's going to narrow it off a lot right there. If we go into this, so

this this is something I personally would say is not a big need, right? I mean, the this it's I know once y'all start going in there with the trailers and all that is going to put a little more traction there, but for the price right now and the usage, the way we've got this thing going until we decide exactly if we're going to be able to base it more community activities and things like that, right? I just see a lot of parking is going to be cut down. A lot of area is going to be cut down. That's if you put the pavement there, then this of course we wouldn't want them putting out the grass. That's going to cut those numbers down. And and as far as necessities, I think this in my opinion only. I just don't see this as a necessity going into this year right now. Okay.

Maybe down the future when we do have the money or something, but as far as this, I think this would be one that I I personally could say, let's not do this right now. And on that also note I I kind of share that same concern depending on I understand the reasoning but um for various reasons for safety for people especially going to vote. I know a lot of people it was hard for them to get across on that gravel there. Um but we had a meeting with an architect and he had mentioned there was an he had concerns about us being able to pave that. So, has this been looked at to see if we have enough area to be able to pave it? Has this been ran through proper channels to make sure it could be paved? Um,

what Christiey's talking about is when we met with two by two by two and um Doug, I can't remember his name, but the architect that did the drawing of all all the community center could have looked like. Yes. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Arnold. Um, said just what she said. But we did meet two by two by two in the meeting that we were in said that I don't know if they Mr. Arnold and Mr. Braum and Mayor Phillips if they mentioned that to you but we were concerned um that the ratio is not going to be right and now we're seeing it here.

Yeah. He told us it was not he did not believe it was an option to do paving there is what he had stated. So whether that like I said I don't know if that's just didn't been looked into to that level of detail. I believe you're referring to the imperous surface of the the lots, right? So, it's 45% in our town ordinance. Um it's aotted impervious surface um the total lot. So, with this is the way it's cut right now. We would have the ability to put the um impervious surface in there, which is the pavement. Um we would have to mitigate that with storm water, of course. So, he mentioned that as well. the the

I didn't put the price in there because that is actually something we can do inhouse minimal cost we have the equipment we have the personnel to do that there's not many utilities in the way but again it's an added expenditure so well it is pricey and we're not using the community center that much would make it look nicer it would reduce people you know tripping but I'm with you too it is pricey right now. Um, but I'm glad we're looking at to see how much it was because I know we've talked about it. Um, it was important for us to know how much it it will cost. Absolutely.

So, it's $42,000 plus your labor for the storm water mitigation. And I think as we as the budget more, you know, solidifies, we'll know more where we'll know after today some more and we know currently, but we'll later know where we are. I think the the hope of this council is eventually that this building will be used for more community events to have things because we have an active community and if we can get things going down there, then this would be something that we can justify in the future to make sure it is nice and and and good for if we have enough events going on that that's actually serving our community, not just voting for the county or whatever, you know.

Absolutely. And hopefully that'll be something. Yeah. And there's different options we can look into as well in the future. So, um the next thing is uh the gazebo and streetscape street lights. Um so, if you driven onto the island at night or early in the morning, you've noticed that there are a lot of street lights that are out that are owned by the town.

Um decorative lights. There are 21 lights altogether. um 17 on Sunset Boulevard, four double headlights inside the gazebo parking lot itself. Um of those 12 of the lights are currently not working. Um so nine of them obviously are. So what Brunswick Electric has told us in email is that the lights that are no longer working since they do not have the parts cannot obtain the parts to replace them and fix them. they would replace these poles at no cost to the town. Um, and then thereafter the monthly charge for electricity for the poles would be $14 a month if it's a single head. If it's a double head, obviously it's doubled, so it's $28 a month. Um, to keep a consistent look, um, we're recommending that we would replace all the lights, um, which is nine lights that are currently working. Um, so you're looking at $100 per pole, so $900. Again, thereafter it's the $14 a month for electricity or $28. So we can we can obviously go and replace the ones that are out, but then you're having different look.

We like a consistent look. We've already you Everything on Main Street is already what these lights would be. So you're keeping that consistent look all throughout the island. So I guess what we're asking is for us to pursue the change of street. Absolutely. Yeah. And which options can we pick? Any of these? You can. Okay. Um again with with the different options you're looking at different money cost associated with them per month. Yeah. Are there other options we can also explore? Those are what Brunswick Electric gave us. I think there were four different options altogether.

Okay. Do they have I think you know here we go with the girls. Um but do we have something like maybe a nautical look? Um can you at least ask them something more nautical looking? Well, even the decorative light, we don't really see the rest of it. So, we need to see what it looks like. Um we need some more info. Let's put it that way. Yeah. It's going to be because ours some of ours now are very um nice lights. I hate they can't just replace the bulbs, you know, but they um Right. Guess we um and then also too with those lights, you're looking at obviously the cost a month going up in electricity, right?

As opposed to the 14th. Um one other thing I I don't we don't want the boulevard light, I guess, is what I'm getting at. We don't want the interstate lights, right? Look, I guess you're talking about the silver pole. Yeah. Okay. Well, we don't want it, Mr. Arnold. Mr. Do y'all like that look? Y'all like the more classy look with the Okay. So, another option, uh, again, I don't have this on here, but it was something I thought about last second was, you know, last year we had, um, we had bought two solar lights.

Um, we staged one at the wildlife parking down by the boat ramp and then one by the, um, gazebo um, on the island. Um, they've worked out very well for us. 365 days a year it's got light um obviously there's an upfront cost but thereafter there's there's nothing very minimal um maintenance on them um so I I don't have the numbers but I just kind of want to throw that out there and see if you guys would be even interested in doing that again is the upfront cost is what's going to get us yeah yeah over time

you're you're going to be saving money but it will cost it'll take a while to to get that money and see where it's saving, but I'm just throwing throwing out the look of the I don't know. They can change. They have different looks. Okay. Maybe send us some options that could be similar to what different or a nice look and you could look at them and cost so we can We just got the two we have now are just generic. Yeah. Looks they have different heads that change out. See if electric could tell you where these lights are located at in Brunswick County. Look at Great idea. Great idea. I have some in my development so I can Okay. Yeah, good. That'd be perfect.

And do we The the biggest thing is is the wattage coming off of them and the looms is going to be the same. Like if we if we didn't pick this decorative light, but we we chose this one. Mhm. You know, this one here. Mhm. It's going to be the same as and it's the light is going to broadcast the same as far as you know what we're looking for, all that. Okay. Just making sure. Yeah. Because there's definitely lighting issue. I mean, you got there's a lot and the purple light syndrome as well. Oh yeah, that too nationwide though.

Um, so the last thing is more of a discussion for you all. Um, we currently have a position. It's a part-time position. It's a roll card attendant. Um, this service from my understanding has been provided to the town for at least 10 to 12 years, not mistaken. Um, and what it is is that, uh, when the trash is, um, picked up on Wednesdays, um, the next day we come out, part-time employee comes out and they roll all the trash cans back, the recycling bins back, and then again on Saturday, um, trash is picked up on the island. And then on Sunday, our part-time employee comes in and rolls them all back again. And this is provided to the island and seaside station only. Um, again, it's been it's been a service for at least 10 to 12 years. And it could go back further. I I don't know. Um but we kind of wanted to get your input as to what you guys are thinking. Um there are a couple other um areas u along the coast that do provide the service and don't provide the service. Um Ocean does. They pick them up the same day. I believe Holden Beach does. So um and then there's a couple that like I said they don't provide that service. it's the responsibility of the homeowner or the um rental company to move those back. So, it's just more of a discussion point for you all if you'd like to continue this or

Well, I remember when it started and it was basically um people were at Seaside Station were not here on I think it was at that time it might not even been Wednesday pickup but whatever day it was they were second this was their second home and they left traditionally on Sunday and then they had to work with their neighbor. Hey, can you get my trash can out? So, so the counselor at the time said, you know, it's a good idea to to do that. So, it's get helping them. And then on the island, you know, we have so many rentals um that, you know, you're renting a house, the last thing you're going to do on Saturday is get the trash can out, unless you're penalized. And then, of course, you probably would get the trash can out. I just worry if we if we don't continue, what's that going to do to our um parking out there?

But but I don't like that we're providing a service to one group of people and we're not providing a service to another group of people. That that's not fair. Yeah. Um and I don't know if there's a way that we can work with the the rental agencies to say, "Hey, you all need to manage this." I mean, because it's their trash can. Um, in here I saw it's $12,000 that we're approximately. Yes, ma'am. And then that's a seasonal thing. They do they do it they do it all year. They do it all year. The seasonal part is April 1st through October 31st where there's a second pickup on the island, right? Um but

January through December, they do pick them up um every they roll them back every week. Um, and then they also come in and during those times of year they'll help our department with um, lighter items take care of. I got a question. Is it everybody at Seaside Station? Like is it all the way to the waterway that we're doing this? Is it sporadic homes or are we providing this for every home over there? It's every home. Every home. Shoreline Woods, Seaside Station. So they don't have to take their trash can from the street back to their property like everybody else. That's whether they're a renter or not. So full-time residents, the fulltime people too in two portions out there, two portions of the town only. Yeah, it doesn't.

But most of them probably roll it back because I mean that's little exercise. I thankfully haven't had to do that only but once. So I don't know. Oh, okay. Um but I mean it's the same thing when we're mowing the rideways and everything as well. You know, there's full-time residents out there that they'll just wait for us to mow. So, it's a section of their their their property that they don't have to mow. So, yeah. I mean, I'm not saying every property owner is that way, but they may just know, okay, well, Sunset Beach provides a service. I'm going to take advantage of it. So, where where all do we mow? Same two places. Every So, we do mow everywhere, but we only push the cans back in two places. We mow everywhere else.

Sea trail. Well, Sea Trail and Sand Piper and things of that nature. We don't We don't touch those, but You don't mow there? No. So where do we when you're Okay, we're talking about two different things. We don't have to worry about mowing. We don't have to worry about mowing at all. The roll cart. Yeah, the roll carts. So

because like I've I've have property in Seaside Station on the island. So I assume the whole town was done that way because I've I've honestly always felt like it was weird that a property owner is not responsible to roll their can back because what the town person does is rolls it into the yard and away from the right of the rideway basically. So then it's still got to be rolled the rest of the way to wherever they store it. Um I um so to me um I assumed it was done townwide. To me, I also don't think it should just be to certain areas of town if we're doing it. Um

I also feel like if you're a property owner, you're your responsibility is take your trash out and take it back. Now, that may mean if you're not able to, maybe there's an, you know, a way that a person that has an issue could have a service or something like that or ask a neighbor. I know people are out of town. You ask your neighbor or you, you know, you work that way. To me, it's kind of taking care of your property and your stuff. Um,

so I was shocked to hear it was just for part of it. Um I do feel like on the island due to the parking situation if they're not up but if we have a code enforcement person to me is that's something that that's their responsibility. If a property owner whether it's really files to the property owner if they rent then they're rent they could engage their rental company or their rental service or an outside service to assist with that like they do many things but if not it's your responsibility on that property to roll yours in. If not, to me it to me it really becomes a code issue if it's not rolled back. But what what does the code truly say on that? I'm not sure. Yeah. There's an ordinance for it.

Yeah, exactly. But to me, um you know, so uh you know, so does the ordinance say they need to return their trash can back. Is that what the ordinance say? It says can't be in the rightway for I think it's more than two days prior. Two days after or something. Yeah. And then the trash pickup service, they have a waiver that if you are handicapped or um can't get out there, they have a waiver service that you can fill out a waiver. Like you got to maybe show a doctor's excuse or doctor's note to say um that you have a handicapping condition that you can't get your trash can back, which is very good that they provide that. But they do provide that to people that can't do it.

Mhm. Hey Matt, on page 36 you have these two numbers here 1513 and 929 island and seaside station. That's almost 2500. It is. And then when I look at page 42 for instance like the month of July it shows 1652. Mhm. So what's the the difference there? So some of those are duplexes. Okay. um which will obviously when we counted them it was the structures themselves but within that there's duplexes involved in that right so um the 1600 is might be a duplex all right I see what you're saying okay

I definitely think if it changed there would need to be education and time for communication to go out to property owners and to the rental agencies to Um, I don't feel like if there's that many I mean in July there's 1,700 and trash and I mean there's over 2,000 cans rolled in by May I recommend something? Yes.

Um, if you're if you're thinking about doing this at all, even cutting the position in general. Um, we're already in March. I mean, season's coming on pretty quick, right? Um why not almost make a decision to where the fall time after October 31st essentially right you say okay the service is no longer right you give folks enough time to say renters whoever hey okay we're getting rid of this service this season we'll have it but that way they at least have time to you have six months to prepare you know it's going away that's just a recommendation obviously I think that's Yeah, something

would be four months. If we start a budget July July 1st, we would have four months till October to pay for it. So, a third would that be? Yeah. A third of,400 uh 14,000 would be what? Three or $4,000. And my math is

I mean, or you can just start January 1, say, "Hey, this is no longer providing a service." If that's the intent, I'm just throwing a recommendation out there. I I do agree with Miss Bachelor on the communication is key because you know she has property both places where it's um being taken care of and she just was under the presumption that it was being taken care of. Whereas when you told us we were doing this I was like well y'all are not doing that for anywhere else and it's um yeah now we roll our own trash cans. My old say my husband handle does all that. He's he's I think a lot of people do that,

but he I would have you know to me only if someone's out of town but like if I'm going to be out of town ask a neighbor and they do the same for me but some people obviously if this many those are shocking numbers that who's doing this now um one part-time employee. Okay. So that would be a savings in our part-time um for that position. Yes ma'am. Yeah. You know y'all we keep willing it down. We'll have some of these roads paved. How many hours in a day are they actually just doing cart work? Um on average uh like again it all depends on the season. Um we'll we'll take July for example. Yeah. Uh upwards of six or seven hours a day. Okay. It's just one person in one person

town vehicle drives up vehicle. Okay. You mentioned something about mowing. Is this Can we talk about that? If you want to. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have No, that's okay. You mentioned that we're mowing town rightways. Oh, yeah. Tell us what you're mowing.

So, um, we we maintain the town rightaways um and state rideways. We have a contract with the state um to do Sunset Boulevard um Shoreline Drive West. Um it's a it's a small contract. It's enough for us to pay for maintenance on our mowers and everything. Um but we maintain it because if not it would look a little rough as much as they get out here and mow it. Um all of Seaside Station, Shoreline Woods, um and then on the island as well, we mow all that.

So you're not you're mowing the rightway throughout the whole town unless it's an HOA and they so trail or point or Okay. But any other neighborhood or street, you are doing the right away. Yes, ma'am. And is is in those neighborhoods that have HOAs, is that just because they have lawn care people that do it or or do I mean, yes, they they do do it. Okay. Well, I mean, I have I'm mow my own grass and but I also know that it's it's a policy where I live at that, you know, hey, you got to maintain the the easement that they belongs to the town.

Okay. I believe it's like that in the other HOAs, but you know that's So we're talking about the HOAs, Sandpiper, Windfall, Cape, Oster Bay, um Sea Trail. Mhm. All of those you all don't do. Correct. But you're doing in Seaside Station all the way back to the water. Yes. And all the way over to um Seaside Road. that out. Most of the homeowners that I live back here and a lot of those fuss when they do cut them because they have somebody comes in and cuts the grass every week or every two weeks and then y'all come in and sc them down. We have we have a list of ones that we're not allowed to touch. Yes. And say

because of that reason that and then also we got a codes person fixing to come in. So if it gets to where people's not taking care of and it gets to those things that's something that that you know we'll be sending out letters for to handle. Sir, I just don't like providing a benefit for one group of people and not to the the rest. That that's just not fair. Um I don't care what

Yeah. Okay. I My only caveat is the question about this on the island where the right of way is used for paid parking and people's right of way. Um how was that handled? Because to me the town, if you you're using it for paid parking and you've got gravel and crap all out there in the is it in the right away. The DOT right away or the town right away to me the property owner shouldn't have to keep that up. So, how much grass is over there on where you know I'm thinking we've got all this parking people trapsing all over it. Do we have a lot of grass that you're mowing over there? It's a lot of weed eating. Yeah.

Yes. A ton. before obviously the parking areas there was a ton of grass to mow um in the vacant lot they mow a good bit into the vacant lot we ride and then of course majestic oak we mow that that's our biggest area on the island of course um but yeah before uh before the parking um we mowed a great deal it was far less trimming work now it's far more trim work and less mowing yeah that's involved. Okay,

the last good minute break would be great. Are we sorry? Are we hiring the roll card attendant or or not? Because there's a vacant position right now for that. It is vacant right now. It is. Yes, sir. So, if this is something pushed out through through half the year, we're looking at a even if it's going to be cut July one, we're going to have to hire. Yeah. But it's going to be a very short that's not fair to do to somebody that you're going to hire and then say got a job no more. Um, well, we could keep them through the season. I'm sure he could give them because it says they do other work. I mean, I see what you're saying 100%. Do you need them? typically

you know that's like that walcart would be their main responsibility but I'm sure he could find he said it we have whenever we do lighter duty yes worth it so you could tell them it's it's it's going to this point in time and it may be budgeted going forward it may not or so it's in the last budget that's why yes I I think in July and if we extended it you know in half $7,000 to do it through January the 1st is we're not going to do it we are whatever we decide but just to give them an idea the people I guess you've already got people flying just to give them an idea this is a job that may go away at first

yeah and I think it would be good discussion a lot of people will watch this and we've only got two residents here but we have um a lot of people will watch this or look online and read the documents and get we'll get feedback we'll hear from residents on their take on this I'm sure and and just on that part if people are watching um be sure and go into the portal and put your thoughts in there on topic so that we all receive it and it's clearly documented in the minutes of this meeting. That was the commercial right before our break. So, are y'all good going go in as far as going to our

finance officer at at the 7,000 basically just for right now and then this will be something that may phase out. So higher the if it is higher than what you got left for the rest of the year and if it gets through July and then for our new budget going into January we'll just do half and then we can always revisit if it's something that we think we need to keep up. Okay. Yeah. Thank you her number. Thank y'all. Thank all right let's call if I have motion. Hold on. Mayor May think you had good motion just to take break or I'm just I'll make a motion to take a few minutes break. All in favor?

Let's call this meeting back to order. Next up, we'll be going to the fire department. Go ahead, Chief Childris. Good afternoon, mayor and town council. Thank you for having us today. I don't know if it's a good thing to go uh in the middle of the pack here or the first or the last. We'll see. All right. First on the agenda today is Hey, there we go. Uh um multi-year firefighter hiring plan. I'm proposing that we hire three firefighters uh between now and 2031. a multi-year uh plan. Uh and what this would do would give us um four firefighters at each station. Station one and two. As you know, fire station one is staffed with four four personnel and fire station two is at three. Um four firefighters per rig is the preferred minimum uh crew size. Um this is essential for operational effectiveness and safety. Uh, I asked town council to consider this plan to allow um to allow just us to be able to operate a little bit better um and a little bit safer. Um, as you know now, we still have to deal with routine absences such as uh vacation, sick leave, injuries. We do have one firefighter that's currently deployed in the National Guard. Um, we estimate this to be between 275 and 300,000 annually. Um, which includes the retirement benefits, the taxes, insurance, scheduled overtimes. Um, this would take our full-time staff from 24 to 27. Um, NFPA 1710 recommends a minimum of

four personnel on each fire apparatus uh to ensure adequate fire profession, rescue, and emergency medical operations. Uh, this would greatly enhance our ability to meet this standard. Uh, again, that's just a recommendation. Um, this investment uh would align us with the national best practice staffing levels to bolster our operational resilience and ultimately deliver a higher level of uh service to our community. I want to talk a little bit about some current building kind of kind of to build upon this uh and a little bit about a pro the projects that are ongoing in this town as you're aware. Um, and I'll just run through this really quick. We've got Beacon Landing that's opening should be opening up now, which is a a development on Seaside Road 2, multi-story uh condo complexes, uh, 108 total units. Uh, as you know, in the sanctuary building is ongoing. That's going to be a total of 363 units uh, with around 90 something already built. Now, um, goals landing in Seat Trail, um, 93 units, 65ish, and I could be plus or minus depending on how many they've got done this week. Around 65 already built. Um, Jaguars Layer off of Old Georgetown, that's another 200 units um, with 125 approximately already built. and some projects that are in the works now uh as you know happening in uh the towns at seaside the villas uh they're getting approval for another uh 80 units um Pelican Reserve that's going big time um Luminina Fairways Heron Point and Angel Trace Logan Homes complex is coming. So a lot of building going on and coming up

in our in our very next future over the next couple of years. Richard, regarding those new developments, what kind of expected revenue do you see coming in from the fire um on those? Um

I wish I had our expected revenues coming in today. Um they actually got an email this morning. They're hopefully next week we'll have those numbers in. Uh last year we were increased by 171,000 if I remember correctly. I in my opinion, I think we're going to be near that this year as well. And um with all this coming up, I think that's going to be pretty solid between 100 and 200,000 uh increasing depending on if things slow down or remain the same. So somewhere around that general uh avenue. And if that's the case, this 5-year project will be, you know, we'll we'll definitely fund that. Some of these that you mentioned are in our ETJ.

I left a couple out that were in the ETJ. Um but along in that um county jurisdiction as we call it um we've got Leedane Gardens that was recently uh in the planning process 525 units. Cadam Glenn. Uh they just completed Hart Ease, Hart's Ease. Uh I want to say Hardies when I say that. Hart's Ease up there by Chadam Glenn. 136 units. And then Sailor Haven uh just outside of our jurisdiction, but that's going to cause a a lot of traffic into Sunset Beach. And that's uh that's right at the intersection Old Georgetown. 300 units per day.

And that's not going to have you a good access. That second access was horrible that they approved at the planning board county planning board meeting. Horrible. Again, that's not in our fire jurisdiction. But still, you're going to be going there if a fire happens. We're going to be going and and that's going to be that's going to make tough work in that general area. So, Sailor Haven is not in our fire district. I mean, we know it's in the ETJ. It's not in the ETJ. Not in the ETJ. Okay. So, that will be Carolina Shores, Calabash, uh, Griet Town. Gryet Town will take care of that. Yes, ma'am. And then we just provide mutual aid to that. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.

But where we're located, would we be the first? Would you likely be the first trucks to arrive there? That's what I'm thinking. You're the closest station to it by far. Kind of crazy the lines. It is, you know, to really all of these that you mentioned, our fire engines will be the first. Our guys will be the first to get there. Definitely. Definitely. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Yeah. I guess when if you could email us that list because I don't think that's in our packet. You got it. Yeah. And then um when you do get those revenue estimates, that would be great.

And uh again, some of the numbers and uh um they aren't exact. U I'd have to get with Carrie to give you exact numbers on how many homes are already been. This is just a good rough estimate. That way we don't miss something because there's

moving on. Um, I'd like to talk about the salary step advancements. Um, in 2025, town council approved a salary step program for all Sunset Beach employees that u measures uh that has been instrumental in fostering professional growth for growth for our firefighters and encouraging them to pursue training, advanced degrees, and personal development. As a direct result, many of our staff members have already obtained or working towards the required degrees or certifications that qualify them for the new salary steps. Um $51,081 is the estimated um anticipated salary increase that um if they reach that between now and July 1, they would u um be rewarded for that incentivized. Excuse me. I want to ask about that. Um,

just for clarification because I'm trying to wrap my head around this. You hire somebody, they go through the step program. Um, and each year you have to ask for that amount of money, that chunk of money that they may have earned that certificate way back when. They could like they could have earned that they could have earned that step up. They could have earned that in August or September. And they have to wait till the next July one to get paid on that. Is that a good thing that we have in our town? I mean, I just just asking the question. Don't want to stand step in a landmine, but it just that's odd to me.

It is odd. And we're changing that. Oh. So the previous administration wanted when when when the police and fire began working on the step programs and then it expanded to other departments for me and I know I don't want to speak for the fire chief but I assume that's similar for him. If I want to hire somebody that comes wants to come to Sunset Beach that has 10 years of experience. They're an instructor. They're they have a lot of a lot of talent that they can bring to the town. But I say I can only offer you base. Yeah, you're worth more. and our STEP program says you're worth more, but here you are in August. I'll pay you for what you're worth July of the next fiscal year. That's not fair, right?

And when this was built, our intention was we need to to incentivize people with talent that want to come work in Sunset Beach. Now, I can't say you're going to take a pay cut, your family's going to struggle for a year, but in a year I'll make it whole. Um, so I've worked with the finance officer already looking forward to FY27 where she's going to put a line in that's basically going to give us an additional body funding for an additional body. We're not going to hire somebody, but we'll have that money there. So when somebody reaches a salary step, we don't wait until the next fiscal year to have them recognize that incentive. Likewise, if we have somebody that leaves and we are able to find somebody that can bring talent to Sunset Beach, we're gonna be able to pay for that talent immediately.

Thank you. I love that. Yes, I I do too. And and stepping on that, we have we have quite a few. It's depending a little bit of it depends on your anniversary date. So, a couple of our steps when a firefighter comes in and say we hire them at fire level one, well, they might get hired at July 15th. So they they hit their their three-year mark to be able to go to fire level two, but they hit it 15 days after budget is is complete. So I think that would completely address that in that in that case. Very good. And and Richard on the um on the multi-year hiring plan,

is that included in that person in here or would that be another person? So, another person that is in budget, an extra person for fire and police is budgeted, right? It'll be in the personnel line, right? It'll be in the personnel line for each individual department. It's not included in that figure. Okay. That he has here. That figure is for the employees that have reached a step in the previous Gotcha. fiscal year.

Moving on. Um I have an item in here um communication equipment. Um this project uh directly advances our mission by ensuring that uh every vehicle is equipped with at least two portable radios. Uh we have a cachet of portable radios. So every vehicle has a mobile radio and a mobile radio is in installed in the vehicle and then um the goal is to have at least two portables on every rig. Um and as you know that includes um the beach vehicles as well. So we've got um two vehicles out there working. We have three in the inventory but two vehicles working on the beach. Um we operate on many different channels. So we operate on what we call the fire channel and we operate on um a tax channel which is operation channel. And then when we're on the beach we operate on a what we call the beach channel. So there's three different radios. So, at times, uh, DC and I or any of our people are having two radios in each hand just to be able to communicate. Um, we try to make that better as much as we can, but it's imperative we get two radios, two portable radios in every vehicle. Um, and so this project's $29,860. Um, it would outfit every vehicle we have with two portable radios. Uh, and this could be um all this year or we could split it up 15,000 this year and 15,000 the next would would be okay. There is one mobile radio included in this and that is um one mobile radio for the uh boat. Uh not the skiff, the the larger boat we have. Um we really need a mobile radio. It's a little bit better communications because when we're going down the waterway or the ocean, it's kind of tough to hear a portable radio. So, one permanently mounted there would be would be for the best. Again, this is state contract pricing. Um,

and like I said, that can be definitely be split into a two-year project. We would be okay with that. Before we get too far, do we want to is it the pleasure of the board to give a consensus as we go or do you want to recap at the end so that he has some direction?

It's a necessity. It's what? It's a necessity. What? It's needed. I'm talking about the radius. Is that what we're talking about? You want a consensus on that? touched on three topics and I don't know from the first presentation if you're asking for any personnel this year. I know you mentioned a five-year plan by 2031 starting from this year for the next five years. So, as long as they understand what the ask is, we have three items that he's presented so far.

Okay, we got what you said. So, you want us to take the first item um which is the hiring plan. um kind of hard for us to commit to five years when we three have a four-year term. These two have a two-year term. I think I would like to see our expected revenue increases, what those are going to be to also see what dollars and I think once we get from um finance where we are with everybody's requests. I think it'll give us a bigger picture of right now where I mean this these details are just popped up last night for us to even see. So, we need I feel like that type of ticket item we need to um the qu the one question I had and you know I know we have spoken we spoke the other week and um

but with the the I know you were wanting to have you've got four at station one you you've got three at station two and I know the new standards are four

at each one. Um, a little more clarification on when there are different levels of personnel there. I know you referred to them as crew today, but there's there's different levels of I guess I would say man for most people management within the fire system. I I guess to me to me and since some residents don't understand why someone else can't hop on that that rig or truck or whatever or why they can't meet there if they're there because um if you could elaborate on that a little bit the need for that. I think that may be helpful. Um

definitely the the goal is to have uh four people on each rig and that crew operates together. They're on one rig. They arrive at the same time. They're able to handle a lot of a lot of various emergencies. You know, we respond I consider us a allhazards department because we respond to everything, vehicle crashes, uh structure fires, um severe weather, anything like that. And to keep that crew integrity is the overall goal. So, they're able to fix those emergencies as quickly as possible. Um the main goal is when there's a fire they try to make a rescue, you know. So if somebody's in in a house and they need to get pulled out that's obviously that's why we're here, you know, that's uh that's our priority there. So uh the more people we can have on that truck, the better when they when they get there. Um

specifically tell us who is on the truck. So let me make sure I got this right before you answer. Okay. You got four people on a shift and then it's fire station one. Fire station two, you have three people on the shift. At fire station one, the four people are there and you have yourself, the deputy chief and a captain. So you have seven people there. And I think our question is what exactly is everybody doing? Okay. And why do we not shift some people over to station two?

Gotcha. Understand. Understand. Um well, Captain Brown, let's talk about him first. He's um you know, in the summertime he's on and off the beach. Um in the winter time, he's doing various other assignments as well. U we can definitely move him out to station two in the wintertime and let him operate some of that, but typically his duties are mostly administrative versus, you know, a shift employee. Um at station one, let me backtrack that a little bit and go go a little further in detail. So, um on the ladder truck, which is station one, there's a captain, uh and three firefighters. Um he's responsible for station one and station two. Uh at station two, there's a lieutenant and two firefighters. So, that is the crew bosses as as we call it in there. Um myself, deputy chief, we're at station one. Our office is at station one. uh we're a little bit back and forth between all stations uh in various different avenues of of our job assignments. So um again, Captain Brown spends a lot of time off and on the beach and that's um um depending on when Easter falls till October. Um so we could definitely put him out there some in the in the summer, but it wouldn't be a daily basis. And then he's again Monday through Friday 8 to 5 type assignment there. So again at night time it would be you know

the other captain 8 to 5 or is I I don't know this individual. All the the crews are are 48.96. So they're 24hour employees. They're there around the clock. So this captain though you said works 8 to 5. I'm I'm speaking of Captain Brown. Captain Brown over the Okay. of the beach res beach rescue in the beach in the beach in the other season when he's not doing that. That's right. Why could he not be a fireman and be one of the, you know, you said you have the captain and you have the other ranks that come.

Is there a reason? I mean, I'm asking because I just don't know. I'm not picking on anybody. I just I just don't know. 100%. and so explain 100%. So, uh that could be an option for us. Uh um let allow him to do his beach services in the summer months or or things like that and take him back to a um shift employee as we said in the winter time. The reason why I'm asking is that seems like the the individual that does on the police and I know it's different. Mhm. that individual is over the code and then during the other time that individual has a regular I mean I might be wrong but it seems like that individual has a regular shift

and it seems like we could be more balanced with the same I know your functions are different but I I' I don't know how you all feel about this. I I don't want it to be just I just throwing this out and you said you could do it. Do you all like that option? Well, I see what you're saying, but what are you going to do? What what are they going to do at station two when Captain Brown then goes back to doing spending the his days doing beach patrol? They're short three pe They're short a person then. Think it's just the fill in during that season when

I mean I know, but I'm saying he's so he he's either going to be on the beach like they say he's doing or he's going to be at station two. So, you know, where where's he gonna he's got to supervise the people that are on the island during the the season only. Right. Right. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Right. So, so my point being is we're shorter person. We're back to being where we are today. Let me ask you this on that. I I see exactly what you say. Part-time. How many part-time guys we got? I've got six part- timers. Is this something that in the summer months we could have a part-time guy? Part-time guys working there?

Definitely. make sure we do have that. I mean, whereas if you know, if you've got six part-times and you you know, Mr. Mr. Brown's doing his job in the in the summer season, is that something we could put the part-time guys where we would ensure that we always had four there? That's what we try to do now. That's what you try to do. That's what we try to do now. Okay. Yep. Mhm. Anytime there's a opening, we try to get the So, you normally have four at station two. No. No. No. So, you just have three there. What I mean by that is when somebody's off work um sick or off sick, something like that would work a part-time. So that that fourth to keep four people at station.

And I guess what I was getting at initially was um trying to understand the three at station two. It seems we have seven or eight or nine depending on I know there's other personnel. I don't understand who can fight a fire. Does that make sense? like who's not up the chain that they no longer do fires is what I guess I'm getting at to be bluntly. Um where to me if if a true fire is taking place

to me it should be all hands on deck happening and I assume it is. So to me you're going to meet that four no problem no matter what. Um, to me, if it's a a fall or a first aid type of call, I know we've talked about to me, why does our fire truck and four people need to go there? To me personally, I don't feel like that needs to happen, especially when the call comes in if they say it's a fall or

you know, like I said, just a perception. Our fire trucks are very expensive. They're costly. We don't need to add extra wear and tear on them. Um, but that's another story. Um just trying to understand though what staffing can be counted as fighting a fire or on the truck because it seems a lot of others go in other trucks. Trying to better understand that because after we talk What do you mean other trucks? Well expand on what you mean by that. I I guess they're pick part time paid on paid on call staff. I think

well I was thinking of the not them. I was thinking of the full-time people that are working. There's other trucks like y'all. I don't know what the other captains or other lieutenants are. They on the fire truck or they separate truck. So you two get on the fire truck? No. When there when there's a fire, you as a fire chief and you as the deputy chief, what how do y'all arrive at the fire? So we drive our personal or assigned vehicle to the fire. So y'all do What about the other? What about the captains?

So So typically uh between one of us, we do various things. you know, if if it's if all three of us are at the station, one of us sometimes gets on the fire truck. It's rare that there's all three of our vehicles on on the scene at the same time. Um, so let me backtrack some of that thought process there. Uh, uh, we get the most credit for our from the Department of Insurance, uh, for paid staff. So, when we get rated and they come in every 5 years and do a rating, um it's the paid 24-hour staff that we get it, the full-time staff and and we're included in that as well. Um the paid on call staff, we're given a percentage of that. So, we need to have them on the roster. We do get credit for them, but um DC, you might have to help me out on this. They're they're a percentage of what a full-time uh firefighter would be just because they're on on duty 20 receiving. Let's say there's seven at station one and there's three at station two. Is that somewhat accurate typically

today? Yes. Yeah. And I know there's like a fire marshall and there's an admin too there. So, um but if a fire call comes in then you also have how many folks are on call that are depending if they're in the area. So along with that six part- timerrs typically one of those would come back cuz they live close they're in the jurisdiction. Uh and then one to four from the paid on call staff. Okay. So that would be seven. So who's on call? Like let's say if a fire happened right now, how many are on call where like they're supposed to be in that area? So nobody. No one's no one's assigned to being on call. So uh

Oh, I thought you said they were before. No, they're typically always Okay. Always are. Uh when I say paid on call, uh firefighters, they live in the fire district. Uh they respond from home from whatever they're doing. So unless they're out of town or something like that, typically they're coming back to any type of major event in the town. So they get a page, a phone call. How do they get they get they we all carry pagers. They get a page, they come back, and it's called paid on call. Paid on call. So if if today I'm a firefighter and today's my paid on you have a special paid on call day, right? No, no, you do not. So what do you do when everybody's paid on call but they are not available? What what do we do?

They don't come. So mutual aid comes. So mutual aid mutual aid still comes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. There's there t typically we get at least four uh uh at the same time. Um, I'm going to ask a question and please don't think I'm being petty. Mhm. Why are you two not on the fire truck? Is it not enough room on the fire truck? So, typically um our our job is incident command. So, we have uh certain assignments on a fire ground. Okay.

So, uh um whoever arrives on the scene first. So, we're we're right here today. If we're in our office, a fire comes out, one of our vehicles needs to be in the front yard of that home that's under that's on fire, uh, as close as possible. Uh, sometimes if it's a larger house, it's a big incident, we're we're both sitting in that pickup truck running command, telling people where to go, telling people what to do. That that that's our job. Uh, and Paul Brown, Captain Brown from Beach Rescue, he he does that same assignments if one of ours are out of town. Um, so various of that. Um, if I'm in the front yard, I'm running inc incident command, DC Adams might go to the second floor where the incidents happen and take a alpha bravo command of that incident so he can get a little bit of of a closer view of what's going on.

Thank you for explaining that. I've gotten a lot of calls and emails just wanting to ask that. So, I thought that this would be the appropriate place so that everybody can hear why. cuz you know like Miss Bachelor said people talk about things and and we don't know the answers. I mean we kind of know think we know the answer but we want to hear it from the source. So thanks for allowing me to ask that question.

Yeah. I' I'd ask you not to not not to put us in a position where we're you know uh so so we've got the vehicles we've got my gears in the truck, my tools and everything everything we need to run that incident command. So, um, if we're at the station and our turn gears in the rig or in the vehicle that I drive, that means that call comes out, then we have to run over there, grab everything we need, then go to a fire truck. Uh, that house is burning. So, it's imperative that we get there quickly so we can do our incident command side of things. You know, there's a lot of moving parts when it comes to a house fire. You know, uh, we do utilize mutual aid. Uh again, a goal of ours is if we can handle that incident and not use mutual aid, that that would be the best. Um I think in one of the previous conversations we had as well, you know, um if we're at that house buyer, we've still got to manage the other incident that could be that could come out as well. So, one of those crews that are coming or our paid on call crew that's come back to get that second incident, uh a mutual aid crew, something like that. we've got to put them on standby to take that, you know, heart attack call that may come out next door or another fire, water rescue, whatever it shall be. So, we've got to be ready. So, that's a lot of that's on his and I shoulders to make sure that all that's in the mix. So, and again, that's Monday through Friday. Um, you know, weekends, you know, we're coming back from home and doing the same job. Well, for the position that you're positions you're asking for, I think it's imperative that we do have hard numbers projections.

Um, so that probably needs to be tabled today. Okay. Is there a way that you can look at when you bring us our numbers um how much that is coming from the actual town um properties and then how much is coming from our fire district segregated out so that we can look at that just for so that we we see that. I can.

Um then this that was the first one. Then this the step as Mr. Arnold said um no that was for the I'm sorry the communication equipment. Um we think that's a given. We need to do that and the step we've promised that to the employees. So we need to do that. We cannot take that away from them. Yeah. So we have no concern with that. So, you got direction on three things, and that's what our um administrator was asking for. Uh the radios. That's communication. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's a no-brainer. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, sir. Y So, we're up to the We're on carpet. Carpet.

I'm off track. I'm sorry. I didn't see on the back side here. Yeah.

All right. Moving on to carpet. So, uh um station two carpet is original to the building and it's very little carpet there. It's four bedrooms and one office space uh uh somewhere around 11 or 12 it was installed. Uh doing a little bit of research. It's just good good practice to uh replace that every 5 or 10 years, you know, especially with we're dealing with some contaminated areas and things like that. Um, I did since I've put this together and put it on Catalyst, I did get some quotes back. Uh, I estimated $15,000. I'm not a carpet person, so a little bit better better numbers than that. Uh, LVP, if we upgrade to LVP, uh, that's $6,200. Uh, 62.86. Um, if we do carpet, it's 2474. Uh, that's not carpet squares. That's just regular Mohawk carpet. Um, but

so I'm confused. It's not 15,000. It's not. That was Okay. So, when I presented this, I haven't obtained the quotes for the carpet. That was just a crazy number. I didn't want to undershoot it by any means. So, uh, I just threw 15,000 on there, but it came in way under budget. So, can you give those numbers again, please? Yeah. Um, okay. So for the um LVP, so that's replacing those four rooms with LVP is 62.86. Okay. And for the carpet, it's 2474. When you think about that plank that I mean that's like it's not carpet, it's the plank.

Mhm. Is does that have a longer longevity? It does than a carpet. And we know that carpet um you spill something on it, it's hard to get it out. We also know that captures dust where the plank you can just mop it off and it's it's good to go. Any idea what the Any idea what you all would rather have? I'd rather have the el. I would too. I think that' be the most thing going forward for the future.

Yeah. Because when they come in, even though I'm sure most of them take their boots off and everything, but just being dirty and all, I mean, we're going to constantly be cleaning carpets and wearing it down. Yeah. The floors, the floors that they got now seem to be lasting a lot longer. So, I think for the long run, it would be worth the investment in that. And that's a station two is uh has tile throughout. So, it's very little area to be that that I think that's a good cost there. And that would take care of us for quite a few years. station one. Uh we had the carpet upgraded last year. Um that would have been a a lot higher number. So, you know, we can touch back back on that in 10 years from now. So,

one question about the flooring. Um I've been told there's moisture problems in that building. Do you feel like there's moisture problems in the building? So, station two, um, you may or may not know that was a a a grant building and it was green and, uh, the we had to build it a certain way. I don't think any of us were ever happy with the design of that building and how it was built and things. Um, they've got it pretty under control now. Um, the the the the issue is the ventilation system. Well, uh, uh, you know about the geothermal heating and air. Uh that's been crazy since that building was instruct uh constructed. Um but the air return system there, I think we've got it under control, but we had a quite a few years there where we didn't have sufficient air return and duct work moisture. Um if you ever look at that building from the road, it's got a metal roof. Um there's no um whatever substrate they use that's connected that's interior from the metal roof. uh that creates some kind of I don't know. So we have problems when it's 100 degrees outside. So So when when it's uh in the 80s 70s this time of year, we're good. But when it's 110 110 degrees outside, we have problem we have problems every summer. Uh the duck work sweats. Um um I'm I'm happy to report though, we've got a town hired a maintenance person. He's been looking at ways we can fix that and things like that. So we're getting better. Well, my only issue is if there's truly still a moisture problem, we probably need to get that fixed before we look at putting LVP in there and mo any moisture in there could become a problem, you know, or or even new carpet for that matter. We need to make sure if that's an issue to look at that would be my take.

I'll I'll follow up with Matt on that. So, you got the plank. We want the plank.

Yes. Thank you. Moving on. This shows up very small. Sorry for that. Um security cameras. Uh um Allen in the back of the room quoted uh security cameras. You know, just trying to uh take care of our area. A little bit of security um for both fire stations. So, what this is is four cameras at each station. Depending uh if if this project's approved, depending on uh when Allen comes out to install those, station one has is a little bit more difficult to put cameras 360. So, we may do three cameras at station two and five cameras at station one, but right now it's currently uh quoted at four cameras at each station. And that's all exterior 24 coverage. Uh the station one cameras would obviously get anybody moving to the public works facilities. Uh front door, back door. Well, maybe not the back doors, but try to get 360 that we feel like we'd have a good uh pretty good uh safety for our employees vehicles and anybody that sneaks around there at night and tries to cause trouble. Um

well, in addition, we have meetings there. Um, and we have employees there and for their protection if something were to happen, it would sure would be nice to have footage. That's right. Um, if we have somebody violating them somehow. So,

that's right. Um, so station one has was uh according to Allan and a lot of this goes way over my head. Uh, we had an upgrade system and the police department used to have camera parts in that building. So, we're set up and ready to take cameras at that that building, but station two would need a a video recorder um for that. So, uh the total projects 3470. Um I would like to depending on uh what the other departments need to do, there is a grant we can try for uh the League of Municipalities. This is something that they're really pushing for and I think Chief Clayars took advantage of that, too. So, this is something we can try to go for the grant as well at some point.

That would be great. Do we need to get consensus on that? Everybody good with cameras? I'm good with that. Good. Yep.

Okay. And lastly, peer signage. I kind of threw this at you last meeting a little bit. So, uh, we've been working on this project for over a year. Um, as I mentioned, uh, earlier in the week, um, we we've been trying to establish a no swim area around the around the pier. Um, we've used two different methods. Uh, our first method was a a base flag system that we filled with water and sand. Um, and we moved it. Again, this is kept at the water's edge, approximately 100 ft from the pier. Um, and as the tide comes in, we drag it back. Uh, that wasn't a great system because as we fill it up with sand or water, um, if we filled it up, it was sometimes too heavy for some of our employees to drag constantly throughout the day. Uh, if we didn't put enough water or sand in it, it would fall over in high winds. So, that wasn't a great system. And we had a lot of complaints there from um the the citizens saying we we were blocking their view. And in essence, it was uh it was about 6 foot high and uh as you know around the pier area gets heavily congested and um we just need a better system. Last year we ordered uh I call them political style sty style signs with the metal post like a um like like it's covering our roads right now. Um we did that. Uh it's a little bit easier for the employees to move but um it's really hard for people to see. So, um, we've went back and forth with what we could do to make this, uh, uh, number one, make our our citizens, visitors see, make it clear, and, um, so we came up with this. Um, and this took a lot of work. I I I definitely got to thank Carrie White because he's dealing with KMA, dealing

with, uh, all the different agencies he has to do. So, we really wanted to make sure we could have approval to do it before we brought it to you guys. Um, on top of this, uh, um, if you've ever heard of the Jack Hillbig Memorial Foundation, they're a local 501c3. Uh, their mission is to prevent drowning. Uh, we've, uh, Captain Brown and I have met with them a couple of times and, um, um, they've partnered with Ocean Oak Island. They've did water safety um boards and things at some various beaches. They've agreed to uh donate us 2,000 on this project if we were choose to go if we agree to putting their logo on this sign. Um but that they're they're a great group. Um and along with this pricing five we need a additional $500 for uh um the marine grade 6x6 post. uh um one of the agencies makes us have the the little stronger post a little more for that u public works to install. So the total cost of this project's 37.87 and that's not including the donation if we so choose for that. Um this would be performed by the the local sign shop in Chaloke. And that's a little um kind of what we came up with designwise. Obviously, um all of that's up for interpretation. Our big concern is a a large uh um red flag swimmer and the words no swimming. Um that's really what we want to see on the flag. though are on the sign. Um the sign dimensions, so everything you see on the screen there, uh it's got to be 8 ft in the ground. Uh it's going to be 7 ft to the bottom of the sign. And then the

actual sign is 5 by3. So it's rather large, but we thought getting it up in the air would create less uh problems there. Getting as high as we can. Um, but that's kind of the design we we came up with. Um, just to make it a little more visually appealing. Uh, that would be placed 100 ft east and west of the pier. Um, and it would be wet during high tide. So, we want to get it as low as possible to the to the actual waves as we can. Um,

so we can give them a fine. I thought Monday night you said that we couldn't enforce that. Not we, but you all couldn't enforce. So, we can we can give them a five $50 fine. We can. It's currently in our ordinance. It's 50. And that's just a sample uh that they put it up there. Um I don't know if that's something we want to do or not, but uh we have an ordinance. We can uh issue a citation for $50 if somebody swims with it. Have you ever issued one department? Has the fire department ever issued one at all? We just adopted this uh two years ago, I think, something like that.

I'm Mr. Arnold, did did you ask about could they enforce somebody being out in the water Monday night? I don't think I did. Uh maybe maybe I did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And what I think what you were referring to is is um we we when I say we, the police department can issue a citation for swimming here to sign. So our ordinance reads here to sign. Um but I think I don't want to put words in your mouth, but uh um if it's a red flag day, we can't say, "Hey, get out of the water." Yeah, that's what I

We can't. I think that's where you're you're going. Um, we can I'm assuming we can make them get out of the water for that or we do. So, when they're swimming within our signs, we do blow our whistle and make them move. So, regardless of what color the sign is, I mean, regardless of what color the flag is, regardless, if you tell them to come out based on that sign, that's when you give them a $50 fine. Again, we've never we've never done that, but we we could we could legally There's an ordinance there that they could be charged.

Fire could give it. No. No. And we're not going to have police stationed on the beach because they're going to be our ambassadors by the presentation. So, really, no one's going to be on the strand to write a ticket. That's right. So, why put it on a sign? Town ordinances. I'm sorry to interrupt, dispatch. But town ordinances could be written by any town employee. Okay. Typically, the police department do all the enforcement, but technically, yeah, but are we going to give them a fine? If we're not going to give them a fine, we either need to give everybody a fine or nobody a fine. I mean, we go picking and choosing. Yeah.

No, my mindset was just not not so much as giving a ticket. You know, I can't say next summer that, you know, uh we won't have to call the police. You know, typically our people once we blow the whistle, they move. Um, you know, maybe this summer we have a problem and somebody just flat out knows and that'll be a, you know, if they can't hear that whistle, those whistles are loud. I'm sure y'all heard them, but uh, that's a call to police. Hey, come out here and help us with this person. The my only mindset with the fine is is again I'm worried a large reason why I'm I think this is a great thing is is that when we leave the beach at that 700 p.m. time frame nobody's out there. Would that fine scare somebody and say I don't want to I don't want to swim illegal. I don't know. I don't know. That's the only thing I was thinking about.

Is it two signs on both sides of the pier? And both of them you said 7 ft and then additional 5T. So from the ground from the sand it's going to be 12 feet all the way up. Is it is that what you mean? What you meant it to be? And then it's the pole has to go 8 ft down into the sand. Yes. Where will this be posted? So it's about it it's hard to to tell you where that's at. Uh um it would be 160 ft from the pier house. Okay.

So there's a there's a radio communication area. I think it's where the surf check cameras are. That's a good thing. But it uh uh it's wet when it's high tide. It's in the water. So it's it's as far as we can possibly make it. And then your flags that are you you'll still have the flags there.

We we will still have our flags in all the current places. Um, we're still uh this doesn't fix the when it's super low tide that's that's there's still going to be some distance between this sign and the and the water edge. So, you know, if you think of a swimmer that's swimming chest deep in the water. Um, I'd still like to put something by the water. We'll probably try something else. U but the more the more rip current signs we can get, the be the better. Lots of little yard sale signs that y'all moved 550 times last year. Not since you presented this to us Monday night. Um I don't know if you all got calls or emails, but I've gotten several. Yeah.

Um about signs about the signs that there we have too many signs out there already that it's I mean it's been a whole host of um responses that too many signs out there already. How is anybody ever going to notice this sign? Well, I guess since it's so big, they will notice it. Um, I mean, is that your strategy is so big that they will notice it? I I'd like for it to be big. Yeah. And then, you know, we have so many other signs out there. Do people even read the signs? It's so many. I mean, how could you? I walked on the beach yesterday just to see how many signs were out there, and I got tired of reading everything. So many signs out there. Y

even walking up the gazebo there. When you walk up the entrance way, there's signs, you know, there's signs there, there's signs when you get on the beach. Um the pier has signs, no swimming by pier, you know, lots of um signs. Um I've received feedback from Monday night's meeting that people are not for this being on the beach just from the aesthetics, from the look. They don't want some big another big sign out there. Um, obviously not everybody knows about this possibility yet, but I've also received um I've not I've not received one from anybody would that would like them. It's not to say I won't, but I haven't thus far. Um,

so um not that I want anybody to ever drown, but but obviously no one does. But um but I think also there is signage out there and if we have at six employees out there during our peak season, we're going to have three police and three fire spread out. Um you know, I don't know if we do. I I know y'all have some because I also walked out there looking again at signs. I know I'm from very familiar with them because I'm out there a lot. But you know there's some little signs that are like laminated like when you come around the turn where there's the baskets to pick up and you do that last turn. Y'all have a little sign right there. Well, that sign if there's people coming, you're not really going to see it. So that sign I would suggest y'all move it somewhere else or it actually needs to be revamped. You know, it's it's cheap. You can make it easily but it it it seen better days. But that one I don't think is in a spot that would even be seen talking about the um you know the rip currents and stuff like that. But um but that's my take on it.

That's what I've heard. I mean it's first heard of it was Monday night. So I don't know that many people know about it yet, but I have heard from people that aren't for it. And it's what about $3500? 30. 3700 I think. 37 for both. Um the laminated sheets that was a trial run we did. So we have a lot of we have a lot of I guess first-time visitors that don't know what the flags mean. Uh so u right and I think education on that is very important because most people do not know the flag system at all. It's great. I I think we've got good feedback on there and if you've come to Sunset Beach uh uh if possible it would be better. Um,

but that was a that was a trial run and maybe one day we'll get we'll ask you to to to upgrade those and make them a little well well and there's several signs like that are eliminated. Some are from public works, some from um the um Ver Island Stewarts about there, you know, and in some are turtle, you know, there's very there's a lot of signage out there when you really walk all looking at everything. But to me, some of those signs need a little faceelift that just have seen better days. But the placement of that one though is not ideal where it's at. So, I'll check it out.

Um, having thought from the signs. I mean, I guess it's just a matter of do we want another sign out there in the name of public safety? Um, do we feel like we have enough signs out there in the name of public safety? I mean, it's not that much money. Um, but it it do we like the look? Do we want another sign out there? I think is and I think this is a different sign. This is one in the sand in I mean this is a pretty intrusive sign for I mean it is it is that's the best way I would know to describe it when you're talking that part of the sign that's gonna

every do you know every person that takes a picture of the pier that sign's going to be there every you know is that is that the look we want for our beautiful beach and our you know another sign we have signs everywhere it seems for everything already at some point I think some common sense has to come into play that um but that's what you think

I'm in favor of it because if it's going to save somebody's life and it's only going to c if if way I'm reading this it's going to $3700 we going to get a $2,000 grant it's only going to cost us $1,700 how they read that

you know what's what's $1700 you bring up a good point about how that that sign is going to be so outstanding and so bold that's going to catch somebody's attention and cuz it's not normal of what other signs are are out there and people will see that and like I say it save somebody it's money well spent there's a lot of things that we might not like to look at but there's a a great benefit to that as far as a from the life saving point of it or harm to someone by them seeing that heating to And that's how I feel about it.

I agree. I'd be for it. Also, they've cut down on beach rescues. Hopefully, possibly save somebody's life. I hope so.

Y'all want to hear what I got to say? Yeah. I'm the one that told her to look into it. Of course we do. Because I I go out there all the time. all I'm out there a good bit and it's constantly people getting in there and I've seen kids it's big my biggest I mean adults are supposed to know better but kids get out there and get caught up and I've seen them get thrown up against those things and get cut up and that's not a good thing and this the the last two years what I've seen out there like I said they had the ones that waited down that was ridiculous I mean and it was constantly moving

and then the ones last year was just I don't know who come up with that idea it looked like yard sale signs. It would it wasn't even running office signs. It it was they were terrible. But it's constantly moving and then they would have to move them up because of the tide and you couldn't even see. It was like sitting in front of a person there and that was the only thing. I guess in the name of safety we should do it. Is there a way that we can look at the signs it maybe making the sign smaller? Not not as but I'm talking about in the what was it? Three by five. So it's five high three. Right. Right. That's right. Mhm.

But you know, when we first talked about this and talked about that thing, we also said something about having a bracket on it where you could put your flags where they could see if it was red or green or yellow

right there at the water cuz it changes. I mean, I've came to the beach and it be green and all of a sudden the water gets crazy and it's red. But, you know, a lot of people don't turn around and pay attention that way where if it was out that way, they would see it. But that's just I mean, there's just a lot of tweaks to it. So, now that you're in my head, because that's where I was going with this, is is there a way you can make it all more concise? Like, we've got signs over there everywhere. Are there signs that we can take out since we've got this larger sign that now we're going to use the flags there? We're going to take those flags. I think that's what you're saying. The flags that you were talking about are so heavy that people didn't want to that because that was your pitch that we wanted to get away from those. That would be the goal. Could you take this monument or whatever it's called sign,

put the flags there, and then maybe clean up some of the other signs because we've got so many signs there out on the beach.

Definitely. I could definitely look at everything out there and try to, you know, you know, one of the neat things we tried to accomplish with this is is um if you look at the little yellow triangles there. So, at the pier, there's barnacles, there's fish hooks. So, we really wanted to put that information on on this sign some way. And again, the design can be whatever looks appealing, but um if we can let let us get out there and see what we can do about the other signs and if we can clean that area up, I I'd say so. And let this be the main information board for that. Um I'll come back to you with that.

Right. Just one other thing, Richard, and you can you all do what you want to do, but I'm looking at that sign right now, and we all know that it's a $50 fine, and you know, there's people that come to this this beach and they don't know what every fine is or anything like that, but do we really have to have it say that it's that it's a $50 fine and and if we just what if we had something along the lines of like a life safety hazard or something like that, so that would kind of grab their attention. you do what you what you think you need to do as far as the situation. I'm just throwing an idea out to you. You're the expert, but I think if we try to explain something on there that how dangerous it is or something along that lines, I mean, that's up to you.

Yeah. Any any of that. Our our goal was to put the swimmer. So, if we've got the swimmer with the line through it, u uh if if a person can't u you know, if we needed to get a a different language on there, that that takes care of that. Uh the fine does definitely doesn't have to be on there. That was just a thought process. But I I I like what you're saying. Yeah. A life safety hazard. That's what we want to get across. That's that's what we we want to get across. This is a bad idea to swim here. Go somewhere else. Go down the beach. I always ordered a train horns. They work good too. And like I got train horns. Train horns. Yeah. Well, I know you got one of those cuz that makes the whole beach look or something.

If if I may. So I I've been enforcing laws and ordinances. is my entire career and if we have something that's unique to the area that somebody coming from say Ohio doesn't realize that oh I can't have glass on the beach first thing that happens when an enforcement officer goes to that person well where is it posted so posting this because it's unique to our beach is wise I applaud his efforts and wanting to keep people safe however if we had a 10 by 10 25 mph speed limit sign on the side of the road do you think it would stop everybody from speeding. So, it doesn't matter how big that sign is, people are still going to swim close to the pier. Again, I applaud the efforts, but having done this my entire career, we could put up 10 of those signs and people are still going to swim by the pier. We save one person from swimming by the pier, like Mr. Arnold said, you know, it's it's a low investment to to save somebody's life, but at the end of the day, you're still going to be blowing your whistle,

you know, and and Chief, you bring up a good a good point about after 7:00, you know, we really don't have anybody there. And it wasn't last year, but the previous year there were some young adults came down towards the end of the Easter season and the weather was nice and they went down and got in the water and they more or less ended right up over there and I was, you know, trying to motion them to kind of get away from it. One of their friends come over and asked me what was going on. He told me mind my own business. I said, "Hey, listen. If you get on those barnacles, uh, you know, you're in deep, deep trouble. Take and the help will be a little bit of while getting here to to help you out." So, um, you know, it's we it's I I really feel we got to do something there one way or another, you know. Yeah.

So, it's a 12 12 ft and I never got to how wide it is. Three three feet. The the the Well, it'll be able

the the metal sign is 3 feet, 5 by3. So, whatever a 6x6 is on the outside of that because it's kind of built where we can I don't know what it would do during a hurricane. So, uh they're going to build it where we can take it down, you know, take the metal sign down so that it'll be a little wider than 3 ft. But we can look at the size. I mean, you know, everything this this whole project's open to to do something. We you know, our our ordinance reads no swimming here to sign. Um, so I think when when we approached town council a few years back and asked council to consider adopting this ordinance, um, what we have on Sunset Beach that east to west longshore, a lot of days we have that strong current that it's rare that it's pulling from west to east. It pulls from east to west. So, we we asked council to adopt that because we wanted to not say, you know, on some of those days where we have that severe current, we really like to move that down to 150 ft, things like that. Um, this wouldn't allow us to do that, but uh it gives us signage that hopefully everybody can see, but we can we can definitely revamp it if if that's something

and we know what the side ordinance for our town is that this is in complant with the size of a side. We've got to be in compliance with our own laws. I'm going to lean on somebody else for that. Well, just check it. Just check it out. I I don't We don't need to know that today, but unless we do know. Do we know today? That would be Carrie. Yeah. Okay. Just want to make sure that it's in compliance with our own laws, rules. So, what I'm hearing, I'll go back to the beach. We'll we'll look around uh kind of take that in consideration. and then we'll I'll next meeting I'll bring that back up. Thank you. That should be all from you today, correct? Yes, sir. All right. We appreciate you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. to the police side next.

Afternoon everyone. Afternoon. Good to see you all again. Yep. Thank you. Thanks. Don't mind. We'll just jump right in.

Sounds good. Um, this slide is our capital apparatus replacement plan. And if you see, if you notice, uh, we're we're trying to replace three, um, patrol units this year and one, uh, UTV for beach patrol operations. When we imp implemented the take-home car program in 2018, I think it was, we projected that our cars would have a 5year lifespan. What we've learned through the last 8 years is that we're getting about seven years. So, it's going better than anticipated, which puts us expecting to replace three patrol cars yearly. We have 20 20 sworn officers. We like to keep one spare car for part- timerrs or when vehicles down for maintenance or things of that nature.

So, the three that you're looking to replace are 20, excuse me, 2017 vehicles. Yes, ma'am. So, they're 8 n years old.

Yes, ma'am. We we've added personnel since then. And what's happened is we've not gotten vehicles with the personnel. So, we've had to drag the cars out a little longer than than anticipated. Um, the first two we want to replace are Ford Explorer UTVs. Like you're you commonly see our guys driving be marked units. They are $47,000 to purchase on the state contract. And then we have to upfit those vehicles with decals, lights, sirens, cages, weapons, mount systems, things of that nature. That uh that totals about 195 per vehicle. That that is the first two. The next vehicle will be a Dodge Durango. That will go to one of our detectives. It'll be an unmarked vehicle. It's a little cheaper to buy. about $44,000 state contract price and the upfitting for that vehicle is only I should say only but it's $15,000. Um these vehicles do not have um prisoner transport cages. They don't they don't have the the striping. They just have less equipment for detective use.

So the Durango is for the detective. Yes, ma'am. Okay. I was going to ask you what I the difference was. Yeah, that's that's the difference. There' be two mark units for patrol and then this will be for our detective sergeant expert. Can we go back to the life of the vehicles? I had asked you about that we're actually they're eight or nine years old. Yes, ma'am. Because you know when we went to the program for the you all to take the vehicle home, it was that they would be properly maintained. You would take more ownership in the vehicle. So that did work. If it was re it was regularly going to be seven years and now we've extended to eight or nine years that has proven that that program does work. Well, the initial anticipation was five years. Five.

Okay. It was five years and the program has just worked better than it anticipated. Okay. We have a lot of people that ask about that. So, um there's the answer. It it does help to maintain you all to take it home. you take more ownership of the vehicle

as and if I can add to for the detectives they don't patrol as frequently as the patrol officers do. So, even the seven-year expectation out of a detective's vehicle or a vehicle like mine as the chief um I can easily get more than seven years out of that. Since we started our code compliance program, the uh I asked the fire department how what their life expectancy was of their UTVs and they about 3 years with the with the salt, the sand and things. the the frames rust and they they take a lot of abuse out there. But this year, well, last year actually, we had a John Deere Gator that had to be removed for service due to a mechanical failure. Transmission went out. I think it was $4,000 or something to repair it. And it was deemed it wasn't cost effective. The repair was more than the vehicle was was worth. So, we took it out of service, put it in on the gov deals, sold it last year, and this vehicle here will be to replace that

with the new program that we have for coding flights. You know, we're moving we're moving from a different what we did last year. Yes, ma'am. We still need this vehicle.

Yes, ma'am. What what we have is we'll have two vehicles that operate every day. So we will have two co- compliance offers off officers out there and there are times when those machines break they have to come off out of service for oil changes and regular maintenance and things of that nature. So we have to have a spare. So we have we have three total code compliance UTVs in addition to our police UTVs which we have two of those. We only have one police officer working. But those police UTVs can't be used by our co- compliance personnel because they have blue lights that say police on them, things of that nature. So, we got to keep those two two separate.

And where are we going to store this? Well, well, that's uh that's been worked out between the chief and the fire chief. Okay. So, there's room for this one, too. I know you talked about the current ones. Yes, ma'am. We We keep one here in our in our little garage and then we'll have the other our other four down at station one. So, yeah, we're going to have five total. We have five total. Yes, ma'am. And since we're not going to be using those on the beach much, there's we need to keep the two for just police, not the code compliance police.

Yes, ma'am. just cuz we are going to need them and then one's going to go down for let's say for maintenance or breakdowns and things of that nature. So we need one for for when those those occurrences happen. Okay. So we have two primaries and one spare for co- compliance. We'll have one one primary and one spare for for police operations. Yes. And and one of one of our lease ones is a 2018. Yeah.

So, we're we're getting, again, this is just projections on on our on our replacement plan. Most of our equipment is is outlasting that. So, and we and as a police department, we don't just replace the equipment because it says it's time. We we replace it when it needs to be replaced. Well, I think you've taken good care of things. I support your three. Yes. Okay. I do, too. Yeah. They're good on on the three vehicles. Yes, sir. And then the UTV. Yes, sir.

Our incar computers or NDTs, they are this whole thing has been a mess since we we started with these. Um when we the last time we were given MDTs uh they were refurbished units that uh were outdated you know nearly then. Some of them had back to the keys some of them didn't. Some had GPS some didn't. Some were touchscreen some weren't. And it just didn't feel it just didn't feel what we needed as a police department to keep our officers functional and safe. Right. They this is something they use while they're driving. So they need to have the functionality back to the keys for night shift touchscreen for our CAD system. They they can they can put themselves on scenes or in service or in out things of that nature. They can do that with a touch of a touch of a button on the screen. And to to have that is is very important. But but mostly these ones we have now are so outdated that they're not being they won't be able to be updated anymore. So they won't be able to operate the systems that that we need to operate to function as a police officer.

Does anybody have one of these already in their vehicle or we just revamping all of them? It' be all of them. So any training that we need for this or is it pretty much just get on there and go? It'd be get on there and go. the the only problem with the only when we get them, we'll have to have Allan um put the programs on there, our windows from the town and things of that nature that he'll he'll he'll get them booted up for us, so to speak, and then we'll we'll assign them and then guys can go to work with them. So, it may be a little bit more than the 61,000 for his labor.

For his labor. Yes, ma'am. Uh another thing on these uh I've spoken to Allan and to the provider that we've gone with here. These are these are state contract prices on on the MDTS is it this provider has told us that if we don't order these by May 31st that the price is going to go up. The RAM apparently has gone up that is in these things to uh put them together and so this this price can only be guaranteed through May. So, we want to approve a budget on July 1st. Correct. Or for July 1st. So, you probably could work your charm with them and say, "You have a motivated council that wants to sell want to buy 22. Wouldn't you want to sell these to us?" And we like that $61,000 price.

We'll do the best we can. Okay. We'll do the best we can. That's for sure. But just so you guys know, there may there may be a change. So, one second. Let our let our sound engineer guy come up to give you some information on something. Yeah, he he knows more about this than I do. Yes, sure. test.

Yeah. Dealing with this. Um, there currently is a manufacturing shortage for the memory that is used for RAM, which is think of it like short-term memory, and for solid state drives, which is long-term, what you would consider a hard drive due to all manufacturing going to data centers right now. So, I told the police department that they should probably try to get these laptops yesterday. Like, this is a now or never type of thing because the price is only going to go up and we're talking about like something that cost $100 a couple months ago is now going for $600 now. So, whatever lower price you can get, because basically you're buying already manufactured stock, but once that is gone, it's it it's not to do fear-mongering or anything, but the whole computer tech field right now is pretty worried as far as like who like who's going to get a new computer, who can afford a new computer. Is everybody having their own desktop computer even going to be something in the future as the way it looks right now? So, um, so yes, police department, their computers are old. We don't want to get into why they're old and everything, but um, whatever they can do to get it replaced and get it replaced now would be for the best interest because it's kind of like a now or never type of ordeal. So, if they can't lock them into those if those prices are going to expire, like I know it's a lot and like I said, I don't profit from this at all cuz I'm not even, you know, I'm not even doing the laptops as far as selling them. Um, it needs to be done. Yeah, that's it. I don't I don't know if uh and Alan, you probably don't know the answer to this, but I know in previous budget years

we've sent letters of intent when the council has guess consented on had a consensus that we were going to make a purchase and then the letter of intent did not obligate us if the budget would change due to circumstances. So, I don't know if that would be something that we could do or if this is

I thought about that and the answer I got was is that the distributor might would accept that but the manufacturer is not going to accept it. So, the the I guess two options here, right? We can we we can we can look at it and roll the dice and see what happens in July or potentially looking to spend the money. We may want to do a budget amendment and do it now. I don't know. Do you have money in your budget now to do it with the savings of anything? Any money at all for a down payment?

We may do a down payment. I don't I'd have to look at our equipment line and and do some do some numbers, but um it would definitely take a budget amendment to make it happen. Have you checked with finance to see if there's any money anywhere that can be used for that? No, ma'am. I I was I was looking for for guidance today before I made any any bigger moves.

Well, we got two issues. So, we can look at buying it today or not today, but before the next fiscal year, but we need to know how much money is projected to be left over in your budget and then as you say, roll the dice to see what it will be. Um, but we don't need to be handcuffed, no pun intended, but but handcuffed that it may go up and we don't have the money now. We can't say, "Well, we're going to buy it now because it might go up $10,000."

I guess I guess option three would be is that we get we approve the 61,000. We buy as many as we can in July and then complete that number a year later. I

I think there's another option. Um, so we could our budget could absorb some of this. Now, um, it would take since this is a capital, uh, something that we didn't budget for and it's a capital purchase, you'd have to approve the purchase and we may be able to do an budget amendment out of personnel because we've been down two officers for a little while now. So, the money that we've saved in not having to pay those two salaries as we still continue to um do backgrounds and we we actually just had one of those positions start today. We still have a second vacancy. There may be money in that personnel line which we can't spend personnel money or equipment with a budget amendment. We could transfer from that line to an equipment line to make this purchase.

So, that might be something if you would agree to that. That would be a good option. And then this 61,000 that we're looking at here, um, we could put that into the roads into the storm water. You wouldn't need it in the F27. That's right. Yeah. So, if do some research on that, come back to you next meeting and we still have time. Yeah. Great. Thank you. I'm good with that. Yep. Sounds good. So, we'll have more answers uh than questions uh next meeting.

Okay. This is this is something that I feel pretty passionate about is employee wellness program. Something that Chief Clayar instituted last year was he had every employee for the police department go through um a mental health screening with with a with a company. We weren't real excited about the results of that. So we're looking for other options this year. And this is what I come up with. It's a it's Shark Performance. It's an appbased um virtual life coaching platform. It's a they call themselves Sub therapeutic. So it's what it is. It's life coaches that you can access through this app that are have expertise in across across the board. Right. So they they don't they aren't it's a mental health platform. they have that that there's that element to it but it also encompasses uh diet nutrition if you want to uh there's leadership development um aspect to it even spa uh faith and spirituality but the the mental health aspect of our job is is it's exhausting right the things we see the the stress under for what whatever it may be and there's a stigma around that in our profession that getting getting help is a sign of weakness or it's a is frowned upon upon amongst some people. So the thought behind this is that you'll have access to to those types of help that type of help where no one has to know. You can do it you can do it in your car you can do it at your home. You can do it wherever. You don't have to make an appointment. You don't have to get approved by a chief. It's just something you can go on

and do. It's a in my in my experience. This take my personal experience. There's situations that I don't want to talk to the chief about or my wife about or my friends about, right? It's just and and everyone on this app that's these these coaches are people who have been in our business. They're either our military, police officers, or firefighters. So they're they're relevant and people in in this field they people who have been there in a lot

well we know it's tough and we know you you all see things, hear things, smell things that that are I mean death it stinks. Um and it it's hard on your psyche. Are you saying the other program just wasn't as successful because our officers had to say, "Hey, I'm in this program where this is more confidential." Yes, ma'am. They um and it gives them a resource that they can go to at any time that you all don't even know if they're using it or not.

The last time that we did it was it was mandatory. So, they we knew everyone went right. this this program one person may never use it one and one person may use it once a week. There's an unlimited amount of access to it. It's not you get one time a week or two times a week or you only talk about one topic or what it may be. You you it's unlimited access. What's the response from our staff? Do I mean do they want this? I don't think you will ever get an honest response about something like this. Let me ask you something. I mean, that's as honest as I can be. Sure. I don't think that they'll ever say, "Yeah, I won't use that."

This this program, this is this is for the program. It's not by how many policemen or nothing we have. So, this is something that we could also implement into our fire department. You could This isn't a honestly. Anybody that's an employee, anybody in the town have access to this, but but no, this is for this is a per person. fire would be a good It's a per person cost. It is a per person cost. Yes, sir. Okay. And what we what I budget it is for every full-time employee for the police department and and part time. Yeah. Anybody who deals with That's what I didn't know if So, how many total people? How many? I think I budgeted for 24. 24. Okay. So, I might have misunderstood you. Is it 24 time 8,500 or 8,500 for all 24? It's per total.

Okay. Great. Great. Great. And then numbers might be a little loose, but I have the quote I can show you guys. Get to If all 24 of your officers don't use it, would they allow another in um another department to use those 24 slots? No, ma'am. It be it' be for my people and I wouldn't I would offer it to them and they're going to download it, right? If they use it, it's up to them.

Okay. They the the app does not report to us who used it. It doesn't say Stan signed in and got it and got a coaching for on this topic. But we can see there was 30 coaches or whatever it was. So we were we able to gauge usage to to see if it's worth doing again next year? Yeah. We'll say this is yearly cost. So this be something that you'd be looking at next year if you had usage of it. Yeah. Just like last year's thing. This is something we would would we would try to try to implement and and gauge its success and we last year's idea was not a success. So we're we're hoping that this will be

well we hear so often mental health of of folks um and this would would be our position that we do care about their mental health. Um well that the diet nutrition the the leadership as I mean we we can always a little help with our diet nutrition. I mean, that's a there's a there's a lot lot of things got a lot of legs and a lot of opportunities to help people in in different ways. The program we did last year, we budgeted I think it was $350 a person. So, I just did some quick math, $8,400. And then I think we budgeted $10 to $12,000 with the anticipation that one or two people going to need a follow-up.

Not one person needed a follow-up based on the screening that was done by the doctor. So, there was a clinical a clinician that that screened everybody from me on down. And I I just I wasn't I wasn't happy with questions that were asked when I did mine. And we made everybody do it. So, you know, when you when you talk about mental health or you talk about um you know, is a person fit for duty to a police officer, that can be, you know, a death sentence, so to speak, because fit for duty means, all right, they're checking to see if I can continue to to pay get paid and feed my family. As the assistant chief said, we have a way to gauge this, not by who you talk to or what you talked about, but how many times it was used as a whole. And if we see out of 24 people it was used six times, right? Maybe we know next year we we're not going to renew it or look for something different. But I think it's important to at least provide it. And if it if it helps, great. If not, then we reassess next year. Mhm. And it may be good that we want to expand it to our fire service.

Yes, ma'am. I I this is from what I They see a lot too. I'm I'm in in a program now up in in in Raleigh and I've talked to a couple departments that's that's implemented this and they're they're very pleased with the results. And I've and the people I've spoken to are obviously chiefs and the chiefs are using it themselves, which is which is testimony to to how good it is. So, it's not just it's not just the new guy, you know, it's it's it's being beneficial all the way through the ranks. It sounds like a very worthy thing for us to invest dollars in. I feel like it is 100% agree. Yeah.

Okay. Next, this is a Brata camera um project phase two is expansion of a program that Chief Claymore started last year, which is a camera replacement where our current provider. So on this phase, we're asking to replace six locations that now have the focus cameras, focus broadband, and and we're going to add two additional locations to do that. The equipment cost and licensing and all the equipment and shipping is 5532532. The network materials will be an additional $2,212 for the total upfront cost for this year be 57,538. Now that that license that we buy this year will be valid through up until 2030. And then that point it will be uh the nice license rene will be 12,162 and that's a three-year license. Okay. And that's for another three that's another three-year license. The monthly first net charges for the sampler these are run through sailor data. So for each location be $42 for a total of $4,32 per year which will be added to our uh sales service lineup. So the purchase will be what 575 and then and then an additional 4,000 for for a sailor service. If you if you upgraded these the six are how many more you got left after that?

That's right. That's all. That's it. Yep. Oh, that's good. Okay. The previous council did this and with a thought to continue to replace them all. Correct.

I pitched it as it was almost a $100,000 project to do it all in one fell swoop uh or to do it in a twophase project and the council opted for two phases. So, the remaining cameras that we have with our previous provider are in those locations. Um the new locations, one is at 40th Street and that would give us a four-way view at 40th, one toward the marsh, one down the walkway down one down 40th and one down West Main Street. Um you may be hearing a presentation from a nonprofit that wants to pay for one of those four cameras, uh which could drop the cost down of this a little bit. Uh the other new location would be on Georgetown at clubhouse which would give us uh two-way direction there because there there's cameras already on clubhouse. The camera systems are this is such an improvement from the previous

the previous that we had. And I know we often get questions like this is big brother. Why why do we need all these cameras? Is there that much crime in Sunset Beach that we have to have cameras all over town? Um, I'm not asking for six police officers to stage in six locations throughout town. What I'm asking for is six cameras, which can keep an eye and help keep your property safe, help keep your valuables safe. Um, we've had incidents where construction sites have been stolen from, homes have been burglarized, cars have been stolen, and we go, the first place we go is to cameras to see if we can find something that gives us an idea of a direction of travel or to see if we can find somebody.

Just this morning, we caught a traffic crash at a food line in Food Line in parties right there. so that the whole entire traffic crash was on on camera for the investigator. I think for me, I like continuing the project to its fulfillment. Absolutely. Yes, I agree. Yeah. Particularly if we're going to put a period on it. That's, you know, that's nice. We're getting it done. That's the biggest thing for me. And and you've seen that the Yeah, they're fantastic. The performance of these are Yeah. a vast improvement of what what we had prior. Yeah. I mean, currently now they have sometimes they'll have to call focus to ask them to reset the modem to get the cameras to work and everything. Sounds good.

So, I'm good with it. Right. And this is our our last our last um part-time salary adjustments. Currently, our sworn personnel, our part-time police officers are getting paid $19 an hour. And I would like to propose that we move that to $26 an hour. And I'll come up with that was if we do the math on that, you put them through a year of hours that'll put them in about the starting pay of a of a police officer. Because I was going to ask you how you why did you have a 40% increase and it was to get them to the starting pay of a police offic.

Yes, ma'am. If you do the hourly wage down to 20 2180, whatever the hours was, and that's about the hourly rate. Is it hard to get part-timers? Yes, ma'am. It's It is It's uh It's hard to get them to work. Some guys want to come get sworn in and say they work for Sunset Beach part time and then But they don't show up a lot sometimes. So, we need to uh need to entice them

and entice them. and and the people we have, we have a a couple of guys who are retired from from Charlotte, the Daves, Dave D they've even Dave Cannon, they they were instrumental in our in our program throughout the summer. Hey, one works the beach strand with Tracy and one works concerts and markets. And without those guys, we would have overtime cost and it'd be great expense to the town to cover all the duties we have to have in the summer. They work the special events with us and every hour they work is an hour that we don't pay someone else overtime for. uh our code compliance people were they were making well they are making $15 an hour and uh Detective Phillips came to me earlier and we're where we're the lowest paid um agency around for our co- compliance officers and asked her how much ocean made and she said $18. So that's to stay competitive. Uh we need to pay our people at least $18 an hour to to go work those long hours on the on the beach strand in that heat. And um again, those people play a vital role in the operation of this town and I feel like they need to be paid for.

I think I I have no problem with this. I think it's uh this is what the deputy chief is talking to us about. problem that we are going to have to keep, you know, maintaining or monitoring as we go on is as we have to compete with the other other towns around us. Um, and and for us to kind of stay competitive, we're going to have to kind of go along be in that same ballpark as far as what those other salaries are and everything exactly what it is, but be close to it. So, um, it's just kind of like the cost of doing business is the way I look at it. And I I feel like, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, that the these these wages were set by council years ago and then as we got the COLA adjustments throughout time, these these stay stagnant. So, these have not been able to be to stay current with with our cost of living adjustments. And I think this will will get us more in line where we need to be.

I'm fine with it. I think Yeah, I know. We were shocked that they made $19 an hour when we were figuring up. I don't remember what it was. It was one of the events and we were like $20 an hour that's that's just not enough or $19. Yes. So I I'm in favor of the increases. It's a big ass ask a man to go put on a bulletproof vest and strap on a gun and go do it for $19 an hour. Put himself his his family's future at risk to do that for us and like be Yeah. Takes a special person and we want to be competitive and the market calls for that.

Absolutely. are parttime as you know they don't exceed they cannot exceed a thousand hours a year. Um we don't use them just to use them. So if there's a need we schedule them. If not here those guys cover shift they they work night shifts. They are pretty good people. I think that's includes you sir. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you. Next up, our last thing is the administration.

Thank you. You probably about to freeze, too. It's cold in here. You You can go ahead and start. It's just the base right now. So, go ahead. Give it a second. All right. Mine should be relatively painless, I'm hoping. All right. So, from the administration standpoint, understand I've only been in this position since December 8th, so I haven't had a full fiscal year to think of needs for the the town as a whole. The new positions that uh have been discussed previously in council meetings is the code enforcement position. Um which a lot of these are there's there's been some movement some changes that uh um these positions are are going to be using funds that were previously allocate allocated. For example, the project manager position, which we're not going to have uh going forward. Code enforcement position, the me the median range is 63603. Uh a planning director, we're advertising for a planning director and UDO administrator currently. Um, we've set that at 115 and depending upon the applications we get, I don't know where we'll land on that, but uh I wouldn't expect that we would exceed that. Uh we currently have a contract with some planners with the at that do planning for the town and I'm not sure on the number that we spent last year but um I believe that contract is not to exceed 1070 10 somewhere in there

117 117 okay and then the 65,000 for the comprehensive land use plan for the whole budget would be at 182,000 Okay. So, if we can do this in house at 115, that's it's going to save us some money.

Um, I'm asking to budget for reception position. We have a young lady that works in the reception position now that is also one of our finance tech technicians. Um, she's a very talented young lady and I see a better use for her talents than what she's doing now. So, as we continue to move closer to the fiscal year, uh, and know what we're going to do with that position, um, would like to to have the council consider replacing that position so we can make better use of her talents. And then it was discussed at one meeting about um the possibility of an assistant town administrator and titling this an operations manager rather than an assistant town administrator. Again, we don't have a project manager. Um this position is something that could possibly oversee projects, could uh do a whole wealth of things for the town. um anything from what would be in an assistant town administrator role all the way to to project management.

Mr. Claymer, you know, the code enforcement that you have here, um we we're using InFocus and if we don't use InFocus, um I think we're paying them like 6,000 a month. So that's 72,000 a year. You would be under that with this code enforcement. So that's a savings to the town. Correct. you would have a person that's here full-time rather than somebody that comes once a week. Um I I this is great. That's that's the one contract I forgot about. So, thank you for bringing that up. That would help us save some money. And for anybody that's listening or going to watch later, the my idea with code enforcement, and I'm sure it's the the board's intention as well, is that this is going to be a proactive position.

So, we don't want to wait until somebody calls. when you get to that point where you're so upset with what's going on beside your house that you call um it might be so far out of control that it would take a long while to mitigate. So, we're hoping that it can be more proactive to help beautify the town and keep it beautiful. And the operations manager really is going to just slide under like the project manager that we used to have that we don't have anymore. you've absorbed a lot of those responsibilities as well as our public works. So, correct that position is not a new position. That's just correct

taking a a regular position in and realigning some duties that will help overall town with the projects that we have and some administrative things that we have here. And then the planning director um position we talked about that. That's already in our budget as well. Right. So I misspoke when I said code enforcement would be that cost might be absorbed by the project manager. That cost would be absorbed by eliminating the contract that we have within focus.

Um it would be the operations manager where that position that salary would be absorbed by the absence of the project management. So the only real new position would be the potential of the $45,000 administrative assistant. This is actually from the from the things that have moved here recently from the salaries that have been vacated from those and going into that. We're actually going to come in under what we're paying already with these new positions. Yeah. I mean there's it's there definitely is there. Sure. Correct. So we are saving money and getting inhouse full-time people. Correct.

It's going to make a lot of difference. So the numbers look pretty good there. that what we know we've saved will be a difference. Any further questions on those positions? We're good on those. So, when I call them new positions, they're not all new positions. I'll let you clarify that. I should have put a different title on this. They're positions. I'm kind of just re, you know, reclassifying positions, if you will.

So, the next slide is does talk about reclassification. So my administrative assistant in the police department is classified currently uh under the pay scale as an administrative assistant. Um we looked at what actually she does comparatively to an administrative an actual administrative assistant which you'll see on a ne the next slide. But what we're asking is to reclassify her as a police operations administrator. move that to salary grade 12, which is a the starting point of grade 12 is 59050. So, it would be a line increase in my budget for personnel of only $5,490 uh to move to this new position. So, the reclassification, as you'll see here, the the responsibilities are far over what a typical administration administrative assistants do. um some of the things such as um she's direct leaison for the state bureau of investigation uh enters law enforcement records into the national database system for wanted people, missing people, uh people who have warrants. Um she's directly involved in law enforcement processes such as investigation, prosecutions. She handles all of our digital evidence which is uploaded to the courts. um it's more than just answering the phone and greeting people at the window. So that's why we feel the the classifica the reclassification is is important. There's

certifications that she has to maintain just to be able to have access to these databases. She's currently working toward our our audit um with DCI to make sure that we haven't violated anything when we access these sensitive databases that give us person information. So, I'm asking to have that position reclassified with salary grade uh number 12. We're good with that. I do that a bargain. Yeah, he's great.

Some educational lines that I want to add for this budget year. Um, we want to invest in our deputy town clerk so that she can become our town clerk by obtaining the training that's needed um be a total ask of $8,500 which includes the year-long training. And when I say year-long, it's four times uh a week long each over the course of a year that would get her the education. um travel and lodging because this is held in the Raleigh area in the Raleigh area, the $8,500 to that line. I'm asking for some additional training dollars in the educational line for administrative staff as a whole. As we develop our personnel, um I guess the longer I stay as the uh interim town manager or administrator, I want to be sure that uh that I'm knowledgeable as well and that I'm serving the residents the best that I can. So, we're asking for a bump there in that that educational line for those things.

The town deputy town clerk for her to get her municipal clerk certification um I spoke with the lady that's in charge of that and I also wrote a reference letter and Miss Bachelor, I believe you you echoed um what I had done. Um totally support that. Um I don't know that she's ever been given the opportunity before to get the municipal clerk certification. We're thrilled that you want to do that. I think you'll enjoy the camaraderie ship as well as the knowledge that you'll learn. Um and we are looking forward to you being our town clerk. So, um I support that. Um I do as well as Okay. I

Yeah. And then of course you're you have to have some training too. So we're good with that. Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome. This next one is I think this is a golden opportunity for the town. So, if you're familiar with the surf checks camera that's on the pier, it zooms, it turns, it zooms again, and then it gives you a three-way look uh east and west on the beach strand and then straight out the end of the pier out into the Atlantic Ocean. Uh, I talked with Chris at Surf Checks about maybe doing something different where we could see some other parts of the town and we talked about the pole that we have a camera on now that faces the bridge. It's as you go, it's just north of Northshore. It's kind of the last pole before you get to the bridge. That's uh a Sunset Beach pole. Um, I've took screenshots of Google Earth to show where this poll's at. Showed it with Chris at show shared it with Chris at Surf Checks. He's interested in putting camera or cameras on that pole along with a weather station. Those cameras will do the same function that you see on the pier where they zoom and they turn. Um, his objective is to capture the weather as it is over the ICW and to capture the weather as it is over the Atlantic Ocean. The trade-off for us is that we get to see the traffic on the bridge. We get to see traffic on the island. Um, and it's not going to cost us hardly anything. He's going to install the cameras. He's going to pay for the cameras. Uh, the only thing that we have to do is pay for the internet connection and the power to the cameras. um internet in that area, similar to what we just pitched under the police department, cost us about $42 a month, $54 annually. Didn't know the cost of power until I heard uh Chief Childress talk about it in his pres or I'm sorry, Matt Sorl talk about it in his presentation. Roughly $14 a month, I

think is what he said for power to a poll. Um, so this is I think this is a good opportunity to increase our views of um traffic and and things going on on the island at a very very low cost. And our commitment is just the connectivity. If something would change, then we'd figure out if he needs to remove the cameras or find a way to connect those himself. And chief, if we did this, that information would be on the website under all things beach where they would go and access that.

Correct. We currently have the pure camera linked there now. So, I would anticipate linking this as well. So, our citizens could click on that and get a live view of the area. So, you we're giving real-time data and I think that's very beneficial to anybody want to come to the think it's an excellent idea. A lot of communities have that. A lot of communities have that. Um, a lot of tourist towns have it. I think this is great. I know he's, you know, Chris is interested to see how this works out and what kind of traffic is generated to this camera and if it works well, he will consider the possibility of putting one elsewhere. So, we'll see how that goes. Great.

Awesome. projects that we have ongoing right now. The 904 corridor study is nearing a close where that's going to be uh the study portion of that will be completed. And the town has a a share that we invest in this study. And in talking with the architect today, the way the billing is, it's about two months behind. So, they anticipate roughly $15,000 that we would likely owe in the fiscal year to finish out the billing for this project. I just received an invoice yesterday. I think it was for January, so they're a little bit behind on their billing.

How much total have we paid for that study? Um, does anybody know? Yeah, I was on the invoice. I want to say we've I can't I can't give you I don't want to guess. I don't want to be wrong. I don't know how much we've paid. We've only been I think we've only been invoiced since July. Seems like the whole project was 25,000 and then there was another 75,000 that the state was going to put in, but we don't want to be wrong, but I think we would like to know though how much how much it was. And I I have that. It's just okay.

I didn't bring it with me today. Uh, another thing that this is just for discussion, the bike and pedestrian path, the multi the multimodal path that we received a grant for that would run from our town park and connect with Calabash and Carolina Shores. Uh, our match is $771,975 for that grant. When are we going to have to pay that money? Probably not for several years. But when we're thinking about CIP, capital improvement, um this would probably a good be a good discussion to have to start putting some money aside if we're going to continue with this project. Um my understanding in uh speaking with the Calabash town administrator to get a little because he's been intimately involved in this where I have not been being new to this role is that when DOT resurfaces those areas when they resurface Shoreline Drive and they resur resurface Beach Drive at that time they would add that path. We wouldn't have to do any of the biddings any of those sorts of things. DOT is going to handle all of that. All we got to do is write a check. it's going to be a lot easier on us from a from a a project management standpoint, but it is, you know, threequarters of a million dollar investment. Um, I think it's a great investment. It connects people to our town. It connects them to our park and it keeps them keeps them off the roadway and it keeps them safe if they want to bike or if they want to walk. We would want to, I think, strongly consider setting some money aside. Looking

What amount are you thinking? Half of it. Well, if we're not going to if we're not going to have to commit to any money perhaps for three years, I would say a third. A third. Yeah, I think a third would be wise. Yes, I think so, too. Any other questions on either of projects that I've got there?

Town hall improvements. One of the things that I looked at was adding and sorry the the image is so light. It's just how it came through. Adding a a door and a partition as you come in building and inspections as you know that that side of the building is now open. There's new signage that's going on the building that's hasn't been delivered yet. But as we have traffic come through there, there's nothing to stop somebody from walking back to the employee area where the kitchen is, walking down the hall into council chambers or into the conference room where we often have staff meetings. And we looked at a way that we could prevent that from happening by the addition of this, which will be a metal frame glass door. So, it'll be much more aesthetically pleasing, similar to what we have here. Um, that will sit just past the reception area, if you will, in building and inspections. It's about $7,000 to do that. Why do I have $9,000 up there? Because we would add a key fob to it for employees to get through. uh which is about two grand to add that to that. So council sees fit to better enhance the security of this building. This is what I'm requesting.

Yes, I agree. Yeah, we have to do that. Yeah, we could save some money with drywall and a standard door, but it's not going to look pretty. Let's make it look nice. If we're going much to save a thousand or two, let's make it look nice for our public to see. We don't sure the difference of what we were going to be spending to redo this and make this plushy in here. It's very cheap, right? Considering we took all that out. Yeah.

So, you talked about other things that we might be spending um town hall improvements as a whole. I know we had a meeting 2 by two with uh Sawyer Sherwood Architects to talk about some drawings that they produced for the previous administration to remodel town hall to move this council chambers down to the community center which I think uh the consensus of those that of you that saw it and attended the meetings said we're not going to do that. Um I don't like it. I don't want to do it either. But do we want to set aside some money for carpet, for paint, for any sort of remodels to this town hall? Um, I know one of the one of the main issues is what they call this dead end out here in the hallway where if somebody leaves this council chambers because there's an emergency and they go this way instead of this way and they end up in this hallway and they go straight down to that door which is locked because it takes you into the police department there at a dead end. There was in those um drawings, if you recall, an option to widen the hallway that gets you out into the lobby by removing one of the restrooms, improve the existing restroom that's there and make it a unisex bathroom. So, we have one bathroom in our lobby. I can't tell you that we've ever had enough people in that lobby where both bathrooms have been full at the same time. Um, that's a possible improvement that uh I think we could do now if we're considering other things such as maybe looking for property to do something different with a town hall. I don't know what that you know how many year plan that would be. Do we invest thousands of dollars into this building if eventually this whole building would become the police department? The town hall might be moved somewhere else. So again, I just want to start the

discussion Um, how much money do we want to dump in a building that may not be our forever home? One of the options that we discussed was going up. Can we can we go up? And as you know, the architect said we'd almost have to build a shell around this building. It would be just as expensive almost as building a brand new building. Where do we do that? Land is the problem. Land is the problem. One idea I did have was we got a awfully big parking lot over there.

Building were a consideration for a future option. We could build in that parking lot, continue to work in this building till that building was completed, move into that building, raise this, and then make this our parking lot. See, now you're thinking like a leader. I mean, that's strategic, and I think that's what we need to hear. We don't have the monies now to do that, but we could start saving some monies for that, right? I'm not asking to do that this year or even next year, right? But we could start think about the CIP that's strategically thinking what we're going to do. I don't even want to I don't even want to ask for money to get an architect to draw something up.

You could build Yes, sir. building maintenance building, whatever. But I know there's more pressing needs than just our roads, our walkways. Um, these are I I'm just merely having a discussion. So, we get to the end of um, you know, our budget cycle and we kind of project what our carryover is going to be. And, you know, even if there's $50,000 that can be put into a building improvement fund, it's a start. We do have some painting needs. Um, and we do have some carpet needs. We have employees who don't have full carpet in their I mean it's been taken up and there's nothing there but the I don't even know what the base floor

right and there's a trip hazard as you know between because of an expansion those seem to be inexpensive fixes rather than doing structural things but we do need a little bit of a facelift with the carpet and the um the walls needing some painting and our painting for sure can be handled in-house now because we have that maintenance guy that we didn't in the past. So that's something that we can handle a lot welldeed better than we did in the um I agreed with you Ken on the where the bathroom part was taken out from the main lobby if we were to do anything that seemed like the most

didn't seem like it would be super expensive from what the architect said but you know to me if we had a price point on that and then I agree the carpet some of the places especially the flooring where that trip trip hazard is and we had funds allocated for this year for some stuff here in the budget. So, can that go ahead and be done this physical year um or not? I didn't know what your take was on that. I mean, that trip hazard to me needs to be fixed. And yeah, and our our maintenance employees have uh an option to fix that. Um it's just going to it would be bare bare concrete by the time they were done. So, we would but it would be smoothed out. There would kind of be like a little bit of a ramp there, if you will. In the past budget, we had the one that we're in right now, right?

Shouldn't say the past. There was $250,000 earmarked. I doubt we've used all of that. I know we've had some engineering drawings um for the things that we're not going to do like redoing the council chambers here, taking it to the um community center. We're not doing that. Um there was some other engineer drawings, but there was money in there to do some other things, too. It would be great to see how much is left over of that and see what we could absorb in this year's budget for that.

So, what I'll do is I'll come back with some quotes for carpet. Uh paint is just going to be supplies if we can do it with our manpower. Uh, I'll talk with the architect, see if they can give us a rough estimate on the bathroom redo, if you will, to to better right help the uh, ingress and egress. I'll look into the $250,000 that was budgeted to find out how much is left there to see what we can do this year. Um, then I do have one other thing to discuss if we're if any, unless there's any other discussion on town hall improvements.

Something that I wrote down as it's not in my PowerPoint, but something that I wrote down as we were going through presentations. Um, the handicap beach walkways. So McGill and Associates have um that project that they were looking at per perhaps doing that. But I think that's something that we should pursue. I think that's uh a worthy project. I think our uh folks that need to use uh assist mobility assistant devices should be able to get from the sidewalk to the beach access without having to cross through the sand and dirt. Um, if council sees fit, I think that's something that we should pursue in this budget year in 2027. You know,

FY27 on 40th Street. We have where a wheelchair could actually roll down. There's I don't think there are any steps there. There are not. or not. Is that the Are we looking at maybe looking at other locations, other beach accesses that have where you could actually cuz roll down to the beach cuz now you can get to the Well, you got you got a view of it, but you can't actually get out there and experience it. Is that something that we might want to look at doing?

I think with the camera stuff, some of those can't be done. I mean, exactly. That's my understanding. I think the best we could do with those I think you're right that was those platforms. This this is from just from the sidewalk to the start of the ram the start of the access way the pathway this is that actual accesses. Mhm. From there to where the wood from right now it's just grass right to there. Yeah. Grass same and some are huge distance. I mean some are some are very long. Yeah. So if you're in a you know you're in a chair or you use a walker or even a can and it's it's tough to navigate that. And some we might need to look at that don't make sense to like some are so long like I mean spread them out maybe.

Now you had mentioned a possible requirement if it's a if it is a requirement then that's what I was told. My suggestion would be we we do them all in this fiscal year. If not then we go two by two. Yeah. And do two this year. And well I had been told it was a requirement for the ones that had that viewing platform. Um, and that a handicap spot was supposed to be I think the initial plan showed a handicap spot by bear prior to you know not being able to have car parking on the south side of the beach um from the DOT. So um but I I don't you know that that's what I was questioning with Matt and them that do you know anything about that?

I don't. What I was going to ask was, so you want to do what do you want to do? Have these things like asphalted then like an asphalt walkway for them to I think we extend um the pvious pavement like it's on the sidewalks to the access way. Okay. Good. And while you're out there looking or having somebody look at all this, if we do have one other where we can do a wheelchair where we're not going through the dune and we're not um going to be in violation with KMA, it would be nice to at least look at that as an option. I mean, I don't know that we any of us really know for sure if there's one out there that could do. Um, I'm going to add that to Matt's to-do list. Okay. I think he's the expert on those walkways. And even if it's one that's a shorter walkway. So yes,

and even the 40th one, I mean, in hindsight, I wish that would be a little wider because if somebody's coming with a wagon and a somebody in any, you know, you got to go to the cut offs to and when they're looking at that, um, if we were to do that, there are some places where the sidewalk on Maine is shifted. That's like a hazard that needs to be looked at as well. Um, and we'll also add that to Matt's to-do list. Yeah. Yeah. I took some photos, but I haven't had a chance to share them with them yet. I

think that's it as far as the department head stuff coming forward. So, we'll we should move to close this this part out. So, we'll be moving on now to our public comments on on the fiscal year 2627. Do I have any comments? Just got this one on right here. Hun, you just stand right there.

Thank you. My name is Candace Seban. I live at 611 Lakeshore Drive in Sunset Beach. And I um first off, I have to say after sitting four and a half hours watching you guys do this, I don't know how you do this, but thank you for all your hard work for the town. I came primarily because I wanted to support the uh town's event calendar and the events budget. Uh our events add so much to the quality of life here and I uh I know you're you're looking at it very carefully, but bear in mind how many of us appreciate it and go to those events and love them. And I really appreciated when the mayor with it last council meeting maybe two ago said that these events are uh so important for community for our sense of community. Um so please keep looking at them. But while we went through that there were two things that came to mind. The first was you were talking about uh sunset at sunset and the parking. I realize those buses are expensive but when you think about safety, how are people going to get back and forth to the park? there's not enough parking anywhere near the park. We don't really have great sidewalks. Um it's a safety issue and they do come early and they stay late and then they have no way to get back to anywhere. Um may I maybe you want to charge them, you know, you can go park over at the church or whatever and pay a buck to get on the bus. I I don't know, but I think that's just so important for safety. The other thing was that in there I think was the talk about lighting in the park. So, I'm on the environmental resource committee and one of the things we worry about a lot are um conditions for wildlife from the town and in particular for the park. If you light that area close to the waterway, please consider the impact on shorebirds. Uh lighting along the waterway has a huge impact on their migration, on their ability to find resting spots as they migrate, on their

um their ability to uh nest and to feed their young. So, uh, evaluate that before you before you make a determination. I think in the park itself, the lighting looks really pretty and the tree canopy suppresses that from from really radiating out much, but down at the waterfront, there's nothing there. Um, what else was I going to say? Oh, then open my eyes up. Like you said, you thought everybody had that cart roll away. I had no idea the town paid for that. I used to go out there and think, gosh, that some company has kind of a nice business here. And I think Matt in his presentation said at least one of the beaches has a private company that does that.

Um I'm I'm glad that you're looking at what all of us are benefiting from.

I wish somebody would come and roll my can back and my neighbors cans. They're both part-time. And like you said, you know, sometimes you have to ask your neighbor and I don't ever mind to do that for them. But I I hate paying for people who are making money on their rental property and I'm paying for their trash can. And then mowing. I had no idea. I would love to have them come and mow my right away because that's that's a big chunk. That's probably half my front yard. Um you you know where I was. Let let them mow it. So if if you can look at that, but I also agree you can't you can't expect homeowners to maintain that area around the parking. So whatever you have to do there. And then just the last is just my point of view. The um fire department's signs at the beach. We may have a lot of signs out there, but truthfully, when you're walking around, do you really look at all that other stuff so much? If you're a visitor, you need to see that sign about no swimming under the pier. I think those I think those signs are great. I think they'll save some lives. The other thing that's nice in my in my uh work life, I have had to deal with unruly people, and it's really nice to tell them upfront, there could be a penalty for your bad behavior. It's a $50 fine. If we need to get somebody from the police department to come and give it to you, we will. You know, how how many times can you blow your whistle out there before you're really tired of it? So, um anyway, and then just finally, we've got the best fire department, best police department of anywhere I've ever lived. Please give them everything reasonable that they ask for. I'm happy to pay my taxes for them.

Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else?

Thank you, Tony Marino. 802 Riverside Drive. Um, I'd like to thank the public works department for highlighting the issue with the unpaved streets in in the island. um and their contributions to the silt that goes into the canals which presently only canal p families have paid for that cleanup. Uh but it is I think um misleading to think that it's just the fish streets on the east end that are contributing to that problem because the town uh and its storm water system uh directs some of that runoff and accompanying silt into the marsh and canals specifically 28th and 30th at a storm water project that took the water to the marsh and the fourth street and fifth street project is directing water into the canal on Canal Street via uh Sixth Street. So, I think it's uh a little bit misleading to think that it's just the fish streets that are the problem on the east end. The whole island is a problem with the unpaved streets and the damage they're doing to the environment. That's, you know, my comments on that. uh as it relates to how you look at the staffing for the town and I appreciate this lady's comment about public safety and I agree I'm I'm a big supporter of public safety but um as you look at staffing needs uh I think you need to balance all the growth that's happening outside of our town city limits who don't directly pay taxes for our mutual aid that we render and our fire department and the capabilities that this town has um in comparison to some of the adjoining towns. Um you know, Ocean is much bigger and encompassing a much larger territorial area, yet their fire department is all the way on the causeway. Yet, our fire department takes care of Ocean Ridge Plantation. They'll

be the first ones there before Ocean ever is. So, we need to weigh the robustness, I think, of our capabilities. Are we des de uh incentivizing other towns from carrying their fair load?

Because Sunset Beach, their police department, our police department, our fire department are able to respond when they can't respond because their manpower is not the same as ours. And our capabilities are so robust that they have no incentive to bring up their capabilities to hire more fire off u firemen or police officers or have better equipment. And I I agree with the radios and all that for the sa safety of our public safety people 100%. I'm in agreement with that. But we need to think about how we grow our staffing um and how these other towns are benefiting with their tax revenue basis growing because they're they're growing regardless of the capabilities of what their town is. And it's, as I mentioned, Ocean Rich Plantation, but you go up um Ocean Isle Beach Boulevard and you got Dell Webb's going to put thousands of homes there and um PI's building homes there and another communities going on in the corner of Georgetown Road and it's our fire department that will go there first under mutual aid.

And so, you know, what are we doing in that sense? um you know how is that benefiting our taxpayers here? We will continue to see our taxes uh increase. We will not see our mill rate decrease like Ocean decrease their mill rate because we are carrying a bigger load. So think about that. Ask those tough questions of our our public safety uh people which I was one and we should be held accountable and should we just think about you know what are we doing for our community? What are we doing for the next community? What is that next community doing for itself? Thank you. Thank you. Very good.

Council has nothing else. Do I have a motion to adjurnn? Motion to adjurnn. Have a second. Second. Any more discussion? All in favor?