Town Council - Regular Meeting

Hey game check testing 123. Can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you now. Can you hear me?

Can you hear me? Yeah. Can you try that one more time?

Yes. Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear like to welcome everyone to our January council meeting. It's our first council meeting of the new year. Happy new year to everyone. Thanks for those joining us in person as well as those joining us on YouTube tonight. Um before we do our agenda adoption, Rob, I think you had something that you wanted to add.

Yes. Good evening, Mayor Council. Um, we're requesting that you amend the agenda to add the item that you have in front of you, which is a contract for consideration. Um, it's professional service contract with McGillan Associates. It's for the design and engineering of historic farm mill. If you'll remember, we discussed um a budget workshop, our last budget work, I'm sorry, our last council workshop. We haven't started our budget workshops yet to uh move forward with the uh design of this as soon as we got it. We didn't get this contract until midweek. So, I didn't want to wait an entire another month to bring it to you. So, um everyone except for our two newly elected officials had already made a decision to move forward with this. So, we wanted to bring it to you. You pipe that mic down a little bit.

Where do you want it? Is this going in um this would go in old business and we have a presentation um for this in old business. So is there a motion to add this agenda item to the old business item 5A? Motion is stated. Second. Second. Second. All in favor? Thank you. The motion is carried. Thank you, Rob. At this time, we will have Councilman Theevan lead us in our invocation this evening.

Thank you, Mayor. It's good to be back. Father, we just uh we thank you, God, for this uh beautiful winter day that we had today. God, we just ask you to be with us tonight as we conduct a business of the town. God, just uh again, as usual, we just ask that uh God, you would bless us with your presence. And God, help us to um remain neutral and respectful of each other and uh of our citizens. And God, we just thank you and give you all glory and honor and praise in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Would everyone please rise 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. We do have one special presentation this evening and with that we will welcome Brian Lee to give our audit presentation for fiscal year 2025. Welcome Brian.

All right. Good evening mayor and council. So as you said this is the uh presentation for the fiscal year 2025 financial audit which is as of June 30th 2025. Um, our auditors this year are Martin Starns and Associates who we've been with for a couple years. And our lead auditor, Kang Moau, is with us uh tonight virtually. So, she'll join after I get done with some of the uh financial results from the year and she'll go over the audit process and the results from their perspective. Um, so another reminder that all municipalities in North Carolina are required to have an annual audit. Um these are turned into the local government commission which is uh tucked underneath the treasur's office for the state. They review and approve all of our audits across the state every single year and it's one reason that North Carolina has such a healthy municipal government system. Um so our audit was turned in in early December, December 10th and uh it was approved by the LGC. So let's get into some of the significant impacts for fiscal year 2025. Um, one of the focus areas for the town this year is transportation improvements, both for vehicles and for pedestrians. And so we have about $1.7 million that was invested in transportation projects this year. Um, some of those include about $300,000 in sidewalk additions and uh safety improvements with the ADA sidewalk program. Uh, some greenways and trail head projects got off the ground. Uh and then we have um our transportation bond projects about 600,000 for those about a quarter million towards some of our federal grant uh transportation projects that we've gotten started up. And then lastly, a little bit over 500,000 in POW bill street resurfacing took place this year. Um another significant impact or something that can be a significant impact to the financial statements is

contributions of infrastructure from developers. So this number can range from what you see in front of you about 400,000 this year. That represents uh streets, sidewalks, uh street lights, water and sewer and storm water infrastructure for Addison Park neighborhood that came online this year. Uh but we've seen years where this number has been up to 13 or 15 million in a single year. Uh so it just depends on the number and the size of neighborhoods that we accept uh onto the town's network. So this year just Addison Park at 400,000. Um we have about $9 million was moved over to savings accounts this year across the general fund, water, sewer, and storm water for all of our approved and planned capital. Um we always have a 10-year outlook uh for our tax rate and for all of our revenues and make sure that it can handle all the capital projects that we have across the entire 10-year uh horizon. And so this year was one in which we could save about $9 million to put towards these projects in the future. Um you'll see some revenue increases in the statements um that were pretty impactful as well. So property tax up about 5.6 million from the prior year. Um the reval obviously played a a big part in this and would have contributed about 6.2 million of increased revenue, but with the drop of the tax rate from 43.5 to 41 cents, it resulted in about a $5.6 $6 million difference and that's across uh real business and uh motor vehicles as well. Intergovernmental taxes include sales taxes, franchise taxes. These are taxes that are distributed from the state, make their way to the county and then get distributed to the municipalities. So we had an increase of about $1.4 million there. About $200,000 of that is due to actual economic activity uh increasing in the county. So, a lot of that is thanks to Concord Mills, uh, with a lot of the shopping and the sales tax that's generated there. But about

1.2 million of this increase is due to our greater proportional distribution of taxes within the county. So, if you'll remember back to last budget season, we talked about um our our tax valuation and our levy as a proportion of all the communities in the county. And depending on where we move and where others in the county move, we would gain a larger distribution of of those shared revenues. So about 1.2 million is what we saw. We had projected during budget season that we might land around 1.1 million. So we were pretty close on that that estimation and it came out to about 1.2. The water and sewer fund as well as the storm water fund have revenue increases combined of about 600,000. That represents about a 4.8% 8% increase from the prior year. Uh moving from fiscal year 24 to 25, we did a 5% rate increase. So what we actually saw was a slight pullback on uh the average consumption across all of our customers. Um but we we still came in right around that 5% increase at 600,000. Uh this slide here is our governmentwide net position. So you see restricted net position of about $3.2 million. Um these are this is a portion of our essentially the town's savings account or the the equity if you're looking at it like a business um that's restricted from an external source. This ranges from about 2 and a half to three and a half million every year depending on um a lot of different factors. Um so 3.2 is right in line with what we were expecting at the end of the year. Unrestricted net position of 52.7 million. Uh so this is uh money that's not restricted by some external source and it's not already committed to capital like you see in the third category there our net investment in capital assets. So it may have a purpose and we know that a lot of our savings are are designated for capital spending in the future. They are designated as as savings within a

certain fund or they have a purpose uh such as some of our internally restricted money. Um but when you look at it across the government at this at this level, it's not restricted by an external source and so it's listed as unrestricted net position here. So what we want to see is that separation of our of the blue bar on this graph from the gold one and that represents our unrestricted net position that can be put to use in a future year for any purpose of the government. Our net investment in capital assets is the book value of all of the town's assets and infrastructure, equipment and vehicles. all of those assets depreciated over time and then we subtract any debt that we owe on those assets as well and that gives you a net investment in our in the town's capital assets. That number is up to 86 million uh 86.3 million at the end of this year. So you can see nice steady growth on our investment capital assets there with the gold bars and the same uh with the blue bar representing the town's total net position. So, real quickly, I want to jump over and look at what did we do in the current year when we invested in those capital assets. Um, so we have six groupings of assets that that we uh break our purchases into. You can see that we essentially focused on four areas this year, leaving land and buildings out um as those will come up in in future years. And we are essentially a quarter u invested into vehicles, equipment, infrastructure, and land improvements. uh still looking at governmentwide. So that that includes our general fund, water, sewer, and storm water. Um this is looking at the town's overall revenues and expenditures across all of the functions of the town. So total revenues of about 50.5 million. You'll see a decrease from 24 moving to 25. We had about 5.5 million of contributions from developers in 24. And if you remember back to the first slide, we had

400,000 for Addison Park. That $5 million drop is what you see here from year to year. And then you see total expenses of about 36 million and that has a nice linear growth. We plan for 4% growth on our operational expenses every year. And so you can see that playing out here. Um I did want to mention this is going to contrast with my very next slide which is the general fund. Um this is governmentwide. So this is looking at the government like a business. Um, so when this this income statement is looked at like a business, when you buy capital as a uh as a for-profit business and when you pay off debt, those are not expenses. That is adding to your assets or paying off a liability. Um, when the government does that uh in the general fund or even in the water, sewer and stormwater fund um those show up as expenses. So, we budget for that that capital outlay. We budget for debt service and it shows up in our revenue and our expenses. When we back out and look at the town as a business, if it were run as a for-profit business, um those expenses don't necessarily count as expenses. And so, that's why you see such a gap here between the revenue and expenses that what fills that gap is our investment in our assets and paying off debt. And you'll see that on future slides. So, here's a look at our general fund. Um, you can see revenues of 36 million and expenses of 33 and a half. So, I will flip back really quickly. Obviously, if the general fund spent 33 and a2, the town, including water, sewer, and everything else that we do, didn't just spend 36 million. So, we're comparing two different types of expenditures here. So, I flip back over to the general fund here. Um, based on our fund balance policy, anything that's not spent in a given year is transferred to our capital reserve fund. That does show up as an expenditure when you're looking at the general fund. And so you'll always see our revenue and expenditure when looking at the general fund be in lock step as you see here. So they're almost always exactly the same.

Uh, and that's a function of our fund balance policy. The water and sewer fund is much the same. total revenues this year from external sources of about 14.3 million and total expenses of 13 million. It also has a fund balance policy. So, um everything at the end of the year that goes unspent uh is transferred over to fund capital in the next year. Oh, and let me back up here. Uh 2024 does have higher revenue than 2025. Um there was about 3 million in system development fees paid on new housing starts in 2024. that uh is well above. There was kind of a rush of housing starts all in 2024 um to the tune of $3 million on the water sewer side. That number is about a million and a half this year, much more normalized number. Um and so while we while we see a decrease in revenue there, it was not recurring revenue. It's not revenue that we are depending on for operations. So it stands out a little bit here. Um but it's not a sign of actual dropped revenue as far as operations goes. The storm water fund is uh is much the same with uh linear growth there from year to year on both revenue and expenditures. Um in 21 there was a pretty significant contribution of infrastructure that shows up in that revenue number. Aside from that uh this fund is is pretty linear, much smaller numbers at less than a million dollars on both sides than water, sewer and general fund. Um, and really the purpose of our storm water fund is to uh maintain the storm water permit for the town and then build up savings for capital projects over time. So, another really important um thing for the town and that you see reflected in the financial statements is the town's grant funding. This is just such an important part of of what staff is working on all the time is to bring in external sources of money, meaning that everything doesn't fall back on the

resident to fund. Um so we can we can really accomplish some major projects by getting this external funding from state and federal levels and and it really pays off. Um POW bill funding is an example of a state grant that we get every year. We received about 710,000. Um, as as I mentioned on the first slide, we spent just north of 500,000 on Powell Street resurfacing. So, we had about 200,000 uh join our previous 200,000 in cash reserves. So, we have about 400 that we can put towards expenditures in a future year along with distributions we get from the state. So, we're starting to build up a little bit more to be able to do some bigger projects in the future. Uh we brought in a $400,000 DEQ water and wastewater inventory study. So that shows up in the water and sewer fund and that just went into our operating funds to help pay for those studies. We had uh just under 150,000 in hurricane deployment reimbursements. Those come from FEMA through the state. Um, and something important to mention here is that when when we're sent out on deployment with our Swift Water team, we are reimbursed the personnel cost, the overtime that those uh, firefighters are incurring. U, we get a chargeback rate on our equipment and vehicles and all of our direct expenses that it takes to facilitate that deployment. But then we also get reimbursed for all of the employees that backfill so that we keep so that we maintain staffing here at the local level. So, we get all of that taken care of and and reimbursed and so that none of the local uh taxpayers, no local jurisdictions are funding deployments out across the state and even to other states as well. So, um a really good thing that the state does there or that FEMA does to reimburse us for that allows us to keep that program going and provide benefit all across the state. Transportation grants, we've been awarded about 16.5 million in

transportation grants. um highway 49, Cobbell Road extension, Hickory Ridge sidewalk, and the Main Street roundabout. Our local contribution on that is about $3 million. So, we'll have about $20 million in transportation projects that we have a a pretty low participation rate in. Um so, here's a look at the share of those projects of that $6.5 million. Uh we just started getting reimbursed for some expenditures in the current year in fiscal 26. So over the next several years as these projects build out, we'll report on the progress of of revenue that we've received on these uh on these four projects. But this will this will be something that we discuss for a couple years as these build out. And the town's last uh really large grant that previously the largest grant before the transportation grants was the ARPA grant of about $5.3 million. This year we only spent about 54,000 of that uh which brought us to a total of about 2.4 million expended which means we still have 2.9 million uh left to expend. The rule with this grant was that all funds are spent by December 31st of 2026 or we have to return those. Um, so it's very important that we spend this $2.9 million before the year is out. And I can tell you that we've already spent about two um with our contributions to opening up the YMCA facility. So those funds are out the door. The remaining 8 to 900,000 is already committed on the uh fire department's engine that's being built right now. So we will make sure that we pay that before the end of the year and our ARPA funds will be totally accounted for. Um, so now I'm going to move into a couple uh benchmarks and key performance indicators. We report these and we've been doing this for years to the state. When we submit the audit report, um, it has a lot of benchmarks and and KPIs

that go along with it. Uh but now the state is actually starting to um focus on those and and make u municipalities that don't have good KPIs and don't have good benchmarking against other communities respond to that and address those and and implement things that will improve those metrics. Um luckily our our metrics look pretty good here compared to our peers and compared to others across the state. uh but it is something that we want to touch on every year in this presentation and let you know what what some of those are that the LGC is looking at. So the first one is available fund balance um as a percentage of expenditures. And before I get too much into that I I want to point out the the different groups that we have here. So the group weighted average the group that we are compared against with the rest of the state is municipalities that range in population from 10 to 25,000. So, we're pretty uh high in that range um of municipalities. And um the only designation that the state makes in breaking that out is not um you know, it's not geographic. It's not um necessarily a lot of the services that we provide. The only um delineation there is are we a an electric utility provider or not. uh if you if you're an electric utility provider as a municipality, you run a much different operation than one that's not. Uh employee count, investment, all all sorts of things. Um so it is good that they've broken that off. So we have in our group weighted average here and in the next couple slides, we're being compared with municipalities in that 10 to 25 range without an electric utility. Um obviously the state weighted average is um all municipalities across the state. So, what this um what this chart here is telling us with available fund balance as a percentage of expenditures is how much does the town have in savings um based off how much we spent

this year. So, if we spent $12 million this year and we have 12 million in savings, then we have one year's worth of expenditures and savings. Um, so that's what they're looking at is if your revenue is interrupted for some reason, if it's cut off completely, if we have some sort of um catastrophic change to the revenue system in North Carolina, how long could a municipality exist exactly as it did in the prior year uh before it starts to notice some some pretty serious issues? So, as you see at the bottom of this graph, the black line is the minimum required level recommended by the state, and that's 8%. So that represents one month of operations that you have to have in savings. We've set our fund balance policy at 40% of expenditures. Our calculation is a little bit different than this one. Uh so the way that that comes out in this calculation is about 27 to 29%. So we're really comfortable with that number, but the reason that we're comfortable with that number is because of the dotted line. And that dotted line represents our fund balance percentage um with our capital reserve fund included. So there's a lot of municipalities across the state that when they settle in at that yellow or red line, that's all they've got. So they've got, you know, 6 months, 8 months of savings in their account. We've got the three or four months in the general fund and then we've got 111% as you can see with the dotted line in our capital reserve fund. So that puts us in a much better position than a lot of municipalities uh across the state. The water and sewer fund has a couple of benchmarks um that are looked at pretty closely by the LGC and um this one is these are really important because a water and sewer fund is an enterprise fund. It needs to be self- sustaining. It cannot rely on taxes. It can't even accept any sort of assistance from from tax dollars at all. So it needs to be totally self- sustaining on its own. Uh so what you see here is that the

operating margin or the net income essentially for the water and sewer fund has been right in in between our group and state average for a number of years. We've been in great shape. Last year for fiscal 24 we had that really big influx of system development fees from development that you see uh impacting that and pushing us north of 20%. And then this year we had an equivalent pullback of those um those housing starts. And so our our number went down to about four or 5%. But if we normalize those housing starts across the two years, that's what the dotted line reflects there. And so we're still right in there at that 14 or 15%. Um we do look at this operating margin as we head into budget season every year. And it's really crucial that we get this right.

Brian, could you hold us up? Yeah. Nobody can hear you. Yeah. Can everybody make sure they have their phones turned off, please? Thank you.

I kind of liked the music. Um, so this is something that we look at really closely as we go through budget season and when we're recommending any sort of rate adjustment or the ability to pause rate adjustments is to make sure that this graph doesn't get out of whack. Um, so so I I do still feel comfortable that we had some one-time type of impacts over the past two years that that skew this chart a little bit. But in terms of our actual operating revenues and the health of the fund and its ability to sustain itself, um I think the fund is still in in good shape. So no no concerns with what you see here. The next one for the water and sewer fund is operating revenues per capita. So we want to look at how much is each household responsible for um in any fiscal year. and you want to make sure that um there's not too much of a burden on the households in any one municipality compared to those across the rest of the state. So, as you can see, we've been hovering with our state average for the past five or six years. Uh we did bounce up to, you know, a little less than than 700, right below our group average, but we were still below those with our population number. Um that decreased a little bit this year as we gave u we gave back one of the rate increases. Um but as you see, we've normalized that. U for the system development fees. And so we're still right there in between those two groupings. Uh very comfortable with with where our operating revenues per capita have landed this year. Um this is another obviously very popular uh benchmark that people like to look at across uh across the state and for each municipality and that is the town's tax rate. So you can see for a number of years uh we were at 35 1.5 cents. um a decent amount below the group and the state average about 20% below. Um in between 22 and 23, we did have a tax

rate increase for the expanded sheriff's division and saving for capital. So um we saw some evidence of that on the first slide where we were able to save $9 million. That was part of the plan with this rate increase in 23. uh that stayed steady for one year and then as a result of the reval we dropped from 43 and a half to 41. Uh we do we don't do not have the group and state weighted averages yet for 25 but I suspect that it'll hang right there about 40 cents and so we're actually right in line across the state with um our group and our state average. Now, this is different um than what you've heard through budget season for the past year or two because we have selected a different group of peers or a a more narrow focused group of peers when when we look at how do we compare to those uh that we're really in competition with. So, it's it's important to look at the the group average across the whole state and and the state average as well. But we know when we're competing for employees that we're doing that with Concord, Canapapolis, Matthews, Mount Holly, Statesville, Morsville, we're competing with those those are around us in our region. They offer the same a lot of the same services that we do. Um so so that's who we're really competing with and who we call our peers. It's not just about population, but it's about geography, services provided, uh, a lot of different factors that go into the communities that we actually compare ourselves against. So, this is a chart that you're used to seeing throughout budget season. So, when we benchmark against some of those that have a lot of a lot of similarities to us um, in one of those different categories, um, you can see our tax rate of 41 cents is well below the average of 55 and just uh, you know, second lowest on this list. Um, there are some that we compare ourselves to because we both have a relationship with a a major metro. So, you know,

Nightdale right next to us is not geographically close to us, but they do offer a lot of the same services. Um, but they're also right outside of another major metro. So, we have a lot of reasons that we can compare to these more closely than that group average. So, now I want to move into revenue and expense analysis for the town. So here you can see that 40% of the revenues collected this year were from property taxes. Um and you can see the the number in brackets there represents the prior year. Uh utilities at about 31% sales services and some intergovernmental revenues of 14%. Sales taxes of 11 and then contributions and miscellaneous income. uh with two very small amounts there. You'll see a big big drop in that contributions number from 23% down to one and that represents that $5 million difference I I mentioned early on. Um where it was such a big contribution of of infrastructure in the prior year. Uh so that pulled back to one. Um what that does is is proportionally change all the others on this graph. And so you see everything else going up essentially. uh property tax didn't necessarily go from 28 to 40 um in a vacuum there. That's that's a big result of the contributions. It's probably more like 33 to 35% uh looking forward. So about a third of the town's revenue comes in in property tax, another third in utilities, and then another third in all all other revenue sources. Couple different ways to look at expenditures across the year. The first is by function. So we're breaking it into the major departments, major functions of the town. You can see water and sewer or the utilities if you include storm water as well at about 36% combined there. Uh another almost third on public safety and then public works

which includes streets and greenways uh environmental for trash buildings and grounds. So, a lot of services packed into that. Public works uh percentage there at 16%. Parks and wreck at 12 and all other general government services included at 7%. Uh not too much of a change in our strategy from year to year. As you can see, there's only a slight change uh mostly in public works as we grow that function. Um a lot of that is due to our our uh increased focus on streets as you'll see that um in the public works department. Um, Brian, just a quick question on that last one.

The parks and wrecks, those that expenditure number, this does not include the income that's generated by the ticket sales and so forth. That's correct. This is just the the raw expense number. But yeah, what you can't see here is that a good third or fourth of of that number is paid for with service charges of some sort.

Okay, cool. So, another way to break those expenses up um and this is this is townwide here across all functions of the town is um by object. So, I look at debt service at 9% and capital outlay at 11%. Those are both uh purchases of capital. One is in the current year and one you're paying for capital that was purchased in a prior year. So, about a fifth of the town's expenditures is on capital. And then about 43% on operations and maintenance and 37% on personnel. Uh so those are those are pretty much in line with the prior year and we haven't had any sort of shift in expenditure strategy um to speak of. All right. So I always like to uh look at five-year growth. Um you know the last five years have a a major impact on the financial statements that are in front of you. Um not everything happens in one year. So it's good to look at um some of the different inputs into town operations and how those have changed. So homes are up 12% over that uh 5-year period and we know that we have a lot of families moving into Harrisburg. So while homes are up 12% the population is up 19%. Um we've seen that in our in our population numbers as well that we grow at a little bit higher rate than others across the state as well when it comes to new homes. Our employees have grown at about 13%. So, I like to see that that number is very much in line with the homes and the population as um the employees that we have are serving the the new homes and the new people that that are coming into town and we're doing that at a comparable level. And then assessed evaluation. This represents obviously the reval is in there, but a large portion of this 70% is um new homes, new businesses, and each one of those new homes comes with new vehicles and new personal property. Um so about 40% is uh related to the

reval and the other 30% is natural growth over this 5-year period. All right. So um before I get into this, just want to ask if there's any other questions on some of those benchmarks or KPIs or if you could go back to that last slide. Do we have a way to break out any um what we receive from businesses? Yes. Yes, we've got a a good detailed breakdown of that. I mean, I think it would be worthwhile just to understand the uh growth around businesses, population businesses, all that as well. Yes. The other question I had previously was you had mentioned that we are now being required I guess is that by the state for KPI?

Yes. Is there a template that you guys are provided or there is. And what's your timelines? Um so when when we submit the audit and we've done this for a number of years they just didn't do too much with the data. Um but they have been collecting it um when we turn in the audit we turn in a workbook that extracts a lot of information from the audit and then they calculate those KPIs for us and it tells the auditor if they need to get with us and discuss a failing KPI or if something's going in the wrong direction. Uh so all of ours look great. We do have it's a pretty extensive workbook and it calculates um you know probably 50 or 60 different different KPIs that they're looking at. We've got that every year.

Was there unknown expected cost in this or I mean I would I would suspect other towns may have to increase their accountants or whatever but um I mean I think no it's not really it's not really a big burden. um it it's all extracted out of the financial statements and all of our financial statements across the state are pretty uniform in their presentation so they can get similar data out of everybody. So it's it's something that you have to do to put together your financials anyways. Thank you. Mhm.

Councilman Smith, the other thing included in the assessed valuation is annexations and total. So this is the the total value of the town from a valuation standpoint. So over those five years, any new subdivision that came in, that would that would be included in this. So all new homes, any new commercial, any new industrial, but expanding our border is also included in this. So it's all inclusive of increased valuations, new builds, annexation, commercial, and we do have that broken out by by product type. I mean, I I just know with our focus with EDC recently that um I mean, I think it's worthwhile to to capture that that we're seeing growth coming out of Yep. And we're and we're tracking that. Yep.

Thank you. Yeah. U great point that Ryan and department, you should be self-funding all the economic development. That's wonderful. Uh I do have a question. Uh I assume you have a different depreciation schedule depending on whether it's a truck or a building or a warehouse or whatever. Do you have any appreciation? Because the one thing we didn't do was the thing we said we were going to try to do at the beginning of the year, which was buy some land. And I would expect that land would have gone up in value in the year that we let those capital funds sit there. So is the land an appreciation?

Um it it is uh but we do not adjust any of the values of our assets for any sort of market moves or anything like that. So all of everything in our financial statements and that we always reference is a book value or an actual cost paid on those things. Okay. So um so this valuation here um but two two different things. So um on our balance sheet we do not do any sort of market adjustments. Um this valuation does include market moves because this is looking at the town properties. Right. Okay. Do that. But our net position would not reflect that. Our net position stagnant on on land or real property.

So you go to sell it and you make then then you realize it and we put it into our uh fund balance. Yeah. Okay. Um couple questions. So the grant money, the 16 million that we were awarded, we already received it all. It's an in our No, we we do reimbursement draw downs on that. So, um, each week or, you know, every two or three weeks, we'll accumulate what we've paid out and file a reimbursement. And we've done two or three of those already this year. Okay. Okay. Um, and as far as ARPA, I think we were discussing that a small portion of it was going to be used for the improvements to Main Street and I think Lee was

working on that. We had done that originally and then based on the the projected timing of that project, we didn't feel like we could um pay that out by December 31st and so we swapped that with um about half of the uh fire engine because we know that we can pay that out before the end of the year. So we make sure that we get that spent. Yep. So both projects are still funded and and still on the same timelines, but we're just able to apply the money so that we make sure we spend it appropriately. Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome. All right. So now the really exciting part. Um we have submitted these financial statements to the GFOAS uh which is um um the government finance officers association. They their certificate of excellence and financial reporting program. Uh so this will be the town's first submission into that program. Um so we're really happy to do that. And um what that means is that the financial statements were converted from what used to be called the basic financial statements into an annual comprehensive financial report. So what's in front of you is an annual comprehensive financial report. And um by making enhancements to it, by having a really high quality uh set of financial statements there and adding in some of the requirements of this program, uh we're able to qualify for that that program. that we have submitted. We did that in late December and we will not find out for probably another month or so if we receive the award. Um it's it's a really strenuous program. They they go through um the entire report with a fine tooth comb. Um there's like a 150page checklist that they're going through and so it's it's very in-depth. Um it's not very common to get it on your first year, but uh we just we tried for it anyways. Um so we hope to be successful there. We have a great audit firm as I mentioned who also combed through it to make sure we have a really good submission to this program. Uh so I hope in a month or two I can tell you that we got that and share the plaque with you. Um but but more to come on that. Um, so what's involved in uh in an ACFR as it's called is uh it starts off with the transmitter letter. And if you were to pick up the financial statements and um have a five or six page read of everything that went on in the town that year, all the the local impacts to the town, um a lot of our long-term financial planning, some of

our policies, um if you were to go to one place and try to get a snapshot of what happened this year and the overall financial health of the town, uh this transmitt letter should have everything that you need. Um, so it's a good couple page read to to understand um a lot of that's going on with the town. So you can see there in the red section everything that's included in that transmitt letter. And so that's um that's something that we essentially overhaul and rewrite every year to make sure that it really reflects everything in the financial statements for that year. Um, also included are a town governing body and officials uh section of the report, an org chart that shows uh starts with the residents at the top, town council, and goes to the department heads down to each department. Um, and then the biggest enhancement to the report are the statistical tables in the back of the report. Um, this year there's 18 and we'll add to those as we come across uh different sets of information, but you'll see a statistical section towards the back. Um, and really the point of this is to give a reader additional context. So, if you pick up our basic financial statements from a prior year and you wonder where has um, you know, the valuation, how how has that trended over the past several years? Um, it's it's not contained in in the basic financial statements. You only have a one-year snapshot. Um if you want to know the population over time, all sorts of data over time, uh you can't find that in one set of basic financial statements. So these statistical tables give you 10 years of data um for all sorts of different uh facets that we're reporting on and just give you a lot more context um that that basic financial statements don't. Um, so that's really the key to this program is making sure you have good data there and that it's presented uh in an easy way to to digest for the readers and give giving people more context to understand the financial

statements. So a couple examples that you'll see in the report are a table like this one, the assessed value of of taxable property. So, I just mentioned that, you know, if you wanted to see where or how property valuations have changed over time, uh, it wasn't possible in the past, but now you can flip back to these statistical tables and get a get a good feel for that, see how things have changed over time, and that might give you some more context when you're looking at something that you see in the current year. Uh, so this is broken down into residential, commercial, and industrial property. So, I think we have answered one of the questions there already with just this table here. As you can see that breakdown uh it includes personal property, motor vehicles, uh public service companies, all the different categories of uh valuation in the town and our direct tax rate that's laid on on that each year. Another example of a table that you'll find in the statistical section is our ratios of outstanding debt by type. Um so you can see on the left side governmental activity debt business type activity in the middle of course our total primary government. Uh but then two interesting pieces of information here is that uh that's displayed in a percentage of our personal income as it relates to Harrisburg and our per capita share of the town's debt. That's a pretty interesting number there. Um you can see that the town um hit a peak of debt in 2020 2021 in both general fund uh business type activities and for the entire town at about 34 million. So that was almost $1,700 per capita across the town's residents. Uh we've now paid that debt down to about 24 million which represents about $1,000 per capita. Um, so, um, really good trend in terms of the town's debt capacity and each person's kind of ownership of that debt. And I can tell you that this looks a lot

better than your personal share of the federal debt. So, we are beating beating the federal government on that one. Uh, another two examples here that we have are some demographic and economic statistics for the last 10 years. You can see Harrisburg's population, our town's personal income, um, collectively, our per capita personal income for Harrisburg, our school enrollment, and then lastly, the Cabaris County unemployment rate. Uh, we cannot get that data drilled down to just Harrisburg. So, we have to uh report on the counties, the countywide unemployment rate. Uh, but some pretty valuable information here uh when making decisions about the town. And lastly, just another example here, number of water and sewer customers by type over the last 10 years. So you can see our growth in residential in and out of town commercial and industrial water and sewer customers. Um, and that we've grown from about 7,100 customers to nearly 9,500 over that 10-year period. So that is all I have for our presentation tonight. Sorry.

What are some of the municipalities that are in this program today? Um, there are thousands across the nation that that participate in this. Um, the number across North Carolina is more like 10% of municipalities. Um, counties for the most participate. Municipalities is is probably 50 60 across the state.

I mean, I'm assuming that it's probably more of your larger municipalities or counties. Yes. Yeah. Mo most large cities. Um and then um to give our department a little bit of of credit here, most um send this out to a consultant to to put together their their financial statements and um we produced ours in house. So we're really happy about that as well. But yeah, this is not a very um not a very common program for people to be a part of. Uh but once you are a part of it, it's very yeah, it's very important to stay a part of it as well. You don't want to have a gap in your certificates from year to year. So, we've made a commitment now to to go for this and and stay with it.

I guess this is like the ISO certification of the financial world. Yes. Yep. And so, now I will turn it over to Kang if uh she's with us. Yes. Okay.

Yes. Um, first of all, I would like to say great job, Brian, for pushing um to get your capper and putting all those reports together because it it takes a lot of time and effort. Um, so great job on that. And I would go ahead I'm going to go ahead and start the presentation on my part. Uh, I would also like to thank you, um, the mayor and council members for allowing us to, uh, serve as your auditors. Uh, we value our relationship and look forward to serving you in many years to come. And then I think Brian already went to the next slide. Um, here I'll talk a little bit about our audit process. Uh we work year round with Brian and the finance office. Our planning and risk assessment starts as we con complete the previous audit. Um as we read your board minutes to hear about changes such as new grants, new debts, um and new projects. Um we are constantly updating your risk assessment and tailoring our audit procedures to meet the risk involved. Typically we perform our interim fieldwork procedures in late spring to early summer. Uh during this time we are reviewing the town's internal controls, performing walkthroughs of cash collections and testing compliance related to federal and state grants such as the ARPA fund and the POW bill. Final field work is performed late summer at which we are analyzing the financial statements uh tying general

ledger balances to source documents and following up on internal control items and walkthroughs from interim. Uh during the final field work, we also hold an exit conference to discuss any outstanding issues which there were none. Uh once the financial statements are drafted, we perform the te uh the technical review on them and we issue our opinion and submit your report to the LGC. Then we issued an unmodified clean opinion for the town's audit. I believe you have the final audit report. Um, I would like to guide you to the management discussion and analysis of the report. This is a great place to look for a summary of the financial highlights as well as a brief discussion on the fiscal year 2026 budget. Um, and I would like to thank Brian and his team for being prepared and pleasant to work with.

Thank you. Um, here is a quick review of the fund balance available in percentage based on the data input report that was submitted with the town's report to the LGC. Uh, this year it's uh 26% it decreased by 3% from prior year but it's still above minimum the minimum threshold. Um the minimum threshold is 25%, median is 46% of similar units. And here's the general performance indicators. Um there were no red flags. As Brian mentioned earlier, the town's report was submitted and accepted by the LGC in a timely manner. Um lastly, this year had a stable property tax evaluation and collection percentage. And that concludes my presentation. Once again, it had been it has been a great pleasure working with everyone. Are there any questions for me?

Thank you, Kane. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Brian. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate it. All right. Any questions? Any questions for me? I was waiting on Chris. You're the financial guy. I was waiting for you to I'll point out

as you have a chance to look through the financial statements that are in front of you. If any questions pop up or anything, of course, you can reach out and we will uh address those as necessary. point these out for the uh obviously for the board and mayor but also for uh those in attendance and those on YouTube. These are available online as well which is a a very detailed version of Brian's very detailed presentation. Um you know once a year I'd like to remind you guys that my MRB is short compared to the audit presentation. So thanks again Brian Rob. Did you uh create one hardbound for Wally Wallace over there?

Wally can have mine. He'll need the hard copy. Thank you, Brian. Appreciate it. Yeah. Now, we will move into public comment. We did have a signup sheet. Um, we do have about nine folks signed up to speak. So, in order to be respectful of everyone's time, you do have three minutes. Um, you may not defer time to another speaker, but when you come up to the front, if you could just state your name and address for the record, that would be great. Um, first on the list, we have Susie Scoon Maker.

Good evening, everyone, and thank you, Brian. That was the most interesting financial. I mean, I I really got a lot out of it, actually. It was great graphics. Don't forget name and address for the record.

Oh, yeah. Um, my name is Susie Scoomaker. I live at um 10449 Paper Birch Drive in Hulcom Woods. So, I want to say good evening to everyone here and uh good evening Mayor Tay and all of the council members here. Um I'm here this evening as a resident and someone who values thoughtful, collaborative local leadership. I wanted to speak briefly in support of my colleague and my friend Aaron Banks, who was recently elected to this council and received a strong voter support. I've had the opportunity to work closely with her in a community leadership setting and I can say with confidence and with my heart that she is prepared, diligent, and deeply committed to serving this town wi with integrity. I understand that the mayor prom is not an elected position and that this council is full authority to determine who is best suited for that role. I also recognize that experience, continuity, and institutional knowledge are important considerations in making that decision. That said, I hope the council will also consider the leadership qualities she brings, her work ethic, her ability to listen, and her willingness to collaborate. Those qualities have served our community well in other settings, and I believe they would translate effectively in any leadership role on this council. Regardless of the outcome, I respect the council's process and appreciate the seriousness with which you approach these decisions. My hope is simply that we continue to support one another as neighbors, all of us here, and work together for the good of our community. Thank you for your time, for your service, and for the opportunity to speak. Thank you, Susie. Next, we have Karen Powell.

My name is Karen Powell, 5641 Berry Ridge Drive. Um, I'm in Orchard Park, which is it borders Caldwell Road and Tom Query, and um uh my concern is about the um the industrial park there. I've lived there for 24 years, never had any troubles. Peaceful, quiet. Somewhere in this last year, something has happened over we think at Builder Resource. Um, and this is kind of what we deal with. See if I can get it to play for you here. This loud continual hum I'm hearing all the time, day and night. I brought a couple of neighbors to back me up on this because they we we've been discussing it and you can even hear it at night when you're trying to sleep. So, I was just wondering if there was someone uh an avenue a way a a route we could take to maybe work with them and figure out what's going on and if they could change something that they're doing. Um I didn't want to just call them myself. I thought maybe there was a better avenue that we could go through that you all maybe could help us with. So,

can can I just clarify? So, you said this is recent as of the last year or more recent than that? Okay. I'd say it's even a little bit more recent. You know, I think when the leaves come off the trees and things like that, sound carries a little bit more. And the way we're located, um, it's taken us a while to locate the sound because when you drive around, you know, it kind of moves. So, we kind of we're out at 10:00 la last weekend triangulating where the sound was from. But, there has to be a way they can mitigate this. There has to be some sound engineering, something restrictions where they can't run it at night when we're trying to sleep because as my neighbors will back up, you're laying in bed. You're you're putting a pillow over your head to stop that humming.

Is this related to any of the new construction at the end of Caldwell Business Park on the Charlotte side? Nope. Nope, it's not that. It's I think it's something within uh Builder's First Source. I think they have new equipment. Okay. uh that has gone in over the last year. Yeah, it's it's been within less than a year that it's been that bad. But yeah, if there's anybody that could help us, um you have my name and my number. If someone could contact me, I would love to try and approach this in a nice problemolving way if we could. Thank you, Karen. We'll add that to our action item. We um I'm in Fentindelle and we actually noticed last week a couple of nights some sort of like really low like sound and I wasn't sure if it's my ears or what but

it must be there. That's it. Thank you for triangulating it. So ju just just to make sure um make sure we do have your your number. We get back with you. Um yeah, we certainly have contacts with with all those businesses, but it'd be important to actually identify, you know, what it is. is I mean it may be there's a lot of industrial properties that back up to each other there. You've got Blue Dot, we've got Galvan, we've got Builder First. I drove into their parking lot. I know I was probably supposed to No, that's fine. If it was open, did you like what is happening? Did you find the equipment? Um, we found the building. So, it's I mean it's So, there's a building at building first that's got

Oh, there's massive buildings back there with big pieces of equipment. Yeah, probably some CNC uh cutting. So, and so it is coming from one of their bills. That's that's the easiest thing. Yeah. Yeah. But if someone could help us do that, that would be great. We'll help make contact there. Thank you so much. That noises. Thank you, Miss Fowl. Dan Reading.

Hey there, Dan Reading, 4378 Bridgeoint Drive. Um, I'm here to be very quick to address the concerns from the December 8th council meeting regarding the roles and responsibilities for the mayor pro Tim. It's my understanding that it's been the town's tradition that the highest vote getter becomes the mayor prom. Um I would like to see the town continue with that precedence and put forth that Dr. Aaron Bates uh be the mayor prom for the next two years. Um as far as I know, there's never been any issues uh with having the highest vote getter be the mayor prom. So I don't see any reason to break from that tradition and I think it would be prudent to put this in writing as well so there are no issues moving forward. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Reading. Commissioner Patrick. Wow. Welcome. You can hear it at your house, too, huh?

I'm going to listen now, actually. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Um, I'm going to give you my uh government address, and you'll realize why in a second, but it's 65 Church Street South. Um, Brian, that uh presentation is a lot harder when you're in the audience, you're not not invested in it. Um, but I wanted to just come up and introduce myself. Um, I will be your commissioner liaison for the town of Harrisburg and I'm really honored for that opportunity. We got our board appointments and and other appointments at our work session last Monday. And I just wanted to add that since I am a resident of Harrisburg, I am invested in your success, all of you sitting up there. So, please let me know if there's anything I can do to help. Same goes for staff. Please reach out to me. You can find my website on or excuse me, my uh contact information on my website. Of course, most of you have my cell phone number anyway. So, please reach out if I can help you in any way, shape, or form, and I hope you would do the same uh for me. So, that's it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Commissioner Patrick, for being here tonight. Kesha Sandage.

Good evening. My name is Kesha Sandage. I will not say my address, but I do live in Cabaris County. I'm a former elected official and I am all about safety, which I'm sure many of you are. Uh, so I'm here today to speak about governance and equity. Um, I want to talk about consistency and fairness and respect and leadership, particularly as it relates to the role of Mayor Pro Tim here in Harrisburg. Uh, I know the vitality of this county depends on all the municipalities that are a part of this county. So, Harrisburg is very important to me and I very much so follow politics in Cabaris County. Harrisburg has long followed a clear tradition of the highest vote getter to town council is appointed mayor pro Tim. And as I understand, there may be some discrepancies about uh asserting Dr. Aaron Banks into that position. And I just want us to make sure we think about what that looks like to our public. For the last two consecutive mayor prom appointments, it looks like the residents of Harrisburg want to see a black woman as mayor prom. Um and I think that we should give that to them again um in this cycle. I also want to remind us too that, you know, we all deserve to be here. We all deserve to be appreciated and for our worth to be warranted and also uh uplifted in what we see happening every day in our communities. So um as a black woman myself, I'm going to tell you black woman, I see you. I appreciate you and I thank you for doing the work and the will of all people despite what they look like to this council. Y'all do right by these citizens that have been paying taxes here that give into this community a as much as anybody that loves their city and that loves the community that they live in. Um I truly appreciate you all signing up. I know this is a hard job. I've sat

on a dis before in Cabaris County and I understand what it takes uh to you know deal with people who don't like us, deal with people who love us and deal with people that just don't have everything that they need and the only way they know how to express themselves is in ways that may not look right to us. Again, I'll say do right by your constituency. They have voted and they have spoken in their vo votes and I hope that you hear their voices loud and clear. Thank you for allowing me to speak. Thank you, Miss Sandage. Um, Jaya Ber and sorry if I did not say that right.

J A Y A last name Boyer. That would be me, but I didn't. Oh, okay. But I agree with what she said. Thank you. That's funny. Um, Patrice, uh, Patricia Privus. Sorry. Okay.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Patricia Priebus and I live at 6550 River Hills Drive in Harrisburg. During last month's meeting, the town manager briefly presented a final concept drawing of the historic mill and museum to be located on the corner of Farm Mill and Shamrock Roads. I could not locate any documentation on the town's website about this project, including what the town manager presented. I attend In addition, I attended the one Harrisburg openhouse session in October and the zone 4 meeting on October 14th and the proposed development of the historic mill and museum was not included in any of the one Harrisburg documentation. I would think it should have been included so town residents could be aware of this additional Harrisburg project. Many of the impacted residents that live in or near the River Hills Estates neighborhood were not aware this project was being planned. It is perceived that this project is being planned behind closed doors without public being informed, which is not transparent or reassuring for town residents. There are several concerns and questions that my neighbors and myself have about this plan project. First one, this property is in a flood zone and it often floods when we have high rains. Of course, we're in a drought right now, so there's not much water there. However, in the time that I've lived in Harrisburg for the past 13 years, it's flooded several times. That was also the demise of the actual historic building that was there previously um and why it had to be torn down. Um then, um second, this is just a rhetorical question, is this a good use of taxpayer money? How much will it cost to clean up and rebuild this property every time it's flooded? Also, will there be security or staff at this location, which would result in more costs for the town and its taxpayers? What about traffic on these two roads? It's already busy and people drive over

the speed limit, which is causing issues pulling onto Farmill Road from the neighborhood's two streets. There have been plans to have about 300 new homes built off Shamrock Roads, making traffic even worse in the near future. The last point is exactly how much demand is there for a kayak launch in Harrisburg? Is this really a priority for spending taxpayer dollars? It seems like this project may be catering to a very small minority of our taxpayers. My last comment, if a historic mill and museum is something that the residents of Harrisburg truly wish to spend their hard-earned money on, would a better location be the Farmill Park, which is already having the infrastructure to support this project, and it's not located in a flood zone? This could result in substantial taxpayer savings compared to the proposed location. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Yeah, I can I can address most of those um now, but I'd love to get you, you know, a copy. Actually, we have a presentation on tonight's uh agenda, so you'll get to hear our parks and wreck director um present the engineering contract for this. Um when it comes to kind of just the the process, I I will say historic farm mill predates me as a project. Um, so you know, this this demolition of the old mill and storing those parts that's been going on for I'd say about seven years. So there's a there's a lot of different steps in there that that I can't speak to. But um, as far as the transparency, we'd love to get you whatever. I know the past three years we've had this in our budget process. So we've got I know that's a lot to keep up with because we've done probably about 75 80 hours worth of this type of debate on on projects like this. um and this has been one of them and and so we've gone through that process each year. All those are on our website um as well that you can you can check that out. But most recently we we gave our um conceptual designs in the October I believe it was October we had a um workshop on this project specifically. So um that's on our website as well. You can go back and check that out. We spent about an hour debating most of the the same things that we talked here like um flood plane. We're aware that that there's a flood plane there. That's why the historic mill was located there so it could use the river. Um those things would have to be located outside of that flood plane. There would be some some earthwork there. You know, the question about whether it's a good use of taxpayer dollars. I think there's a big discussion that I'm not going to be able to to sum up tonight, but that's been, you know, vetted thoroughly through hours and hours of conversation. Um, and, you know, so far the board has thought that, you know, this does fill a need. It fills a need in our park master plan. It fills a need through our

conversations. Uh, there's a major need for additional community space in Harrisburg, and this provides some of that while also highlighting the rich history we have that's also very thin. So, we don't have a lot of historical sites. Uh, we would have security and staffing and there would be some cost associated with that, but we would view that as as minimal as we do that at our other parks and we kind of rotate folks around. Um, we don't have any plans for 300 homes on Shamrock. I know there's always rumors and conversations and developers propose that there's nothing approved. Um, there are no plans on Shamrock. I I I definitely get that a lot and it comes back a lot and this board hears it a lot. Um but there are no approved plans for 300 homes on on Shamrock. I I think the property owners out there would like to and they've made that proposal several times, but it's been um pushed back several times. It doesn't meet the zoning out there. Um and I'm not I I can't read my own handwriting on your on your last question. Um, but I hope hopefully that uh answered all of them and I I I think there's a need. I think you'll see it in tonight's presentation and then um happy to get you any of those documents that you want so you can get caught up on that project.

Thank you. Next up, we have Rodney Dinger. Rodney Dillinger, 3713 Airshshire Court in Harrisburg. Um, good evening, Mayor, Council, um, town manager, deputy town manager, and the residents of Harrisburg. To the ones of you that live in Harrisburg, good evening. Um, two years ago, we celebrated 50 years of Harrisburg being um, incorporated into a town. I have a copy of the original charter and I also have a copy of today's charter. If you go look at that, there's not much difference except it says that the mayor's position was two. It lists who those town council members and the mayor were. And at that time, we had what was known as a council mayor form of government. So what has changed in the last 50 years is that we have become a council manager form of government. All right. What what that does is doesn't give the mayor power. The mayor is elected to kind of be the head of the town. The council is elected to represent the constituents. All right. So when we look at some of the things that are in the charter, it says in the case of a vacancy in the office of the mayor, the town council shall by appointment fill the vacancy for the unexpired term. It also goes on to say the town council shall choose one of its own number to act as mayor proim and he shall perform the duties of the mayor in the mayor's absence or disability. The mayor pro Tim

as such shall have no fixed term of office but shall serve in such capacity at the pleasure of the remaining members of council. When I've gone through much of this documentation and I've looked at the North Carolina General Assemblies uh statues, when I've looked at our charters, when I've looked at the UNCC school of government and counting codes and the school of government is what we participate in, uh many organizations and townships participate in. It always says the mayor's prom serves for the pleasure of the council. They don't serve for the pleasure of the residents. But as a council member, the mayor pro Tim does serve as a council member. All right? The mayor can only vote to break a tie. So that means if one person is absent up there and there's three votes here and three votes there, the mayor may vote. Otherwise, the mayor does not have a vote. If you look at the general powers, if we look at 168-67, the general powers of the mayor and the council, except as otherwise provided by law, the government and general management of the city shall be vested in the council. So, that's saying the council is really what runs the town. They're the ones that vote. They're the ones that uh approve or disprove a neighborhood. They're the ones that disprove an ordinance or approve an ordinance. The powers and the duties of the mayor shall be such as conferred upon him by law, together with such other powers and duties as may be conferred upon him by the council pursuant to law. The mayor shall be

recognized as the official head of the city for the purpose of service of civil process and for all ceremonial purposes. If you look at Kennan Coats and you go to the school of government and you look at it, it will say it is common for the mayors to have the delegated authority to sign contracts, but I don't believe ours does. I could be wrong. uh they participate in the agenda preparation which they do and they sign ordinances which they do because the ordinance was approved by the council and they conduct various ceremonial functions. So that is basically the role of the mayor. um the mayor prom the mayor prom at the organizational meeting. So, one thing that Harrisburg has not been following is the organizational meeting each year. And if you look at the charter and you look at the school of government and you look at the general um chapter and rule, it says every year we're supposed to elect a new mayor prom. Nowhere through our documentation does it say that that mayor prom is supposed to be there forever for 6 months for two months for 3 months. It's at the pleasure of the council to appoint and be able to remove these statues say they may remove them without cause for any reason. Okay. Um here again the mayor pro tim is to serve the pleasure of the council not the pleasure of the people. During the absence of the mayor the council may

confer upon the mayor pro Tim any of the powers and the duties of the mayor but we already heard what the powers and the duties of the mayor are. Um there's a lot of information there. I even went back to the early days and looked at prior town council meetings. I I I looked in December and I looked in January and I couldn't even see the appointment in some of them of the mayor prom. I would see it one day, you know, in January, one time in in December, but there was only one time that somebody referenced the highest votes that they made the motion for the highest votes. So, we could go through there and look at all that. Um, I kind of agree. I It's all there. It's already all written down. Maybe it needs to be in one location where everyone can see it. Um the town council is getting ready to do their council retreat. We don't have another election for two years. Maybe this is time to maybe set up some of those guidelines. You know, possibly maybe we ought to go to districts in Harrisburg. 50 years. We just celebrated 50 years. We're getting ready to do another 50. Let's get it planned. Let's get it ready now. Let's get it started. As we know our far for forefathers did 50 years ago because most anybody in this room today 50 years from now you're not going to be here. So we won't change. You won't change now. Let's go ahead and make it and let's get that in writing. You know, even if you're 20 years old and you work for this town, you're going to be 70. So maybe we ought to go to districts. Thank you for your

time and congratulations to both new members of the town council. Thank you, Mr. Dinger. And finally, we have Franklin Watkins.

Good evening everybody. Um, ditto is what I'm going to say. I'm gonna I'm going to address again the uh the mayor pro Tim, but I would just say this is a prime opportunity for the council to hear all the all the different ideas and thoughts and know that it's time to put some clarity to this role. And that's all I'm asking for the council to do is clarify what it is that a pro mayor proim does and clarify how that person gets into that position. Once you do that, we're good. Thank you. God bless you. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to to to speak. And we're inviting everybody to come to Oak Grove Baptist Church. Pastor Franklin Watkins, pastor of Oak Grove Baptist Church, 200 Sales Parkway. Come.

Good. Good plug. Thank you, Reverend Dr. Watkins. All right, that concludes public comment. So, we will continue on with the agenda. We have our consent agenda. Is there a motion on the floor to approve the consent agenda as presented? Motion. There's a motion on the floor. Is there a second? Second. Mike, did you get the second? Okay. All in favor? Motion is carried. Thank you very much. Communications. Rob, you are up for town manager report. All right. I've been waiting. Does anybody need a bathroom break? There you go.

All right. Um, quick update. Um, I don't know if anybody's leaving, but now would be the time before we get started on anything else. Looks like Ian's out. Okay. Um, good evening, mayor, council, community. I have a few updates for this evening. First on here, hey guys, can we be quiet in the audience so everyone can hear? Y'all need to take conversations outside, that would be great. I I'll give it a little bit of time. Thanks. Nobody wants to leave right away. It feels rude, but I think it's noisier out there than it is up here for us with the change. So,

y more. I'm lo I'm losing them quick. Mayor, I haven't even started. Yeah, I think yours is actually quick tonight, too. It's not too bad. I just about three minutes short of Brian's. That's what Wait, what? What?

Um, all right. I'll go ahead and go. Just uh quick updates. Um, some of the projects you might be noticing around town that are worth mentioning. We'll also get into more detail in staff updates on these, but turf fields are well underway. If you haven't been down there, um, check out our social media, check out the website, or drive by yourself. A huge amount of of dirt. So, those fields have been scalped and we've begun taking all of the soil off site. Speaking of moving the soil off site, uh we've had a capital project on the books for a while that we just it hadn't really reached the ROI to to get there and that's the parking lot at Stallings Park. With all of this extra dirt out there, obviously we had to get rid of it somewhere. We would have had to pay to get rid of it. Um, part of the cost prohibitive part of the parking lot at stallings is we had to buy dirt. So, we're able to truck from one place to another and John is using uh in-house forces. We have our public works folks down there with our equipment going ahead and compacting that. Um, that's that's going to save us about, you know, anywhere from $5 to $700,000 by being able to do those projects concurrently. So, if you're wondering where that project came from, it's we're doing it in-house, no cost, and using the uh earthwork from the turf fields. We also completed the trail head for Bat Creek. You'll see that next to the Berg Church. I would encourage everybody to get out there even though uh we're still going to have to wait quite a while for the grass to grow. So, you see a lot of straw out there, but um get out and walk that greenway now that the uh Wasach sewer project is done. That is just that's a beautiful greenway and and that is really just the the center of that greenway that will stretch east to west all the way across town. Tonight in the consent agenda, you also approved that donation of about 4 acres there on the corner of Raen Ridge and Stallings. That greenway will go through there as well. So we'll have opportunities for parking

or um you know entrance into the greenway at that location potentially in the future. um couple of meetings to to bring you up to date on. I did attend last week the county needs assessment, the second meeting that we've had on that and and that was really interesting. That meeting focused mostly and this is for the whole county on housing. And it it was very enlightening being in that meeting and seeing the difference between the total county needs for housing versus what we see locally. uh we have a lot of discussion that that goes on in housing, but really in the county what we see is is a a big need on housing barriers for um you know very very different emergency needs. So um needs for temporary housing uh folks that that that have some crisis issue going on just they they're really having a hard time with that throughout the county. transitional housing. Um, you know, folks that have kind of fallen through the cracks and and are either re-entering um and looking for housing or transitioning into different housing, emergency housing for for things like domestic disputes, right? One person has to leave and and you know, maybe they want to take the dog, but the housing that the county has available doesn't take pets. So, finding somewhere to to get the sheriff to get a pet while you um find additional housing. Um you know, the these are just um these aren't issues that we don't experience in Harrisburg. We we do experience them, but not at that scale. The these are kind of layoffs and we're able to to really address those at at the level that we experience them. But as you as you spread throughout the county, it was interesting uh as we all compared notes on how we're tackling housing. far and away affordability was something that came up but it didn't touch it because this was such the the major problem at Canapapolis PD at the sheriff's department at social services the these you know emergency housing temporary

housing these are really the things that we talked about so um still going through that that needs assessment but we were able to kind of collaborate as a as a regional group to figure out what what opportunities do we have throughout the county to make sure that that we're serving the needs of everybody in the housing. Um, good segue into housing. Uh, our comp plan update. This Thursday, we have our housing summit here at uh at Chambers. That'll be our town council members as well as our uh steering committee for the comp plan. And there we'll be able to discuss the uh first openhouse that we had at the YMCA. We'll also discuss the community survey results and get some uh get some guidance from both the council and the steering committee on next steps and and how we're going to approach housing as it relates to land use and how it relates to the comp plan. That will then move us into February 12th where we have our second neighborhood meeting and there we'll get a look at the rest of the results for the community survey as an entire community and we'll be able to get uh the results of that guidance and and fold that in and have some land use opportunities and some place type opportunities to take a look at you know everything that we discussed here in the housing summit. Last but not least, our first uh workshop for the budget process is not until February where we'll get all of our staff in and really have that kind of detailed workshop, but we have been working on this since October with staff. We will start work continue to work on this internally with the council and us this month. Um but keep everybody uh apprised of that. lookout for February where we'll be rolling out um our first opportunity to to have comment and and back and forth with the community on our annual budget and we will have two uh following that that will be the the draft one that's where we get all of our staff in here and

really do that 8 hour on a Saturday. So, look at our website. Um, check all those uh those dates. If you want to sit here with us for eight hours and talk about things like historic mill, um we'd love to have you. More the marrier. Um I think that covered everything I was going to update with tonight, Mayor. U but if you guys have any questions, I'd be glad to answer them. Any questions for Rob? Did we hear back from NC DOT on Stallings Road between Raging Ridge and Veterans or whatever the cuto off was?

The you you're talking about the um taking ownership of that. So that the next step for that is the county commissioners approve it. Then it goes to the transportation board. I expect the NCOT transportation board to approve that uh pretty quickly. that was at the um presented to commissioners at the budget. I'm I keep saying budget. I'm I'm really into the budget this year, guys. Um at their um their work session. Yeah. Instead of their their general meeting um where Ian uh threw me under the bus and said he voted against it even though the others uh voted for it. So, I'll be presenting on, I believe, the 20th at their next meeting uh to explain to the commissioners what that project or what that request is so that they're not just rubber stamping something that that they don't understand.

And then that goes, you're saying to NO or No, I believe at that point it goes directly to DO's transportation board in Raleigh. Thank you. Any other questions for Rob? All right. All right. Well, contrary to what everyone thought, we we get to hear back from Brian Lee and some more finance numbers. I know everybody's very excited.

So, now we'll look at the current year. Uh so, here is our dashboard as of December 31st or half the way through this fiscal year. So, you can see our revenues in the top section on this slide. um over operations. Uh we received 50% of our annual property taxes in the month of December which brought our annual total up to 69% of the budget. So we have come out of uh the red coloring scheme there and we should be uh cruising for the rest of the year. You can see the general funds overall revenues reached 63%. So both of those are in great shape. The water and sewer fund is up 9% this month, which means uh it continues to outperform by about 1% per month. So, we've reached 55% of our estimated revenues for the year, and we should see that continue on um for a pretty good result this year. The storm water fund is right on target at 50%. Looking down through our departmental expend expenditures over operations, you see all departments are in great shape here. um all all pretty clustered there at about you know 45 to 50%. So uh good shape there and then same for all remaining general fund departments um and the two enterprise funds water sewer and storm water at 44 and 43%. So no no concerns at all as we look down um through operations salaries townwide are at 48%. If you remember back to uh the last dashboard of last year we ended up I think it was 11% short. Um, so we're much more dialed in and on target this year. Um, we haven't had the vacancies that we had in the prior year and we also worked on the budget this year of getting that to uh as realistic number as we could. Um, so I'm pretty happy with those results projecting out for a 3 or 4% deficit by the end of the year, which is uh which is really good. Now, moving over to our project dashboard. Uh, here's a look at our single year

projects. Um, so Rob obviously touched on this one, but here is a picture of some of the work going on at Harrisburg Park. Had a whole speech about how great it was to use that dirt over at Stallings Park, but but that's okay. Um, but but really good synergy between those two projects and and like Rob said, that saved hundreds of thousands of dollars on the disposal side and on the purchase side. So really big win there for those two projects. Uh, you've probably seen some of the medians uh around town that have been improved. So this median improvement project for the year is marked 100% complete. This is the median coming in from the Charlotte border. And then you'll also see um the planting that have plantings that have taken place on Roberta and Veterans at the 49 intersection. So all of those are done for the year. Now we move over to our multi-year projects in design. Uh we didn't we had a little bit of activity on on these in the month of December, but no real milestones to report on. Now moving over to our multi-year projects under construction. Uh we had some movement um and some pretty good movement especially for the month of December. Got a couple to point out here. This is the parking lot at the Berg Church that uh supports the the trail head for this uh for the greenway there. So you can see the greenway in the background along that construction fence and it goes from Hickory Ridge sidewalk project that we are currently designing uh all the way over to the Chameleia neighborhood. the really really beautiful greenway and now we've got a place for the public to park and access that uh veterans park improvements. I've shown some pictures over the past couple months as we got this project uh close and we went through the rededication ceremony. So the last punch list items were finished out and this project is now checked off for the year. This is a look at the equipment projects for the year. Uh all the projects in yellow have been ordered and/or received

and are in the process of being placed into service. And we had one this month that uh was marked complete and fully placed into service and that's the generator for the Abington uh pump station. Very important piece of equipment there. This is a look at our vehicle projects. We did receive one more deputy vehicle. So we've almost completed the uh seven vehicle project there for the deputies. And then we had 5% uh progress on the brush unit for the fire department. This has been received, has been fully outfitted. It is going through some programming and testing and will be placed in service this month. And then lastly, a look at our professional services projects. Uh we just uh witnessed the last 1% of the audit take place and so next month you'll see that marked at 100% and complete and then we'll go ahead and open up the next audit to start reporting on that. Uh, and then we also have the comprehensive strategic plan that Rob just mentioned, a couple of those dates coming up. Um, staff has reviewed some of the survey results that have come in over the past month. They're reviewing the data ahead of the steering committee meeting that will take place this month and then the open house in February to share all of those results. So, um, we had about a 4 to 6 week break in the comp plan activity for the month of, uh, December, and now we will really pick up steam on that and finish it out, uh, finish out a lot of the meetings this spring. And, uh, for the next couple months, we will share this budget calendar as we make our way through budget season. Uh, the council retreat coming up on January 24th, uh, which is a Saturday. We have a Wednesday evening night in February. We have our all day Saturday workshop in March and then we have two Thursday evening workshops to uh wrap up the budget season in April. Uh we'll have a public hearing on May 11th and we are hopeful for council adoption of that

budget on uh June 8th at our regularly scheduled council meeting. So any questions? I would be glad to answer them. No questions. just want to really express appreciation for all the town employees who thought of, you know, using saving money by using that dirt and applying it to the other project because I know people need that parking and and there wasn't really on top of our list to to try to fund that right now. So, that's really 100% Lee's idea.

Just way to go, Lee. I I hope the residents like see that, you know, town employees like really care and go above and beyond and really put extra thought into doing a really amazing job for this town. Thank you. On behalf of all employees, I'll say thank you. All right, that concludes our numbers game for the evening. Thank you. Next up, we have our law enforcement update. We have Captain Nash with us this evening. Good evening, mayor and council. Good evening.

I do have some numbers for you. They're not quite as intriguing as items, but I'll do I'll do what I can. So, we're I'm going to go over our normal month and review stats and also some stats and trends from 2025. For December, our law enforcement related activities was 3,993. Security checks was 1,883. Traffic stops was 154. and our non-emergency response time was six minutes and 50 seconds. On December 18th, our Harrisburg traffic unit along with the Crown County traffic unit, Concord and Canapapolis, performed a saturation patrol on Highway 49 around Morehead Road. They've seen an uptick in traffic accidents in that area. So, they wanted to saturate it and help promote safe driving behaviors and then also reduce the risk of traffic crashes. You can see the numbers there of the different citations they wrote. All told, they wrote a total of 130 citations during that time. For some December year-over-year trends comparing December 2024 to December 25, as you can see, we have some decreases and increases and no change. The biggest mover was the 300% increase in vice narcotics offenses from 1 to four and then financial crimes and frauds from two to five. Still, there's not any numbers there that I'm overly concerned with, but it is a trend that we'll continue to monitor and look at. And then for our law enforcement related activity, there's you a nice chart that shows from January through December. And then our top 20 law enforcement related activities. Our top two are security checks and traffic stops. With over 22,000 security checks and approaching 10,000 traffic stops, our greatest asset to deterring crime in the town is to being seen, being out, being active, you know, riding through the

parking lots, checking on businesses, conducting traffic stops. So, citizens see us and hopefully the criminals see us and know not to come here. So, that shows that we're very proactive. Those are officer initiated activities, things that they do when they're not going from call to call. And that's the same chart, but to break it down a little bit further with the security checks and traffic stops. From 2022 to 25, we saw a 12% average decrease in our security checks that we did and the 20% average increase for traffic stops. I came to Harrisburg in August of 22 and our security checks, they're great. I mean, they're astronomical, way above what I would expect an average deputy to do. And then the traffic stops were low. So, we worked to balance those numbers out. They both have great benefits again of being crime deterrence and being seen. Traffic stops al also give the benefit of keeping our roadways safer that we travel on every day. And then breaking down the numbers further for domestic and welfare calls. You can see at the bottom our highest number was disputes and then robberies and lararsenies. Highest number would be burglar alarms at 640. The vast majority of our burglar alarms are false alarms. somebody put in the wrong passcode. Fluffy climbed up the curtains and set off the glass break. Um, but we do those are calls for service that we went to and had to had to investigate. But again, those the vast majority of those are false alarms. And then traffic, the highest number would be traffic accidents with property damage. That's no injuries to people, just property damage at 614. And then under miscellaneous, the fraud and forgery at 86. A lot of those, it could be a bank calling in saying somebody's trying to pass a forge check. A lot of those are people that get scammed out of money. They answered a text or an email that they shouldn't have and sent money and then realized it was too late.

And I will take any questions that you have. Captain Nash, I got a lo a logistics question. When you talk about the saturation, so we bring in Concord, we bring in other departments. When they actually write a ticket, are they writing your ticket or are they writing on their ticket?

They're they're writing it's a state citation, but they have on things like saturation patrols or if we had if we had a major incident in Harrisburg, you know, Concord doesn't have jurisdiction here. We can send a mutual aid request that gives them jurisdiction in our area. So that kind of falls under saturation patrols. They if it's under the guidance of our traffic unit and their saturation, they write their own citations, but it's they have jurisdiction here during that time frame.

The the other question is and you get it every time we see a saturation patrol and I I'm going to ask it for clarification because Captain Mismer used to say you guys got I think like $3 off of each ticket. I I I don't remember the exact number, but he said the majority of that money goes to the schools. Is that still the way that is or is that money going somewhere else?

We don't see any of the money. Okay. Um that a vast majority of things from tickets, I can't give you a number. Um or if we do a drug seizure and people still have to pay if you get arrested for drugs, you still have to pay taxes on that. I mean the state wants to collect the taxes. A lot of that money, believe it or not, it's still it goes to the schools. Their priority seems to be the schools. So it's not the the tickets and and either a saturation or speeding what have you. They're not money revenue generating sources of Absolutely not. There's no quota that they're trying to meet to get us more money. Yes.

Our our goal is to make the streets safer. That That's it. We don't receive any any money from that. We don't um I can we we promote quality traffic stops, not quantity. That means I don't want you just to go out and stop a car just to get the number. If you stop a car for running a simple stop v sign violation, are you looking for signs of impairment? Are you seeing the burglary tools in the back seat? If you're stopping them in front of a business at 2:00 in the morning, you know, be observant and try to stop crime before they come. I give you a quick example if you would like to hear that.

Yeah. Um, we did have a deputy a couple months ago stop a car for just a stop sign. He smelled marijuana from the coming from the car. So, he investigated that and during his search he found a couple hundred stolen um credit cards. Um, a bunch of wash checks. All told, this gentleman had forged committed fraud worth over a million dollars. And all that came from a simple traffic stop. being observant, not just getting that number to check off the, you know, check box, but trying to deter crime. And that case is actually going federal. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions for Captain Nash? Thank you so much. Thank you.

Next up, we have our fire department update, which you've done. All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Welcome to our new members.

All right. fire department report for the month of December of 25. Uh we start off with our fire marshall activities. Uh you can see you had some site visits, consultation, our presubmitts, eight of those. Uh special event planning. As far as fire prevention events, we did assist with a flag retirement ceremony at Veterans Park. And station two had a station tour with 12 people. Uh we mentioned this before, but some of our fire prevention highlights for 2025. We did reach uh directly over or a little under 13,000 people with education and then again we reached over 350,000 people with our indirect messaging uh with our fire prevention trailer positioned on 49 and Rocky River. Again, most of what he does is the general site inspections, but you can see as well we do some foster care, daycare inspections, uh CEOs, and then of course plan review for new buildings. As far as statistics for the month of December, uh performed 30 uh inspections, 24 of those were first inspections. Six were reinspections. Our violation of the month, I think every month you always hear that fire extinguishers are uh the leading uh culprit in violations. Uh this is one as well. You can see the paper ticket has an expired uh date on it. And I'm sure if you're in your workplace, you know what those look like. again correlates to uh the previous fire extinguishers take the majority, but you can also see fire alarm systems that need to be tested or access for tra for exit access emergency lightings and you can see the other ones on there. As far as operational statistics, we responded to 242 incidents in the month of December. And our response time was a little over nine or four minutes. And

and you can see through this chart that that is a vast improvement from the month of November. As far as what we call working fires for the month of December, uh we did have five. Three of those were assisting our mutual aid partners. Uh, one was a vehicle fire out in the Peach Orchard area and then one was a rather large woods fire. Incidents by station. Station one continues to lead the pack and closely followed by station two and station three. You will see an uptick this month in our rescue and EMS calls. Normally that's about 45%. Um, so for the month of December, it did tick up a little bit. This correlates to our incident heat map. And again, the green dots are one call, gray dots are two or three calls, and then four calls or more of the uh yellow dots or red dots. Just a quick brief uh highlight of 2025. As far as total incidents, we did see a 7% increase to a little under 3,200 incidents in total. And you can see the break breakdown there. As far as our incident, our unit responses, you can see the ladder 31 out of station one had the most. Our our overall response time was 4 minutes and 9 seconds for the whole year. Uh we did have 18 working fires. Uh the property value of that was a little under 30 million and we were able to save a little under 10 million of that property or contents personnel trained for a little over 16,000 hours in the month of or year 2025. Uh so that's a pretty good uh number. You can see to the right it's it's kind of jumbled but again another heat map

where shows were all the total calls for 2025 and with that I'll take questions. Um just one quick question. Did we get any followup on the neighbor across the street that we needed to have that space to move the wires station three? Station three. Yeah. So, we're working on that. Okay. Devon and his group's working. Okay. Yeah. And and and we'll give you an update since it's a property acquisition. We'll do that more in a close session or just a send out. Thank you. That was just a followup from last time. Thank you very much, Chief Dunn. All right. Thank you.

Next up, we have Ryan McDaniels with our economic development update. Thank you, mayor, members of council. Welcome to the new members. Excited to be here for the um first update of the new calendar year and an update of the fourth quarter of our previous um calendar year 2025. So, I'll start off with project activity. Um you'll see we actually had a slight decrease um in overall projects. I'll go into that in the next slide. Um you can see the mix of projects we have. Um manufacturing and office continue to lead. Um I anticipate an in uptick in office projects as we continue to build out more space in the area. And I want to highlight um on building um we've actually inverted from our previous reports as I started here um last April. Now we have more interest in buildings and I anticipate that increasing as well um as we start to see some new buildings coming out of the ground here in the town. So I alluded to the change in projects. Um so we're now um we've now implemented a new CRM system um which allows us to um count what we call leads. So a lead could be a quick little um nugget, quick fact um which we enter to our database. It could be as simple as hey um heard these folks are interested in X. Um so we'll enter that as a lead. So leads can easily grow into projects within our system. Um I believe we're the only folks in the state who are using the system. um the CRM we are that we're utilizing that allows us to be really flexible. It actually works with um our Microsoft Outlook program. Um so it uh we're working on the dynamic side and it's very innovative. So I think we're a couple steps ahead of even much much larger larger organizations in terms of our technology here in Harrisburg. So you'll see we'll be recording and reporting leads moving forward with no uh previous input on the lead side. There's nothing, you know, it's going from zero to to seven, so to speak. Um, great news. Um, if you

remember from the fourth quarter of 2025, um, we had our first announcement, um, in a couple years, um, Ford Performance, which is now doing business as Willhouse, um, relocated from Concord here to Harrisburg. So, that was a $6 million investment, and they're occupying an existing $18,000t building, but they have acquired the property next door to add an additional 12,000 square ft. um 25 new jobs to our community and they target their opening date for the new facility of April of this year. So that's important because the auto fair will be at the speedway. Once the cars, the classic cars leave the speedway, they can get back on the track and they'll be on the track um in Concord but coming from home base here in Harrisburg. We're really excited about that project. Um we also completed the Duke Power Site Readiness program in the fourth quarter um here in Council Chambers. Um really important for us. It was an exercise for all departments involved to go through the process of a true site visit. So we treated it like we had consultants in town. Um the gentleman on the right and the lady on the left are consultants with site selection group. Um so we had some great um time with them on out in the middle of a field was side by sides asking really good questions about the property. So um the more important bullets the last one. So, um, you see Duke Power has this program all across their footprint, and you can see really substantial numbers there, 163 companies, 57 billion dollars of investment. So, it doesn't hurt us to have Duke more aware of the Morehead West property, as well as the consultants who worked on the project. It's actually already beneficial for us. Um, we had a project inquiry about a week ago. We needed some water information about Morehead West. We already had that in our our files. So huge uh benefit for us and we're going to be implementing a similar program. Um little different uh parameters but with a um uh property east of this in town as

well. Um we are our staff is full now. Um we hired um Stephanie Berles and started last um Monday. Um she actually came to us from the Cabaris Economic Development Corporation. But I wanted to point out um these are all pictures from the previous year. Um, so she's already went with me and visited numerous businesses in town. So, um, she hit the ground running as expected. Um, knows a lot of our businesses. We had two, um, small business calls and visits today already. Um, so we're really going to grow that program. Excited to have her on board. Um, as I alluded to, business retention expansion, we continue to meet with folks. Um, so last quarter we had seven visits or meetings with larger employers, so 20 plus employees. Um on the upper left that's Wilbert Plastics um just located down the street. Um you can see the side by side um which we're so fond of here in town, but they actually manufacture some of the plastic products for those um side by sides. And then also we've assisted with our um ribbon cutting program now with the town partnering with our friends in communication. Um so we had two ribbon cutings in the past um quarter. Um car so Carolina dermatology and ATA winners for life um within the past um quarter and that actually represents the 14th of October through December 19th. So as you can imagine not a lot of ribbon cutings after the 19th. Um and then we continue to grow our workforce development and business retention expansion program. Um we were uh fortunate enough to be invited by the uh director of career and technical education for Cabaris County Schools um to a conference in Greensboro. Um we went from having no problem to now no pro program, excuse me, to being invited um to attend conferences which was pretty innovative. Um luckily the timing worked out. Uh we partnered with the EDC folks who attended that and I I represented the town. So very informational, learning best practices of what companies do to integrate um with the youth um in their

communities. Really eye opening for me. Um and that was just a pleasure to attend. Um we also had our first 10 Harrisburg Industry Council um here at count council chambers. Um I chose an uh really poor date. It was the last week of December. Um we had a lot of companies are wrapping up their annual um books. Brian, I'll appreciate that as he nods his head. Um but we had a lot of interest. People just were not able to get there. So um we had a couple companies that told us if you had a better date, we'd love to be there. So we'll grow that program here in the spring. But we had Mayor Teague join us, the four reps from the company um representatives from economic development group and the um CT coordinator for Cabaris County. She was part of the discussion. So um as we continue to grow that grow that program, we'll probably move it around to different businesses in town. But we want to um the most important thing I think was the dialogue after the meeting where we saw our companies all all three that were there and all four representatives talk and shop. So that's the target of that meeting. So I will be glad to answer any questions that the council may have. Ryan, I I would say that it's not a question, but the business highlight reels that are out today on social media,

A++++, I I've heard a lot of great feedback from that and, you know, I've wanted to see something like that for so long that um I think it's going to do tremendous help in the community. So, thank you for that. I Wall-E in communication. So, I um we've actually had discussions. One of the things that um we want to do is um help businesses get involved with that because you see the activity on social media. It's very popular.

You know, I had had a talk previously with um the brewing company Farm Mill and you know, they said, "We're in such a poor location. We can't put up signs. Nobody knows we're here, right?" And I think chili dogs may be suffering some of that. But when you get those when you get those or chill dogs, but when you get those out, at least the community knows where to find them and how to find them. And I think those more of those creative type avenues, how do we get, you know, folks dive those folks over to those businesses? So, thank you.

Yeah, it's a great idea and it's working really well. So, we're excited to add more businesses this um coming this calendar year. Any other questions for Ryan? All right, thank you so much.

Just a few items under mayor's comments. Um, each year we do have to ensure that our internal and external boards have their committee assignments. We want to make sure that each of those boards and committees has a primary and an alternate um responsibility is primary would attend that meeting and then report back at the council meeting um anything that we need to know. So I did um council members received those assignments on Friday. So I will read those for the record. Um we do not need a motion or a vote on those as they are assignments. But under new business we will have to vote on the external board appointments because they require resolutions. So um our arts, cultural and heritage committee, our primary is councilwoman Banks and alternate is Councilman Thomas. Our youth council is primary Councilman Fall and alternate is myself, Mayor Teague. Parks and Recreation Committee is Mayor Pro Tim Glover as primary and Councilman Faul as alternate. Planning and zoning is Councilman Thevan as primary and Councilwoman Glover as alternate. And boards of adjustment, we have primary as Councilwoman Kotel and alternate is Councilman Thomas. and Janet I will make sure that you have all of that if I did not send that to you already. So that those are our assignments for 2026 and again we revisit those every January. So we will take a look at those next time. Um tonight we are also appointing our mayor prom for the 2026 term. Um there was some discussion at the December meeting where we kind of laid out the roles of those um responsibilities and there were also a few internal emails for the public to know that were sent to council over this past week. And that's just to make sure that we were all on the same page and clear about those roles and responsibilities of the appointments because I I knew there was some confusion. I kind of had hoped that that information would have made it back out to our public and back to the constituents, but judging from some of the public comments tonight, sadly, I do not think that that happened. But

hopefully we've had a little bit of clarification on that. So, um, just to reiterate, the appointment of Mayor Prom is solely and exclusively the elected council. That's where this resides. Um, the town charter lays this out in addition to the state statute. And really, council can use any criteria that they choose to act as mayor prom, including results of the most recent election or really any other criteria that they feel is relevant. Um, and just to be clear, this decision has no bearing or impact on the public whatsoever. It's strictly an internal requirement in the event the mayor is incapacitated and unable to conduct the council meeting only. So, what is neat about that though is that council member keeps full voting rights. Um, and they also can sign any ordinance or resolutions that result from that said meeting. Um, as Mr. Dinger pointed out, we did find in reviewing that charter and state statute that we will have to review this annually at our organization meeting every January. So, we will be reviewing this again in January and yearly thereafter. I personally am glad to hear that since so much weight from the public has been put on election results and cited as precedent and I think that's important that we'll be able to kind of take a look at that each January. Um, so I hope that offers some additional clarity. So is there any council discussion before there is a for our mayor prom appointment? Um, I would like to add that we take a moment maybe later on in the year just to do that, clarify it, codify it, say, do we want to leave it alone or leave it the way it is? Now is probably not the time to do that. But, um, it is a little ambiguous because as you pointed out, May can do anything you want really. I mean, we can do anything we want. Um, I am cautious though that we don't tie the hands of a future council and try to make a decision for them. uh that we leave them flexibility. Times change, city gets bigger, 50 years flies by and

then we've got some sort of ordinance that maybe they didn't read or or go through. So, um with that said, I mean, it's fairly innocuous. I mean, it's, you know, it is what it is and we've done what we've done and it sounds like we haven't done it enough. We should been doing it every year. We've been doing it every two years. So, um yeah, that's my comment on that. I I I do think and I don't know what the forum for that is, whether it's, you know, we could tack it on one of our budget sessions and have a discussion about it later on and that could be, you know, May or June.

Could I ask a question to Rob with regards to that? If you modify it, does it require that you have to modify the charter or how how does what's all involved? And if you do modify the chart, where's that? What's the process with that? Well, it depends what you're what you're asking. If it's if it's about clarity of how you select it, council can set a policy, but policies are

yet they change every year. You have a new council every year. So, um you know, it's not bad to have some guidance so that you know, future councils know what your policy or what your guidance has been on it. Um, but as you said, it really is just a council decision. Now, there's state statute on it. That's very clear. Um, you know, that really doesn't change your charter. You can you can change, but that that might you might as well be I mean, that's a state statute as well, right? The legislature approves your charter. We don't do that locally. Um, so we can send recommendations to the state legislature to to change charter. So I I really think from a practical standpoint, what you're talking about is similar to your code of conduct and your other policies that are self-governing documents, self- enforcing documents that give guidance to the council in and of themselves. Short of that, the the guidance on this is is pretty short. I mean, the state statutes two sentences and the charter is one sentence and that that's what you have. um then it really depends on the form of government that you have and and how are those other statutes defining roles and responsibilities. But um the short answer is I I think the best you can do is probably um policy so that you understand the process

and I think it's left open like that so each council and mayor can make that decision because again it's only if the mayor is incapacitated for a meeting that's it. Well, one thing that is advantageous, we won't have the most recent election if we do what we're supposed to in January. Most recent election completely goes away from that because again, I mean, you're you're not elected to mayor proton. You're elected to the council seat, which is what it's always been. It's just So, that would be a good clean, right time to evaluate. But you could make that position electable, could you not?

You could not. the state the state leg the state legislature could if if it was requested and that would that would take generally when we send things like that to the state legislature um they won't even consider um a charter change or or a local bill change without all four of your elected representatives signing off on it before the other committees will will even hear it. So, you know, yeah, you can you can do any of that. um if you if you choose to and if you if you have the the legislature willing to do it.

And the state statute is actually more lenient than our charter because the statute says we may appoint a mayor proton charter says we do.

Yes. There's a little bit of discrepancy in the email I sent where the the state statute says you shall, you know, you have to select a mayor prom and then if the mayor is incapacitated or can't serve, the council may appoint them to fill in for the mayor. Our charter takes care of that by saying that that that does happen. So, so when you select a mayor prom in Harrisburg, you are selecting them to fill in for the mayor if they were incapacitated in in the lunar role that you have that we'd all discussed of filling in uh for this meeting and signing the documents that the mayor signs here, which is legislation.

Primary role is still council. Yeah. Yeah. They would not vote in case of a tie. um they would still serve as a council member retaining their vote to to vote on on everything. Um but that's the it's in our charter that when you select them, you don't have to meet again to then say yes, you you fill in for the mayor because they've had some incident that they cannot fulfill their duties. Well, and the other thing we should be clear on if it ever happens, Mayor T wins a lottery and runs away. Mayor Pro Tim does not become the mayor. No.

And that's a whole separate process. But that could also get confused the same way we saw confusion this time. You go, what happened? You know, well, that didn't happen. And there's state statute that guides that process, which is very different from mayor prom because you want to continue to have seven council people and a mayor. So then in that case you would I think as Rodney said you would need to appoint someone to fill that role right for the remainder of the term and the premise for potentially moving away from what the long standard tradition is what what do you I'm I'm not sure what you're asking

so what would be and what would be the situation in which or the foundation in which you want to move away from what the long-standing tradition is. Well, I don't think it should be tied to an election because the person's not elected to that position. They're elected to the council position and it's strictly your decision as council internally for a whatif scenario. That is it. No, I'm I'm fully aware what it says. Um, we've had lots of emails to go back and forth about that, but my question is why would we at this point if we you would if you

if you changed it to yearly and made the, you know, like Canapapolis does it every year, right? And our charter says we're supposed to at our organizational meeting make that decision. We can choose to leave that person in there or we can choose to change it. If you were to change it, then it would not be tied to a vote getter. So, I I think that comes up on the yearly, which was to Chris's point or council, excuse me, his point of doing it in the summer. But my question is about like now. Go ahead. I'm sorry. What? I'm sorry. My question was about like now, like if we were to do that now, why why would we?

I just don't think that that should obligate this council to do that. I think that's strictly your decision on who you want to put in that position as a what if scenario. And that could be one of the criteria. We could say, "Well, we always done it this way. Why change now?" That could be a criteria. Or we could say, "No, now's a good time to change it. We read through it and we think it's time for a change." But as we said, it's up to us. Now, before we get caught too far up into it, I I will say this. The novelty of being up here as long as I have is it's been used twice in the last 10 and a half years. And I got to use it and it was for a period of seven minutes. It was five minutes. He made sweeping changes in those seven.

Five minutes for an emergency meeting because the mayor at the time was on a hike and it was about two minutes to start a meeting while the mayor arrived from traffic. So, you know, in those two instances all seven minutes and when I went to McDonald's, it got me nothing. So, I say that just from the idea that I I don't want us to to embellish the role to make it sound like it's this great amazing tadada. It it simply isn't for our purpose. It's an internal assignment. It does not exist outside of these chambers. It's just to if you're stuck in traffic

and there's no change in that. like that's how that is how it has always been. That is how it is written.

So, I just want to add um I'm I'm glad we're having this lively discussion because I think it's important for transparency and for the public to not um think that we're doing anything other than the right thing. Um we are neighbors. We live we live by each other. We go to the same grocery stores. and we need to make sure that um the voters who voted for us and didn't know that they can trust us and we're going to do things with integrity. And so um I think that I I do think that the policy needs to be in place so that it's clear on what we do. I do understand that it is a vote. Um um I guess my only concern is um why now, right? But why change things now, right? I think that moving forward, it would be in our best interest to also to to have something in place so that there's no question on what we do if it's yearly, if it's every two years, if it's not the vote the the highest vote getter, that it's just clear, right? And that whomever whether and we know that this is nonpartisan, but whomever is sitting up here knows that it's done and it's going to be done fair and it's clear. And so, and my main thing is that the people of Harrisburg know that they can trust us to do this and other things, right? And so, um, so that's what I I want to say and and yes, everyone knows I was the highest vote getter, but when I ran for, uh, town council, it wasn't to be mayor prom, it was to do the work of Harrisburg. And so, I just want that to be clear. And so, regardless of the outcome tonight, I'm going to do the work of Harrisburg. Thank you.

For clarification though, I I don't think we were asking to change it tonight. I think Chris said he was talking later in the summer or whatever. I mean, we still have a vote sitting in front of us, right? That's the transparency is you you guys you guys make the decision on what you want. I I don't see us changing it tonight. I don't No, I look I I I'll go on the record and say don't change it tonight. I'm fine with the highest vote getter. But what I will say to eliminate this thing in the future that we have an offcycle discussion sort of like we talked about a pay raise or something. It's like well exempt us from the pay raise. We can't be a party to that. We don't know what the person or personality or whatever is going to be a year from now. Right?

So six months from now we make a decision. This is our policy. This is what we do. This is how we do it. And then six months from then we can go back and look at that. This is what we told ourselves we'd do. This was the criteria. this is why we're going to vote and and we do it uh you know independent of having some you know anvil hanging over our head by piano wire. Well, we probably would have been able to do that a little bit better, but it became this public issue and it's not a public facing or public affecting position at all. And so, yeah, we can certainly have some conversations about that.

And unfortunately, we can write all we want about how we chose and what we're going to do and this is this is the decision and this is why we're making it. But then the future council is going to do what they will do according to the laws and the rules, which is it's their decision. So yeah, we can write it up, but it would just be Leave them a note in the desk and maybe they'll read it. They're going to be like, "Oh, it's from Chris." Never mind. Those guys. I love it. All right. Well, council, this is on y'all. Um, can I put a motion?

You can. Is there any other discussion? Uh, I move that we uh nominate Aaron Banks as our uh mayor prom. Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion is carried. Very good. Um, just a couple Congratulations.

Yeah, just a couple other um council reminders. We do have a networking breakfast for the elected officials hosted by Central Regional Council. That is on January 30th. I believe Janet sent that email out to us last Wednesday. So, um it's really a great opportunity to meet with other elected officials around our region and then um state treasurer Briner will be there as well so we can have some conversations with him. Um we did attend our first quarterly summit last week. Um we heard from each of our five municipalities and the county. We also heard directly from um with they had a communications panel where our very own communications director Casey Netor was there to show us and share with us how they communicate internally and externally with the public. So that was very eye opening to see also how well they all work together amongst the different municipalities. Um we also heard about or heard from our local animal shelter and the work they are doing in the county. Um, as a reminder, they are a division of the Cabaris County Sheriff's Department. So, it was very helpful in hearing how they operate and they also kind of laid out some future needs that they will have. So, that is all I have for mayor comments. We'll move to council comments. Um, we do have our um celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King coming up and there are events across Cabaris County. Um the mo the formal event is the MLK um celebration that begins on Thursday, January 15th at 6 o'clock with the wreath laying ceremony that'll be at Grace Lutheran Church um which is at 58 Chestnut um and Concord. And then on Friday, January 16th at 6 p.m. we'll have our fourth annual uh Keeper of the Dream Awards banquet at the Laurette Center in Canapapolis. If you're interested in tickets, they are still available. And then on Monday, January 19th, we will close out our celebration with our 4th annual MLK Day parade at 11:00 a.m. which will um take us to Canapapolis City Hall where there'll be

a dream day um event. There'll be a career fair, an H.B.CU college fair, as well as other civic organizations and such that will be there. Um, just three quick comments uh from me. Uh, congratulations on Stephie Berles. I don't know whether to congratulate her or us or you or what. That's a win-win all the way around. She's very talented and we're lucky to have her. So, way to go. Um, the Greenway Grant, you got that email and I think we all got that Greenway Grant and forwarded on to to Rob to investigate because they're all about free money. So, uh, yeah, hopefully we'll get some of that. Um, and then the last thing is uh the land search. I can't believe a year has gone by and we didn't get that. I mean, you got all kinds of things done. Uh, but if we could hang up a land purchase in this year, that would be awesome. If there's anything this council can do to help you in that evaluation process, that would be awesome.

Any other council comments? One quick thing, Mayor, if I may. Um, I did notice last Monday evening right around darkish, uh, there was a vehicle that entered the Back Creek Greenway. Um, I didn't know if there's something we could do. I don't know if that's a parks and wreck or design, but um, uh, if we could do some vehicular barriers to keep a vehicle from entering. Uh, I know it's not necessarily I don't want something huge, but if we could put up some yellow or some signage or something to keep uh some of that vehicular traffic. They go through the grass or from the parking lot to the greenway. I think they went from the parking lot to the greenway.

We traditionally end up with some some ballards there that are removable ballards cuz they are traversible for our um maintenance vehicles. Uh but we don't want Yeah. somebody going, "Hey, where where does this driveway go? It was a Kia Kia soul. So it was it was not a town of Harrisburg. We'll have to put we'll have to put extra BS. It was planned. We had the same problem back here too. Put that way back there in Harrisburg village. You guys fixed it there, too. You got that on the action item list. Perfect.

I bet that was a site. It was interesting. We've actually seen a car driving on the wide sidewalk path at Camila Gardens. Not really sure how that happened, but it was a car going down Stallings and went in and went up on the I was wondering how they were going to cross the bridge. Yeah. And then the headlights came back at me. So I watched one turn into Cookout and then straight up the the greenway that we had next to Cookout because they thought it was Cookouts before we put the Ballards there. So um as a trained traffic engineer, I I can attest that if you don't make it impossible, um they'll find a way. That's right.

Well, they must have figured it out because they're not included on any of our incident reports from our fire department and sheriff's department. Any other council comments? All right, we do not have any public hearings this evening. And old business, we did add the historic historic bar mill park design and we have Jim Spina with us tonight. Good evening. Refer to your hand

and council. Welcome new members of council. Uh it's a privilege to be here again this evening to talk about uh consideration of a historic mill project design services contract. Uh quick review especially we with the two new members uh to kind of get you caught up a little bit. Uh in fall of 2024, excuse me, town council contact contracted with McGillan Associates to develop historic mill master plan with conceptual designs for a future park. Got a little frog going on here. Future park at the former Farmill site on the corner of Farmill Road and Shamrock Road. And over the course of the year, three conceptual designs were developed and considered by staff, management, and of course yourselves. And there's a picture to the uh right of that showing what the old mill looked like uh when it was still standing. So the steps forward from that spot was that in November of 2025, a couple months ago, after reviewing the renderings, town council directed staff to move forward with a full design for the development of the historic Mil Park. With that, staff reached out to McGill and Associates for a quote under services for that contract. And then McGill subsequently forwarded a quote in the amount of $279,045 for their design services. And the cost for this service is within the currently approved budget. And for uh just review purposes and uh highlighting really what's involved in this uh conceptual rendering of the park. As you can see here, you have a parking lot of about 24 spaces and then a community building attached right here or not attached but connected to the parking lot right about here. Uh that building would be available for community members, uh our own pro programs here at the town, uh meetings for yourselves, council, when you saw it fit and appropriate. Uh that would be

right here that would uh seat, you know, 50 to 75 people based on uh once we get out there and get measuring it and get figuring out where it placed, how it's placed, then we would uh come up with a final number there. a historic mill exhibit and kiosk right here. Uh this is basically roughly where the footprint was for the old uh mill itself. Uh continuing down to the water access with kayak access also just you know access to the water itself and then up here with a fishing uh pier uh boardwalk elevated up above the river coming back up here connected to uh these uh trails. So, this is a pave trail and then you have some natural trails through uh the property itself. Uh open area community or excuse me uh meadows, open meadows, that kind of stuff. Wherever we can fit that in uh within the um uh space itself, a waterhe exhibit attached right here to this building uh kind of so we can make sure that we uh remember that there was a mill on this site. uh you know, bike rack for access, that kind of thing. Um just some seating areas throughout uh the area and again the walking paths.

Jim, real quick on that open meadow because we um I've done it before across from the Y. We had a butterfly garden. Would that be similar on this situation? Yeah, there be some natural uh plants that would be native to our area. And yes, we would get into some kind of a nature. Okay. Whether it be similar to what uh the uh youth council is doing now, those kind of things. Yeah, we would that it's the perfect spot for those kind of things. Yes. Thank you. You're welcome. It looks like there's some um existing trees on the left there. Um I was just wondering if they'll be able to preserve some of them. I think it would help with the sound barrier and so forth. Yes.

For the neighborhood, this hole right here will remain wooded. Okay. For sure. Okay. Um the the only where place where trees would be moved or removed would be anything that is necessarily like a big, you know, native tree and that we would need to just kind of get some path through. But mostly this path will follow in between the trees and around the trees and through. We'll we'll preserve as much of that as we can. There's Okay,

any other questions while I got the conceptual up? Be glad to ask answer them now. We can also go back to it later. Uh, the new park will include and I just went through it, but just kind of quick review historical information information kiosk describing the mill and the role it played in Harrisburg community, which we think is very important. Uh, restoring that foundation and footprint of that mill. Uh, historical artifacts salvage from the mill. We do have quite a few uh, pieces. Uh there's a container out there right now that has quite a few uh objects, mostly wood, beams, those kind of things. We also have four uh millstones that were taken from the mill and they all were for different types of um milling whether it be corn, flour, whatever uh th those kind of things. um riverside boardwalk and canoe launch which I talked to you earlier about nature trails and walking path and of course that community building available for small gatherings and meetings and amenities involved. The nature trail will follow the land as we spoke avoiding the trees with the main path measuring approximately a quarter mile including the boardwalk and the paved path. The boardwalk will be elevated allow great panoramic views of the Rocky River and the water entry area where canoes and kayaks can be launched. And of course, the community facility will be similar to the picture you showed here on the right. Right here. So, um that's a ballpark idea of what it would look like. Uh a special note, and I think here he is. Uh former Harrisburg Town Councilman, current county commissioner Ian Patrick has offered his services to design the community building proono, and he will work alongside McGillan Associates through the design process. Thank you. Appreciate it.

And for reference, what Since you bring that up, what does that save the town overall? Just ballpark. Um,

proono still means for free, right? Commissioner, um, several hundred,000 in architectural fees could be added. I mean, you'll see tonight's fee is for the the site design and engineering, and it generally projects like this. Um although Commissioner Patrick, former councilman, used to beat me down on the fee pricing that other folks get, 10% is kind of something that that you can use as a round number for design fees. Um so architectural fees for the building part of this. Um the building is going to be the majority of the cost. We've kind of uh looked at this as is in that one to $2 million range. So um 10% in in the building cost. So, a significant um amount.

I I I do have a since the commissioner is here a question to protect him from being abused. You know, like we got 50 changes. We don't like it. A rewrite you. Yeah. Let us even though it's zero. I I imagine there's some tax implications for you. This is a donation. This is pro bono work. I I I think we should uh Yep. What can he approach? Yes. Yes.

Um to answer your specific question, there are probably some tax implications for my firm. Um and we just get those uh benefits. We can write off the fees. Um but you know, it's it's still a lot of work for my folks and of course I'm paying people to do the work and those kind of things. And I didn't I assumed I was still going to be on town council for the next two years. When all this went down and I agreed to do this and I'm I'm continue to agree to do this, I I don't think there's anything more I could do to show that I care about saving residents dollars than to offer these services and my and my expertise on something that has been my baby for I don't know four or five years. I I hope that answer your question. Changes. It's free. It's free, right? I mean we'll we'll

but even if we had a rich draft a document said for a fee of zero we'll get the following and anything beyond that we pay for or we don't pay for or whatever it is and the deliverables and the documentation belong to the town you know just something yeah my my contract will be under McGillan Associates so my scope of work will be presented to them and not with the town and so if if I had any I don't anticipate It's a pretty It is clean. Yeah,

it's a pretty clean project. It's not very complicated. It's a new building, right? It's not a renovation. We're not going to find as bestus out there or anything. Um, so if I if I found something that was outside of the scope that I provided to McGill and Associates, then I would come back to them and they could decide whether they were a lot better to you or not. Yep. Yeah. I'm not entangled with the town in any way. I'm I'm working for McGill. All right. By the way, huge thank you. My pleasure. Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah. So, without further questions, we just had a bunch of questions. Uh any other questions you guys uh you folks uh may have on this on this contract and we're okay to ask on this contract?

Yes. Yes. It's a specific amount. So through this contract I was reading and um a little rushed on that but um on page five of six seven and eight we talk about no rise um or responsible for all permitting fees and all that. I get it. Where I'm trying to go with this is if we get down this path and it's determined that this is not feasible. Excuse me. Bless you. Bless you.

Um this is not feasible for whatever reason, grounds too hard, there's shale, I don't know, whatever. Uh the previous has mentioned, you know, the flood conditions. Do we have a way out of this or is the amount that we're approving tonight lost?

That's a good question. Um, all of our contracts for design services are terminable at any point and you just you just stop where you're at. So, one of the first things you do in any of these are those types of things. You're doing your surveys first, your geotechnical work, your borings, checking for for things like that. Um, we don't anticipate those on projects that we bring before you. We do a lot of preliminary stuff. That's why we did all of the uh preliminary work that we've done to date. Um but when you get to a point, hey, we were digging out there and we found some, you know, Indian barrel ground that we didn't know about and now we've got to relocate all that. We stop right there. We get a cost. We basically bring it back and go, "Hey, this is different than than what we were considering. Do we want to punt or do we want to continue down this path? But

or at that point, you know, I don't know where you are in the process. Is the full fund still due that we're approving or does No, just just what you've done to that point. So, you know, of this 275, I think you'll see like tasks broken out. Um, and you'll see the first two tasks, first three tasks, survey,

right? then design, then flood plane, then subsurface. You're you're you're really in the survey phase, taking a look at at that. You wouldn't want to move on to design until you're comfortable with all those surveys coming back that it's feasible. Now, you could get through in design and let's say as part of design, you find something and or maybe you just don't get along with the consultant, right? It's just something happens, consultant's not doing good work, you get 5,000 into design and you're like, "Hey, you know what? Stop where you're at. We're done." There's no penalty. Okay?

You just you pay that 5,000 that they've done work for and and you terminate the contract and and you go find somebody else. So, and you own the the work at that point. So, if you have done surveys or drawings or there's electronic documents, the town owns those as part of our contracts. Two other questions and I'll relinquish the floor back to whomever but um one is there a situation you envision that would prevent us from moving forward any you know no

and then the other question is as the previous bring up I get you you said not in flood plan and this is putting the cart before the horse because we're not designing or the materials and everything else. But I am going to ask that forthcoming now. Can is there anything that we can do proactively that would protect because when you say you're not in flood plane, that's good until you're in the flood plane and then you figure out, oh crap, we're in the flood plane, right? Um Harrisburg has notoriously low air. Is there any kind of materials

Yeah. uh protection that we can build pro proactively in that to kind of ease those fears because anytime you go near a waterway it's always a concern. Yeah. And and so great questions and keep in mind a lot of parks and things that that you build are are in flood plane.

Um and and flood plane by itself doesn't mean anything. What flood plane are we talking about? The 25 year, the 50y year, the 100redyear, the 500? you can just keep going out. Um flood way is a is a thing that really is doesn't change and that's a um you know a specific term, but when we say flood plane, we generally mean the 100red-year flood plane. Um if you get a 500-year flood, it's going to flood outside the flood plane that you designed for. Um I think, you know, in my time here, we've had one of those thousand-year events, right? one in a one one in 10,000 chance that you're going to get that much rain in a short period. Hurricanes will bring things like that. Um so there are plenty of people in this room who do not live in flood planes and have had water damage because of storms. It just something backs up, something breaks. Um so we do try to use um specifically for non-building material things that can flood. So that's why we have metal benches that are bolted into the ground. Those are in the flood plane. Those can flood.

Yeah,

you can let those over time. Um this boardwalk, we're going to expect it to flood. There are going to be times where in a heavy rain event, that boardwalk will be closed and and water is going to come up just like it does in in other areas of our town. um when it gets to this building, that's that's the area that we're going to spend a lot of attention on on what are the elevations, what type of retaining walls should you have around it so that you get out of a reasonable, you know, flood plane height, and then like you said, your whatifs, right? Are there materials that are durable in that area? What would we expect in there? And it it's not it doesn't always mean um super durable either. This is where smart uh folks like uh architect Commissioner Patrick come in. Well, you know, what are cheap materials? If you had to replace something, right? If you expect um something to take a lot of damage, you might not want to overdesign it to be overly durable. It might be cheaper to say, "Hey, when that happens, this is an easy replacement. It it's easy to clean this this part out or that part." So, um, you know, I appreciate the the pro bono slashf free work that he'll be doing to to get us that that question answered.

Thank you. Um, this being historical site, I think the possibility of some burials that may have happened there, you know, it's kind of likely. Would we know this during task one survey phase services or is that something later? And then is it like I mean it's possible a family lived there and let's say they they buried their whoever do they relocate that or what happens with that?

Yeah, I mean it it's very specific. Um yes, ecologicals are are part of ESAs. Um and we may have even done environmental site assessments. Sorry, I always use acronyms and then assume everybody knows what we're talking about. Um and and we may have done some of that in the preliminary. I may check on that. But before you move on to design phase, you're definitely doing an environmental site assessment to look for those types of things. Um, if it isn't, you know, there are times where you may own property and you find remains and there's no historical significance to it. You know, this might

might just be you call the cops and you say, "I found these things. They document it." that happens more than than we'd like to admit on construction sites, not in Harrisburg, but in my career. Um, so it just depends. If there is historical significance, then you bring in historical society folks. You start looking at things like that. Um, typically things don't remain once they're disturbed. they need to be um reestablished

somewhere in a in a respectful and historical way is generally what I've seen when we deal with historical societies. Um and and again that typically is something that you'll trace back to you know indigenous folks um or you know pre-colonial um things family burial grounds things like that that weren't documented generally don't fall in that. Um and and it's hard to find somebody that knows the history if it's if it's an unmarked uh grave or something like that. But but you have to do it. You have to check and and that's on every site. Any other council comments?

That mayor, I have a motion ready for you. Thank you. Um I will read that. Is there a motion on the floor to approve approve the contract with McGillan Associates in the amount of $279,045 for design and engineering services for the historic mill project? Is that clever? Thank you. Um, second. Second. All in favor? Motion is carried. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Jim.

Um, two quick things for new business. We've got the appointments to the 2026 Central Regional Council Board of Delegates. Um, I am currently serving on that. Um, I believe Aline, you're my alternate already. We're um have a motion to continue that. um on the executive board and then I think as of Wednesday we'll be nominated to serve as secretary on that. So that those wheels are kind of in motion. Um so is there a motion to reappoint Mayor Jennifer Teague to serve on the Central Regional Board of Delegates for the calendar year 2026 and council member Altinkatel to serve as the alternate. So move. Is there a second? Second. All in favor?

Motion is carried. The second appointment is to the transportation advisory committee and the technical coordinating committee of the Cabaris Rowan Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization. Goodness, that's the one I mixed up on the original email on Friday. I relieved Rob of all his duties and doubled up, I believe, Ron and and Mike on that. So, is there a motion to reappoint Councilman Ron Smith as the CRMPO TAC primary representative and Councilman Thevan as the alternate TAC representative? Is there a motion to motion? Second. All in favor?

I motion is carried. And then also to appoint Devin Houston as the TCC primary representative and Jonathan Young as the alternate TCC representative for the calendar year 2026. Motion. motions second. Got it. All in favor? Motion is carried. That concludes our new business um action items. I just had the builder's first source and I do feel like there was one other that I just did not jot down. Greenways. Yes, Greenway Ballards. Builders first uh noise. Okay. Um with that, there is no need for close session tonight. So, with no further business, is there a motion to adjurnn?

Motion. Second. Second. All in favor? I love it's the two new ones. Motion carried. We are adjourned.