Town Council - Regular Meeting

And welcome to the Town of Garner Council regular meeting of August 18, 2026. And as usual, it's a beautiful evening in Garner. A little bit warmer today, but overall still beautiful. That being said, let's call the meeting to order. And let's ask our town clerk to please call the roll.

Mayor Gupton here, Mayor Pro Tem Dellinger here, Council Member Matthews here, Council Member Singleton here, Council Member Stallings here, and Council Member Vance here.

Thank you. And our pledge of allegiance and invocation this evening will be led by Mr. Elmo Vance. If able, please stand for the pledge.

Let us pray. Gracious and eternal God, we thank you for the privilege of serving our community. As we gather tonight, we ask for your wisdom in our decisions and our patience in our discussions and respect for one another. God, we ask that you help us to listen with open hearts, speak with understanding, and always remember the people we serve. We ask that you continue to bless our citizens, our staff, and all who we serve in this town. And it's in your name I pray. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, sir. Brings us to item B on tonight's agenda, and that is adoption of the agenda. Council members, I hope we've had a chance to look this over. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? So moved. Second. a motion by mr matthews and second by mr stallins uh with no if there's no discussion uh let's have a voice vote all in favor of adopting the agenda please signify by saying aye aye any opposed by nay hearing none that passes unanimously thank you and now to the part that many of us have been looking forward to this evening is item c on our agenda presentations and the first one is about the garner youth council uh the sponsor is isabella stoltz And she's going to tell us a little bit more of who were being presented this evening.

Good evening, Mayor and council members. I'm here just to briefly introduce the 2026-2027 Garner Youth Council Executive Board members. And they're here tonight just to present to you overall of what they worked on this past year and their goals for this upcoming year. And just as a reminder, this past year served as a pilot year for the program. So our first meeting was actually in December instead of August and their first meeting of this year is tomorrow night. And I look forward to working with them throughout this year again as their staff advisor and I'll let them present to you what they've been working on.

Hello, everyone. Before we start, I'd like to give a quick thanks to all the council members that helped support the Garner Youth Council's development last year. And I'd also like to give a special thanks to Mr. Stallings for helping support meetings throughout the year. My name is Anish, and I will be serving as the executive president for this year.

Hi, my name is Lily Velasquez, and I will be serving as the executive vice president for this year.

Hi, my name is Manisha, and I'll be this year's secretary.

And let's get on with our presentation. Okay, so when we started the Garner Youth Council, our purpose was to give the local youth a meaningful way to volunteer because before when we started, it was very hard for a young teenager like the rest of us who are in the council to find ways to volunteer in the town. And doing so, we were able to engage with local and government through our development opportunities and volunteer experiences. We also wanted to provide a platform in order to advise the town council about issues that us as youth have seen in our present day. And all in all, the main purpose of the council was to serve under a united voice as the youth.

The objectives of our council was the monthly meetings, that is a mandatory thing that we have, volunteering opportunities for the youth so that they can get involved, development opportunities as well, and a big service project that we look forward to throughout the year.

Last year we had several volunteering opportunities such as the Paint on Main cleanup extravaganza and many more. This year we're going to have even more opportunities as all our youth council members are required to have 10 plus hours. Last year for our service project we organized a community litter sweep at our local Gardner Magnet High School where we helped clean our school.

So the structure that was formed last year, as we mentioned, was a pilot year, started in December and lasted until May. And we met up on the third Wednesday of every month in order to form our committees and plan out what we were going to do for the following year, which is this year. So the committees we formed were the governance, volunteer, marketing, and membership and engagement committees. So the government's committee oversaw the youth council structure and drafted bylaws in order to develop a structured form of elections and meeting procedures that will follow next year. The volunteer opportunities committee looks for volunteering that could happen throughout the town and also planned and coordinated the events in order for us to meet together. The Marketing Committee created our Youth Council's Instagram and continued to promote the Youth Council in order to gain new members throughout the years. And the Membership and Engagement Committee oversaw member involvement and made sure that everyone was feeling safe and had a good time at the Youth Council.

Our development opportunity for this year was towing the Garner Firehouse Rescue Station One. And this was very exciting. Sadly, I wasn't able to go to it, but it looked like a blast. And our future opportunities is the Triangle Finance Club will be speaking at one of our meetings. Miss Garner will hopefully speak as well. And more information about colleges while partnering with Wake Tech. And then some of our future goals, one of which is to implement more volunteering and development opportunities.

We also want to increase awareness of the council. And while this year we are a CAP member of 30 teenagers, next year and the years after that will increase the amount of teenagers allowed to join and will hopefully increase the awareness of the council as a whole. We also want to get involved with more year-long projects like the service project that we did at Garner Magnet High School. And in doing so, we'll be able to provide the youth with a way to connect with their town a lot easier, and it can increase the youth involvement inside of Garner. We also want to encourage the youth involvement in our community by doing so through the year-long projects and development opportunities. And we think that finding volunteer opportunities every month and giving them development opportunities every meeting will assist us greatly with this.

Along with that, partnering with the Garner schools like we did for our cleanup, Garner Magnet High School, will increase the people that come to our meetings and hopefully the numbers that we will have in the future. Thank you so much.

All right. Well, thank you. This is quite an impressive presentation. Just coincidentally, last night I was at the monthly meeting of the Wake County Mayor's Association, 12 municipalities. And during the discussion, one of them said, well, we hope that we could get a youth council going. Has anybody done anything? Everybody looked at each other and I said, we have. I just wish that we had had this slideshow and you three to make the presentation because you were doing what they all dream of, working together, learning about things, giving us advice that they wish. They have something like this. So clearly our youth council is miles ahead of the rest of the Wake County. And I just hope that our two staff people, Mr. Stallings and Ms. Soltz, are not getting in your way as you get your work done. They seem to be doing okay? All right, thank you. And now we'll pass the microphone to council members for comments or questions. Mr. Matthews.

It's just exciting to see you guys up here. I know when you started out, and I think I made a comment, it's great to see youth starting to get involved because the youth of today is the future tomorrow, the future mayors and council and everybody else, the fire chiefs, police chiefs, and everybody else in the community. And the example you set to the other youth throughout the greater Garner area is just a wonderful thing because we see all the bad PR going on in other towns where the They're fighting, and it's just not a good-looking thing, but to have our youth doing something like this, and I look forward to you doubling in size, and you've got some great things planned. Just keep on doing what you're doing. I'm sure I'm speaking for the board here, but we're behind you 100%. Just go out and get it done and show the rest of the world what good youth can do with a plan and good, strong leadership. You're setting a great example. Just don't slow down. Congratulations. Thank you. Mr. Singleton.

Yes, I want to thank you all for getting involved. It takes a lot to take a big first step, and it's a compliment to you all. as high school students to step up and to want to do things in town. So thank you, I congratulate you for doing that and look forward to your work in the upcoming school year.

Thank you, Mr. Towns. We'll look at you to tell us the real story here.

Now, what I will say is it's a beautiful thing of what our youth council is accomplishing. A lot of times individuals want, we say a lot of times we want youth to be leaders, but this is a clear example of our youth being leaders. All the things that they have planned, they have a self-governance model where they come up, they brainstorm with what they'll take on throughout the year. they come together they debate it and then they come up with a final product of what they plan on doing and it's just amazing to see as they have outlined in their presentation what they plan on accomplishing the energy that they have throughout meetings um how they maintain it throughout the year it's just exciting to see how dedicated they are to the town and just doing this the civic work um and fulfilling their civic duty so i'm thrilled to be the liaison to the youth council i'm enjoy it i try my best to be at every meeting but i think y'all got it and just continue doing what you're doing being a beacon and an inspiration to other youth great thank you mr dowager yeah i just want to thank you all for being so service minded and also say it's good to hear from our bosses

we're up here but everyone out there are our bosses so it may feel not feel that way but that's the real reality of it so it's good to hear from you and i would encourage you as you go through the year you had it on there as a goal how do we get you how do we get us to hear you throughout the year what do you all need sharing ideas and sharing hopes and ideas and concerns finding ways to engage with us because don't forget when you go to me we're their bosses We're younger, but we're their bosses. So don't forget that. So just continue to lead with your hearts and through service. And a huge thanks to Councilman Stallings and staff who have helped support this throughout the year, kind of just giving the framework. But you all are putting in the work, especially if you all are doing bylaws. But keep up the good work and hope to see you all soon.

Congratulations on a successful first year. I definitely see the leadership, the commitment, and just the love for Garner in your work that you're doing, and I can't wait to see what the future holds for you all. I'm quite sure it's great, and you all keep doing what you're doing. Thank you very much.

Thank you. As I think about it, I'm going to have to ask for a copy of this slide deck and send it to my other mayor friends. Just let them eat their heart out. This is good stuff. I thank you all for what you do, and keep on doing it. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. And I believe that brings us along to item two under presentations. We have some good ones this evening. This has to do with a building codes inspection supervisor who's been with us quite a while. We'll call Mr. Paul pageant if you would kind of give us the whole story of what we're doing here tonight.

Thank you, Mayor, Council, management, staff and guests for giving us a few minutes to recognize almost three decades of service that Roy Barber has given to the Garner community. Roy started with us in 1996, December of 1996 as a building inspector, and he was promoted to building codes inspection supervisor in 2022. From 2018 to 2020, he served as the primary building and trades inspector during the construction of RDU-1, the Amazon distribution center. Since joining the town, he has obtained level three inspector certifications in building electrical, mechanical, and plumbing. Since 1997, he was dedicated much of the time to the greater Wake County schools, and then it was transferred over to the county. So he did a bunch of the schools in Garner before it became the county's responsibility. He's dedicated a lot of time to the Greater Wake County Building Officials Association. He has served in many roles there, including secretary treasurer and continuing education provider. Throughout his career, Roy has served on many committees with the North Carolina Office of State Fire Marshal. Those are the ones that oversee our certifications. HE HELPED THEM DEVELOP TRAINING AND TESTING MATERIALS FOR NORTH CAROLINA BUILDING INSPECTORS. HE HAS SERVED ON THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE ICC REGION 8 SINCE 2023. REGION 8 COVERS NORTH CAROLINA, SOUTH CAROLINA, GEORGIA, AND TENNESSEE. IN 2025 HE WAS SELECTED AS THE ICC REGION 8 CODE OFFICIAL OF THE YEAR AND CURRENTLY SERVES AS OUR EDUCATION CHAIR HELPING INSPECTORS WITH CONTINUING EDUCATION THROUGHOUT THE SOUTHEAST. For many years, Roy has volunteered with the North Carolina Apprenticeship Program, which operates under the North Carolina Department of Commerce, serving as a judge for third and fourth year electrical apprentices. For the past three years, he has also volunteered with SkillsUSA, encouraging high school students and serving as a judge to help select the finalist who represents North Carolina at the national contest. For me, Roy has been a huge support as I stepped into the inspector's position. When I got here in 2017, fire was all I knew. Roy, if I had questions about anything, I could go to him. He has been a true friend and a true mentor, and we're gonna be happy for him retiring, but we're gonna be sad to see him go. Garner Inspections will always be a home for you. If you would come up, we've got a little something for you. So we've got a certificate of recognition for service. It says this certificate is awarded in recognition of exemplary performance and dedication to the Garner community. Building codes inspection supervisor Roy Barber, December 30th, 1996 to August 31st, 2026. Roy Barber has consistently demonstrated strong leadership, exceptional attention to detail and a commitment to upholding the highest standards in his roles for our organization and community. This recognition is given on this 18th day of August 2026.

Would you like to say a few words? You can tell them what you really think now.

Well, how about the youth? The future looks bright. I was probably 28 years old or so before I could even carry on the conversation wasn't with a close friend or family. So wow, those guys are amazing. And I want to say thanks to the Mayor, Council, Ms. Miller, Mr. Hodges, Mr. Poole for just providing the time to recognize my years of service. I'm gonna try to summarize the past 30 years in the next 15 minutes. I wanna say thanks to my wife Donna. They had an old saying, you gotta stick with the girl that brought you to the dance. She's the girl that brought me to the dance and been with me through the good and the bad. Appreciate her a lot. I've been with the town through five mayors, five town managers, three inspection directors. mayor robaugh he was just a good down-to-earth guy and i enjoyed having conversations with him mayor bridges he brought a precise professionalism to the role of mayor ronnie williams worked many years with my grandmother at garner post office and for a lot of years two things you could count on was a birthday card from ronnie williams and my grandmother And we'll get back to Mr. Marshburn in a minute. But one of the things I've noticed about Mr. Gupton is he's a man of time, knows the value of time, and he's in the mayor's office more than any of his predecessors. So the five-town manager, Peter Byne, he was a straight shooter at a time when straight shooting went out of style. um mary lou worked her way up from administrative assistant to town clerk to town manager she was the best of the best during the golden age of town of garner barton watkins the hard man that made hard decisions during hard times rodney dickerson the town manager had the most in common with Both like sports, had kids about the same age, and Rodney was a building inspector for Town of Cary for several years, so we had a lot in common. Ms. Miller is very busy, wears a lot of hats, but one of the things I noticed is that she tries to still keep the hometown feeling on her. The three directors, Sandy Till, he had a lot of big positions in large towns and large cities, but he liked the small-town atmosphere. That's why he landed in Garner. He had a special way with people. You could come in angry and yelling, maybe even cussing sometimes, and you left, and Sandy Till was your new best friend. Tony Beezy was a Swiss Army knife. You couldn't talk about nobody you didn't know. You couldn't talk about anything you didn't know something about. And if you asked him to do anything, he would do his best to do it. And as you can tell, I ain't a public speaker. Leadership of Paul Paget, I wouldn't be up here. uh but he i want to say something else about him um he's a good idea man it don't matter who you are if you got a good idea he's got open door policy he can bring you you can bring his good idea He likes good ideas for the customers, the personnel for Garner, customer services. He wants good ideas on that all the time, and he works tirelessly during budget to try to keep the inspections department self-sustaining, which it was not for many years, to try to value the taxpayers' dollars. And a lot of people have asked me what it takes to have a successful career in government. First thing you got to do, because I applied at Raleigh and Cary and Orange County and all over the place for a lot of years, is you got to apply somewhere where nobody knows you. That'll get you probably through the door. So... And then you gotta stay under the radar. At that time, Councilman Marshburn, just staying under the radar, keep you successful in government. They were doing a tour for all the councilmen and mayors when they were opening the Amazon site. and i was showing him a lot of things and showing him my office they'd sit up there for me and everything he says well are you a special inspector or or that garner's hired for this uh project or or do you work for the town i said well i've been here for 23 years and i saw that kind of made him feel bad that he didn't know who it was better but i said well it's hard to fire somebody if you don't know to work here so so that's another key to success in government So we had a good laugh about that. Another thing is surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. And that was the easiest thing I ever did in my life. And then following the chain of command. And the respect for authority now has kind of gone by the wayside. And a lot of people don't do it. But under the three directors I served under, always try to make them look good at their boss i uh never went over the head never went to hr if you bring them idea they don't like it then then that's and you got to respect that and you say well that is not the new way or the common way but when you respect the leadership And they know that you got their back. What you say means something. Another thing for a successful government career is you got to be thankful for legal counsel. Many days without the help of Bill Anderson, I wouldn't have made it. And I really appreciate Terry and her team. And this goes for public service or the private sector. Hard work and determination will take you a long way. I just, I know I spoke on this last time I spoke, but I just want to hit the importance of inspections just briefly. With inspections, you know, the meetings you go through around the country, they're trying to, you know, increase their, improve their image, try to see... and see how we can do a better job of presenting ourselves as a governmental department. They say we're often seen as the stepchild of the government, but the two things I think is sometimes what we do is confrontational. We're sometimes telling people what they don't want to do, but we're trying to do it in a friendly and helpful way. So that kind of gives us a bad rep sometimes. And another thing is you can't see what we do. You can't see the kid that doesn't get electrocuted. You can't see the family that does get hurt off of a collapsed deck. You can't see the people that don't die from carbon monoxide because things are being tested. But inspections is, now it's prevention. EMS and fire and police there to pay on the cure. It takes all of us to try to have a safe community. This is the hardest part. I may not be strong enough for her. June 9th, 2009. Change going on forever. Curtis Poppe. Louis Watson. Rachel Pulley. Beverly Spears lost their lives. And only the people, you know, that were involved with that can understand that none of us are the same people we were since that day. Since that day, I've left all ambition for career advancement. As young people, we're taught to work hard, study hard, and prove yourself. I've never gotten another license, another certification. I've come to work every day with one primary objective, And what happened on June 9th never happens again. Yeah. Well, 30 years ago, or about 30 years when I came, first day I brought this Bible. Just worn out like me. And I just want to say thanks to the Lord for being with me all the way. These people on the back row, they're my superheroes. We got a new fire guy. He's going to be awesome. I don't know what he's going to do yet, but I know he's going to do a good job. Eugene, I've known him for 40-some years, one of my mentors. Leo's always been helpful and supportive. Laura might kill me for saying this, but she's mine and Tim's daughter. And Doug has been my right-hand man. He's a pretty good guy. Unless you need to go to the hospital, he can't find it. And just a few motivational words. You can't improve your prosperity without improving your charity. You can't improve your attitude without increasing your gratitude. And if we all looked out for the person to the left of us and to the right of us more and ourselves less, not only will we accomplish more of our goals and be more fulfilled in doing so, but we'd help make the world a better place. I'm very proud of the town of Garner. I'm proud that they still say the Pledge of Allegiance. I'm proud that they still have invocation. Many towns don't do that. And it has been an honor and a privilege to serve the town of Garner.

Mr. Barber, you can't go yet. Get back up here. We might have something to say to you. First of all, thank you for the heartfelt reminiscences, and thanks particularly for the walk down memory lane as well. But seriously, there might be a council member or two who might want to make a comment or two, and we'll start with Mr. Vance.

Mr. Barber, thank you for your 30 years of dedicated service to the town of Garner. But evident your professionalism, commitment, and really your compassion for the town can be seen and was felt. And I wish you the best as you move forward in this next phase in your life. Again, thank you and congratulations and God bless you.

And Mr. Dellinger.

Mr. Barber, thank you for every single one of those words. I know they were hard even without the content, just getting up in front of people sometimes. I appreciate everything you had to say and just want to say thank you for everything you've given to the town and to the community over your career and your selfless commitment to doing your job well and right and teaching others around you. Thank you so much.

Mr. Stout.

Thank you for your public service, your dedication. I mean, I was just blown away by the things, some things that I'm not even aware of that you've stated throughout your tenure with the town. And I mean, public service is hard, but you just exemplify excellence and just coming to work every single day passionate to do the job that you're tasked to do. So thank you for your dedication. Thank you for your passion. And it's just a retirement well-deserved.

Thank you. Mr. Segal.

Mr. Berber, it's appropriate that that is still on the screen from the Youth Council's presentation to thank you because we've heard thank you all the way down the line. And thank you for your dedication, your years of service out there on the hot days and on the cold days because y'all were inspecting every day. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to do what you did. And I want to say, yeah, I thank you and appreciate it. I also appreciate your comments about what happened on June 9th. I know that was a tough day, but I like the way that you were able to. Talk about it because that's what drives you to do your job, right? So something like that would not happen again. Thank you again.

Matthews yes, sir.

Thank you for 30 years. It's hard to even at my age. Think about working on a job for 30 years, that's pretty good. But you help make this town what it is. And obviously a team player, you go out and you lead by example, and that's a good quality to have. So you've paid your dues, and now I encourage you to get that pretty lady that came up and bought you that bottle of water. And y'all get in the car and go up to the beach, go up to the mountains, and enjoy your retirement. And if they need you, they'll call you back. Congratulations.

Now that was worth walking back up here for wasn't it? And there's one last thing I've been told by our public information officer that no process is complete until there's a photo walk. So let's come right down here or wherever Mr Mercer tells us to be with whoever should be there.

And here's the person responsible for helping me get through 30 minutes. Ready? All right.

Ready?

I'd say that was kind of like a walk through memory lane, a lot of years there. We certainly appreciate the report and that as well. It brings us to item D on our agenda, which is petitions and comments. And I'm going to ask our town clerk, the town attorney, has anyone signed up for this part?

No, sir.

Well, that saves me reading all this stuff that's highlighted in yellow. I don't even have to do that. Thank you. That brings us along to item E on the agenda, which is the consent agenda. These are typically fairly administrative or straightforward issues. I think we only have two this evening. I think town council members have had a chance to look at these. If there's any need to remove any of these items from the consent agenda for further discussion, we can do that. If not, I would certainly accept a motion to approve the consent agenda.

So moved. Second.

Motion by Mr. Stallings, second by Mr. Dellinger. If there's no further discussion, let's have a voice vote. All in favor of approving the consent agenda, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, the consent agenda items are adopted. Thank you. Brings us to item H, which is public hearings. and these are legislative hearings not not the quasi-judicial but the legislative hearings and public hearings are legislative hearings which do not require sworn testimony however all persons interested in speaking must sign up with the town clerk town staff will present a brief presentation followed by the applicant and other persons who wish to comment on the item will be recognized to speak council requests groups of individuals with the same position to designate a representative to speak for the group each member of the public wishing to speak will be limited to three minutes the first item is 1.1 voluntary continuing with contiguous annexation petition related to white oak storage and i will recognize our planning director mr jeff treisenberg to provide the staff report

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, members of the public. Yes, we have one annexation case for you tonight for public hearing. It's on page 14 of your agenda packets, and the annexation petition involves the annexation of 1.91 acres spread across three parcels. It's actually a total of four parcels that make up the development site, but one of them is already annexed. The annexation will also include a third of an acre of intervening right of way along White Oak Road. It is contiguous, so we do not have any satellite annexation criteria to consider. Here is a map showing the area in question. Kind of would be the northeast quadrant of what would be a full intersection of Bryan Road and White Oak Road if it were fully existing that way. The case that for the project that was approved back in 2022 was CZMP2205. when the council approved a tier two rezoning for the white oak storage and we do have an ordinance 2026-5392 prepared for you in your packet should you decide to approve mr douglas ball who represents the property and the development is here in case you have any questions for him as well but that's all i have to present for you tonight unless you have any questions

At this point, are there any questions? We'll start with Mr. Matthews.

No question, sir.

Mr. Singleton. No, sir. Mr. Stallings. No question. Mr. Dellinger. No question. Mr. Vance. No questions. Okay. And the applicant does not wish to make a presentation. I'm asking. No. Okay. All right. That being said, then we will close the public hearing. And our mission here this evening is to make a motion to approve or disapprove Ordinance 2026-5392 related to the annexation for White Oak Storage. Let's see if we can get a motion and a second, then we can discuss more.

I move to approve adopt ordinance 20265392. Second.

Okay, we have a motion from Mr. Vance and a second from Mr. Matthews. Is there any discussion by council related to this annexation? Mr. Vance, any other questions or comments? No questions or discussion. Mr. Dellinger? Yes, sir. Mr. Stallings? Yes, sir. Mr. Singleton? Yes, sir. Well, I think all the hard work was done in the rezoning and all the stuff ahead of this. This annexation is pretty much an automatic thing after all the other work has been done. So it sounds to me that we have a motion and a second on hand. There's no further discussion. The issue before us now is approving that ordinance. And all of us have all in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. Thank you very much for all your hard work, and thanks to our applicant for helping taking us forward with new business properties. Thank you. That brings us to item 1.2 in our public hearings. We have the police offenses and weapons ordinance amendments, and there's actually three separate amendments coming up. I'm going to count on our town attorney to help step us through this process just a little bit, and you may give an introduction and see which of your team is going to be involved here.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. My understanding is we have no members of the public who wish to speak at the public hearings. You do have three sets of amendments to three chapters of the Town Code of Ordinances, which Assistant Town Attorney Diamond Spain will provide a brief overview of those. But I had originally asked for three separate public hearings but given that we have no comments um you can ask questions regarding all of them or we have no public commenters signed up for tonight and then you can make one joint motion or separate motions to approve these ordinance amendments should you desire to do that this evening

i'm going to turn it over to miss spain at this time good evening everyone i'm assistant town attorney diamond spain and we are proceeding on our public hearing for chapters 11 14 and 18. chapter 11 is our offenses chapter uh and where we previously discussed the two work sessions prior and the last one being on july 27th or 8th chapters 4 and 10 we will address those at a later meeting as we are still nailing down some of the actual language And so the intent is to address that at the September 1st meeting. And so there is still an opportunity for the public to submit their comments. We do read them and make sure they are provided to council. And so we do want to encourage anyone who needs to speak on those. The primary topics in Chapter 4 were the use of the central station monitoring system for alarms, and a huge part of Chapter 10 is the new mapping system, and we're also discussing e-bikes. So if those are things that people would still like to address, they still have an opportunity to do so. So chapter 11 is our offenses and other miscellaneous provisions chapter. That chapter involves the addition of prohibiting urinating or defecating in public. We also added language to clarify the authority of the town manager to opt into Wake County declarations. at the direction of mayor or council and then also we tweaked the language just so ever so slightly to make sure that it was clear that the false alarms provision in chapter 11 excludes fire related false alarms that is also being addressed in chapter four The only section that we took out entirely is 11-11, which was on littering. And we took that out because North Carolina has expanded its parameters for littering. And so there was no need to include that. So, we also initially discussed the noise complaints and violations, how enforcement could be done. GPD is currently still working on those. We do have Captain Castellon here. But we don't have any questions, so I'm not sure that he'll need to speak. But if council has questions for him, he is present. But that is not off the table. We are just postponing it until we find a better solution than the language that we currently have. Chapter 14, this was probably the most simple amendment that we are proposing. We just added language to align Chapter 14 with the current council manager government structure and we removed the section regarding auxiliary police because GPD does not utilize an auxiliary police. Chapter 18 is our weapons and explosives chapter. We just added language there to add certain recreational facilities to the list that were not previously included to make sure that our requirement that people not bring firearms to those locations are extended to the recreational facilities and also swimming pools. Any questions?

Hey, let's start with Mister Matthews and come down. We've got three ordinance that we've talked about here. Three possible amendments. I think we've talked about and so we'll have a discussion related to any one of those three.

I think we discussed a pretty good on our work session and I have no questions.

Okay, Mister Singleton.

I agree with that.

Mister Stallings. No question. Mister Dellinger.

I have kind of two questions. Yes, sir. One is a sort of broader question on policy versus ordinance. And speaking in the context of loud noises, and we've had conversations about this, what is the dividing line between us implementing a policy versus changing the UDO? I mean, sorry, the ordinance.

And I'll leave that to GPD to answer.

Are you asking about a policy for enforcement or? Yes. So in a general term, and certainly the police department representatives can also answer this, but I mean we need an ordinance to be able to actually regulate that behavior and whether that's regulated through a criminal charge or that's regulated through a civil penalty. um but it's a tool that we need in the toolbox to deal with potentially the most egregious situations but yes a policy for um whether you want to give warnings first and and whether you want to be able to waive civil penalties i mean that can be established as well um and and council and the manager can provide guidance on how you would like to do that i would say in my tenure as the town attorney um the town of Garner is really looking towards compliance with regulations rather than punishing people for violations. So at this point, we don't have an active court necessarily collecting of civil penalties and stuff. We can start doing that to deal with the most egregious of violators. But for the most part, the approach has been for compliance with town ordinances.

I guess I just, with the noise thing, there are a lot of public comments on it. And I think having an idea of a timeline as to when there will be something tried, and if it doesn't work, we can change it. And that's kind of what I was asking on the policy side, the flexibility on adjusting a policy is much less involved in an ordinance rewrite. So I'm trying to figure out how can we try some things if they don't work switch and pivot but i think there's an impatience out there around not doing anything and so i just kind of want a timeline of when we're going to have something brought back to council that we can consider as like we're going to try this it's worked somewhere else um and if there are budgetary considerations for that and enforcement bring those too but i think we i'd like to have a sense of a timeline as to when we can expect something back to evaluate

Good afternoon, Council of Management. Dave Castellan with the Police Department. So just so we, you want kind of a timeline related to how we apply an ordinance or?

Oh, to be. Sorry. If we don't have an ordinance now or anything that is enforceable with regards to the loud noises, a timeline for bringing a proposal back for a policy that could be implemented so if we've been talking about this rewrite for three or four months now and so in the noise ordinance or noise part of the policy has gotten kind of removed so now i'm kind of wondering when are we going to get kind of a brought back to us this we have a plan we're going to try this is it three months four months

Okay, three to four months would be the ideal time so we can complete our research, but I will say going forward, a lot of the comments that I saw in the public were related to loud mufflers, where a lot of them, which general statute covers addressing that as a tool for enforcement of that, you know, enforcement of that behavior. And also our court ordinance does address unreasonable noises are prohibited, right? so um we'll take that into account in three to four months you know maybe maybe have a better idea of um how we go forth with um maybe making some tweaks tweaks in the ordinance if needed so any any further guidance and recommendations from council would be great as far as the direction

I don't really know because I you know it's sort of a situation where we've got something there but it's not really easily enforceable so it might as well not be there so how do we get to a point where we have a metric or something more solid that we can enforce again I just kind of want a timeline for coming back to council with we're going to try this enforcement method or we're going to That's what I'm trying to figure out how we're going to address these concerns that are being brought. Through our portal here and say oh we have done we have decided to address the loud muffler issue by doing X Y and Z and I don't know that you may not either.

I know that's fine. I think 3 to 4 months may give us the time to look at some different things look at all the comments further investigate and look into that and also give with legal as far as make sure we're in line with um what's best for the town and the citizens okay that works thank you thank you

Yeah, good observation there. Certainly citizens are compared about noise ordinance. They are concerned whether it's mufflers or somebody down the street with a loud stereo or loud party. It's a tricky question to address. I think something that we've learned. So I appreciate the police department giving us some special thought over the next three or four months. Do we have enough ordinances in place to address the situation that we want to? Is there any ordinance that the council could consider that would help you enforce this more evenly or more consistently? We're looking for guidance from you. That is an important issue. So thank you for your attention on this.

just to back him up the the north carolina statute does address the mufflers it require it prohibits people from adding on the muffler that creates that loud noise and i had the pleasure of doing a ride along this weekend to actually witness a noise ordinance in play and one of the issues that they're facing is that you get there and the noise is gone you get there and you can't really locate the person who was causing the issue so they're trying to find a better way to enforce it and not just enforce it but enforce it consistently across the board in fairness and so they're already conducting research on that and we're going to keep working at it it's the first comment I always see usually is noise so we are still working on it it's still a priority

And I understand it's a very tricky issue because it's a lot of people literally driving through Garner from one place to another. So I understand that piece too. And maybe it's a partnership with the county and another municipality or, you know, trying to figure out how do we cast this net of, you know, problems. I wonder if Fuqua is having similar problems too. I don't know. But it might be worth reaching out to them to say, hey, are y'all having issues with this too? And So just kind of thinking in broader, because it is something that, I don't think it's mostly people who live in the town limits. I think it's people who are passing through the town limits to go from point A to point B. That would be my guess, maybe 50-50, I don't know. But thank you all so much.

Good observation. Can I ask a question? Ms. Mayne? Yes, sir. In regards, not to the muffler noise, but we've had an issue in a couple places of loud noise, stereo, party. What if a citizen records that on their phone? Is that evidence that, okay, we heard the noise, we saw where it was coming from. Is that something where you can, I'm sure the police would approach them first and say, hey, this is too loud, cut it down. But if it becomes a habit, and apparently one neighborhood has become a habit, how enforceable is that if somebody records it on their phone and where the sound's coming from?

The issue there is the reliability of the phone and how it's going to pick up the noise and whether or not it sounds excessive on a phone. Does it does it realistically sound excessive in person? I think that would probably play into the issue of environmental issues that we've seen come up when addressing how to assess noise in the courts that has come up, not specifically the phone, but what other factors are playing into the to the interpretation of how loud something is. So I'm not saying it's off the table, but that's something that we can certainly look into.

Well, let me go to the next step is, how about by chance if a house across the street's got a ring camera or some kind of security camera and it picks it up? Same thing?

I think we would have the same issue there.

Okay. I know we're using those for different things. It's more visual than it is video versus audio. But I just wanted to throw that out there. If someone actually hears it three nights in a row, then that's some evidence that something's going on that should be... and i know the approach of police is going and talking to the person first or people or whoever just wanted to bring that up as a thought as mr dunley was talking um how that y'all can research this for the next few months and we'll go from there and one of the things the town attorney is already encouraging is the use of

affidavit so that people can attest to what is going on and give their perspective on it in writing so that we have that record and that might be something to consider to include in the record i can't say for sure that we would be able to do that but that would be again something to consider okay thank you

If I may add, I think some of the challenges with noise enforcement in the past is that it was punishable as a criminal misdemeanor and that there were judges who did not want to enforce this without objective decibel-type standards. A few years ago, when we had to decriminalize parts of the code, we did change this to a civil penalty. And it is my opinion that based on an affidavit, from a complaining witness that that could support the issuance of a civil penalty. Now we have to make sure that that witness is willing to come to court if necessary if we have to actually go to collect penalties or if there would be an appeals process at that point. So that is an option for things that are not criminal. misdemeanor type charges is to to use that and again with the expansion of the legal department we have more capacity to actually follow up on our civil penalties by going to court and trying to collect those civil penalties thank you thank you i think we got as far as mr vance mr vance did you have any other questions or comments

I think, too, there may be like a communications and public information angle. I think one of the things, Mr. Vance, there are a lot of interviews on our committees and everyone always talks about the small town feel of Garner. That's what they love. Maybe we need a video of the mayor saying, hey, we love our small town feel. Come on, love your neighbor or something. I don't know. But there may be softer ways to kind of communicate it to the kind of culture of camaraderie or whatever we kind of have here. And that's that soft angle sort of enforcement, like what are the norms or, you know, how are we considered neighbor or that kind of thing.

I would like to say that recently we've taken a more hard line approach to, especially when someone's consistently violating this repeatedly. As you see by the stats, most everybody complies when we talk to them about it. Even when we catch them in the act, okay, I'm sorry, I'll turn it down. And they're never a problem again. So we've rarely actually had to hold people's feet to the fire on this, but we are taking a more harder approach because some folks can be difficult with it. So we have to take it to the next level, and that's something we're going to continue to do. That was good.

Yes, sir.

Thank you. Excellent. Good information. Lots of issues here. Looking back to our Attorney Jones, we've got a motion where we have three different amendments we're considering here, Chapter 11, 14, and 18. Should we ask for a motion to approve all three of these at once, or do we need to do them one at a time? Is there some consistency, comments from counsel?

maybe do them all at one time i mean you can do a joint motion as long as it's clear that everyone wants to vote the same way on each of them or you can vote do three separate as the last slide says on some of these even if you vote to adopt them tonight they can't be fully effective until that you vote on them a second time gotcha

And just to be clear as to what those are, there's two. In Chapter 11, the public urination and defecation has a criminal penalty of a misdemeanor with a maximum fine of $100. And then in Chapter 11, that second vote would also be required because, Chapter 18, I'm sorry, that second vote would be required because of the additional recreational centers. Again, those elicit another penalty.

OK, so does any council member want to make a motion related to all three chapter amendments?

Mr Mayor, I move that we adopt ordinance number 2026-5393 amending chapter 11, ordinance number 2026-5394 amending chapter 14. and Ordinance 2026-5395, amending Chapter 18, subject to enactment pursuant of GS-160A-175.

Second. Okay, there's a motion by Mr. Matthews and a second by Mr. Singleton to adopt these three amendments at one particular time. Is there any further discussion or questions about these? Hearing none, let's take a voice vote on this. All in favor of the motion made by Mr. Matthews to adopt all three of these amendments, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? hearing none it passes unanimously thank you very much thank you and thank you very much mr jones that helps us a lot that brings us along to item g which is new and old business the lake benson master plan report and Sponsor here, our presenter is going to be a couple members of our parks and rec. I'm Mr. Beard. Matt Beard is going to tell us a little overview of where we are and what we're looking at in terms of possibly taking another step or what could we do next about any master plan update for Lake Benson Park.

Yes, sir. Thank you, Mayor and Council. It's good to see you all. Yeah, Matt Beard. I am the parks and greenways planning manager for the town. So when we last presented the information on the Lake Benson Park master plan update was April of this year. And at that time, kind of the guidance that was provided was to go back and get some uh, community feedback on the two concepts that had been put together, um, by our, our consultant team with, uh, where there's revenue. Um, we went back and, um, did that. We've been talking to folks out in the community and tonight we're coming back to share some of the feedback that we received during those conversations and online poll and to also obtain your guidance relating to the two specific items, the boathouse relocation as well as our park driveway options. so as kind of a quick reminder of what the conversation held in um april yielded we've got this is kind of color coded so in in green uh is kind of green light for uh the walking trail um relocation specifically around the veterans memorial we got to go ahead on that we are currently working with the consultant team from Weathers Ravenel on that. We also went through the conversation around the boathouse relocation, that we needed to do some additional research, ensure that we were asked to explore some alternative locations beyond property that we currently own. And we have secured a right of entry with a property owner and have been able to now start those kind of due diligence explorations for boathouse relocation alternatives again off of the main Lake Benson Park property that we currently own. The red items on here, the distribution of amenities and park driveway, those are items that we really have been hitting hard with our community engagement and really The whole purpose of coming back tonight is, again, to get feedback on those items. So we're going to go into how we went to the community. So we set up a booth at the July 3rd. Since it's, you know, one of our largest events, you have a lot of built in foot traffic that you can capture. I set up right next to the information tent and they were the ones handing out the fans and it was a really hot day. So we had a really key location next to the place that everybody wanted to stop at to get a fan. Um, so I got some really good feedback out there that day. It was, it was pretty much solid, um, solid, uh, conversations from probably, uh, 6 45 until eight 30. That was the period of time where the shade kind of started settling on our booth location and people were flocking over. Um, and then obviously when the, when the lights go off and the fireworks start shooting, they're not going to want to talk to me anymore. So, um, we also set up, um, I set up out at shelter one, uh, several days, uh, following that July 3rd event, um, where I basically just went out there with, with my presentation posters, um, and my sticky notes and had conversations with people that were out there. We had put out on social media. that I would be out there on the Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And we had some really good quality conversations because there's no time limit on it. If you want to talk to me, I'll talk to you out there. I also set up a presentation at the Garner Senior Center. So we got to go and take those same boards in, present, get feedback from our seniors. as well as camp kaleidoscope over at the rec center we had the the kids providing their feedback on kind of how how the park can be maximized to fit their needs and you know what their brothers and sisters might want to see out there as well so we really tried to get a broad spectrum of in-person encounters with this presentation material before coming back to you tonight. The other ways that we engaged people were via our social media posts. So on the right is kind of the screen grab that we use to help point people to our online survey. So that's the last bullet point there is the Polko survey. It was a quick 90 second five question survey and it was really intended to set our baseline of how are you using the park now how often do you come out and then alternatively have you used the boathouse and would you be more likely to use a boathouse if it was accessible from our main lake benson park location so on the first question we only had two people respond that they've never been to lake benson so everybody loves it out there so most most of the visitation that we were getting um is on the uh once a week to a couple of times per year um with uh 50 respondents of our 500 and 59 total respondents saying that they went every day. So that's part of their daily routine. How is the park being used? The large majority, 69% of the respondents visit the park for casual exercise, walking, jogging, biking. So this is this kind of fits what you see out there on a day to day. If you go out, there's people walking around the trail, hiking, running. It's really kind of a passive recreational park. So as opposed to like your Jurgen Park or Garner Rec Park, where you have built in fields and things. 8% visited mainly just during events and festivals, and 23% selected the option to visit a specific amenity. So if you select that, we had 127 people select that one, that takes you to a different question that digs in a little bit deeper. Do you go to the dog park, multi-use field? Do you go to visit the playgrounds, the Veterans Memorial? Or are you just there to go on the walking trails? Most of the people that selected a specific amenity were going to the playgrounds, followed by the walking trails and Greenway access and the dog park. So again, it's kind of what you would expect to see. You have the people out there doing their kind of casual exercise, and then you also have the families utilizing the multiple playgrounds that we have on site. Onto the boathouse, the majority of our respondents had not ever rented from the boathouse in its current location, with 14% even saying that they didn't know that we had a boathouse. So the follow up question was, would you be more likely to use it if it was relocated to Lake Benson Park property, which garnered 73% in favor of, you know, they're saying that they would use a boathouse if it was on the park property so that's that's a pretty kind of you know somebody some of these questions maybe didn't didn't yield super conclusive results that one definitely tells us a direction And then this is just kind of the age demographic breakdown that was captured as part of the poll. So again, you have users in that kind of 25 to 55 range. And then we have less responses from individuals that are in the 18 to 24 and then above the 75 or greater, as I like to say. Um, so the onsite community engagement that I mentioned where I had my office hours, um, those converse, this is kind of a summary that I kept, um, as I'm having these conversations, these are the notes that I was writing down and this is kind of. raw data as it's being kind of thrown back to you. So each one of these is either a specific conversation or a consolidation of several conversations that were pretty much the same. The top two I've kind of put in bold here. One of the main requests that we heard from our first social media post was access to the lake. People want to be able to get on the water. It's the same conversation that I would kind of have with them. It's like, it's not really our lake. It's a city of Raleigh. They own it. It's drinking water. They kind of write the rules on that one, but we absolutely can go back and engage with them and have that conversation. And maybe it's Um, time that they can, they can reassess kind of our usage rights, uh, for the lake. But that also tells me that there would be some amount of support for, again, the boathouse to be, to be brought out. And so this, this is. I mentioned posters and all I have the, the actual the posters are in the appendix on the last page of your, your PDF. So, and I can pull them up if you'd like. But basically I had, concept a concept B and then the middle was for four questions highlighting the differences between the two concepts. The first saying, all right, so what is the driveway location look like? Where are the playgrounds located? Where's the dog park located? And then where is the boathouse located? And so trying to get kind of a preference off of those. And that's just a way of helping guide the conversation to a point of getting some kind of definition behind what people are wanting rather than it just being a free form i want this thing that's not shown on here yes we want to hear that but specifically we want to address these these questions um the uh shade This is dog park users coming up to me, specifically when I'm sitting out there in Shelter One. A lot of the dog park users are out there in the middle of the day. And it's hot, hot, hot. And they, like everybody else, they want to be in the shade. It's more comfortable. So that's going to be something we hear no matter where the dog park lands is they want to have shade. So the majority of the users that I talked to out during the office hours were supporting relocation of the driveway away from the mature trees. We had a neighbor express a desire to return concerts to the park, like regular concerts. Not just during our large town events. And then we had, yeah, Desire over in Shelter 2. You know, that's an area that doesn't currently have a restroom. So trying to add a restroom over there would help that keep it from being continually underutilized. I have a question. Yes.

And given this is sort of a larger master plan, can we price out what it would like to put a shade in the dog park? I know we have them over some of the playgrounds. Yeah. Because I think that's something we could actually, that's good feedback, and it's something we could actually do something about in pretty short order, maybe next summer when it's really hot.

Yeah. Yeah, and that's kind of a, you know, it's a good question because you know, one of the, the whole thing that started this is, you know, we have some things that we want to replace, repair, improve, but we want to do it in its best maximized location. And so, um, you know, from talking to the dog park owners, they say, don't move it, just add shade.

so you know that's something that's definitely you know on the table as we move forward in the master planning process but if it's if it's affordable then i saw something similar happen over at dick's park they'd set aside a large dog park area uh dark dog park space and it was huge but then like at the beginning it was like everybody was in one corner up against the fence because that's where the tree shade was and i think they added a couple of shady spots with the sunshade so thank you

Thank you.

Um, so my next event was a pop up over at the splash pad. Um, so trying to engage with people where they're going, um, the, uh, again, for whatever reason, the, the focus was on dog park, um, with, uh, you know, the, the, the two concepts, um, they vary in a number of ways with regards to the dog park. Um, but one of the kind of key points that I was trying to, um, get out of these conversations is what is the what is the apprehension or the desire to have playgrounds and dog parks in proximity to one another? Where I come at is is I don't I don't necessarily want my kids next to a dog that I don't know. But in talking to the dog park, dog parents, it's I would love for my dog to be able to have a positive interaction with a kid. And I would love for that kid to have a positive interaction with my dog. And you know, these are this is the other side of that coin that I had, I had assumed that we wanted to keep them separate. So, um, you know, there's, there's the dog park folks were, were, you know, very, uh, very much coming out and saying, you know, we want to shade, just put us wherever you want, but put, give a shade. Um, but again, that's just kind of part of that conversation and part of the thinking, um, around kind of co-location of amenities. My conversation with our seniors, not as many individuals that were really tied in with Lake Benson Park as I was anticipating. They wanted to, again, make access to the lake easier. So that would be, again, boathouse relocation or renegotiation with Raleigh. And then... Part of the conversation around the dog park expansion was to expand it kind of into the woods so that you capture some of that natural shade. There was concern about dogs getting ticks if you do that. The Camp Kaleidoscope folks, they appropriately latched onto the layout for the playgrounds. So that was kind of their focus. So yeah, this gentleman on the left is showing where all the votes I think he was pushing for. we're going were for the larger of the two playgrounds on those concepts. So the location on concept B is kind of It's a bit smaller, but it's also tucked in under some of the larger mature trees that we have. It combines with the relocated driveway. It's right next to a new restroom, but it was smaller than the one that was in A. So there was a little bit of that. All right. Well, where do I want to put my vote? Because I want the big one, but I also like to have these other things that are shown on B. So that's where, you know, we have these dot exercises and it's good data, but it's more the conversations behind those dots that is going to help inform us going from concept a and B to the assembled vision, uh, of, you know, maybe concept C that combines all the good parts. The only big difference in the boathouse locations that were shown on concepts A and B was that I believe B had a nature play area kind of nearby the boathouse, whereas on A, the boathouse was kind of on its own. So they liked having a combination of The boathouse is there while my mom and dad can go in and they'll hook up the kayak rental while I go and play on the nature play area next door. So this is kind of what I was talking about. This is the assembled data from the dot exercises of all of those conversations that we had. This is a lot on this slide. The following slides break them out by specific question, but I did want to show you the full board all together. So again, some of these provide a little bit more clear direction than others. But again, it's kind of the conversations behind the dots that really tells us what we want to do. So focusing on the driveway question again, the majority of the participants preferred the concept B, which it's it's very small and I apologize, but the the driveway circles around through what's now the open field comes back down through where the dog park is now. and connects in basically where it does, where, where it currently sits near shelter one. Um, so the, the preference there is, um, I think it's twofold. Um, I think it is the, uh, the relocation of vehicular traffic, uh, to the edge of the park, rather than right down the middle of the park that opens up a lot more, safe pedestrian usage. It also has the benefit of relocating those vehicles from the mature tree roots that are currently getting driven on and parked on. And then either way, the desire was to pave the driveway, whether it stays where it is and we improve some parking or it gets relocated. the hard surfacing of the driveway was pretty much unanimously supported from the folks that I talked to. I think there were maybe some folks that just didn't care if it stayed gravel, but part of the conversation as well, it came up specifically on the driveway portion was, All right, Matt, what's the cost of this going to be? What's going to be the more expensive option here? And so cost was not something that was presented as a statement of facts. I don't have engineers estimates behind any of these improvements yet. But the way that it was presented was right now we have a pretty well compacted you know, quote unquote, hard surface going down, uh, going down the line. My assumption is that paving where it is now is the, the more budget friendly, um, option versus relocating. Uh, but again, I don't have those, um, you know, those numbers, uh, playground location. We already kind of talked through this when, uh, when I was talking through the, uh, the camp kaleidoscope, um, slide, but, um, Yeah, the kids liked A because it was bigger. On B, this is where it's located on B. It's kind of tucked in in the middle. So that would allow for, you know, you can park over here and that allows you access to kind of the full range of other park amenities. You're also not having to drive all the way to the back of the park to access a playground. But again, they want that, but bigger.

I have a question about the playground. So in concept B, is there going to be some form of security fencing for the dog park or the playground if they're so closely located together?

Yeah. And I think, you know, one, yes, you would have you would absolutely 100% have fencing around the dog park area. The the fencing around playgrounds, it's not something we've gotten into that level of kind of granularity with our design choices. Um, but yeah, I mean, I think, I think that would, that would make sense if, if it shakes out and we, we are okay with having those two things next to each other. Uh, because for every person that I talked to that said, yes, it's a good idea to have these things right next to each other. You'd hear from somebody else that's just like, no, that doesn't make sense. We're going to keep them separate. If I want to go to the dog park with my kids, they're going to come with me into the dog park. They're not going to go over and play on the playground over there. It's just, yeah. So yes, that's something that would be considered if we want to keep those two items together. As you can see, the dot exercise didn't point us that heavily in one direction or the other, but rather it was kind of a these are considerations that you should have when, when laying this out as, you know, what if it's not a good dog? What if it's not a kid that's going to listen to their parents? Like there's, there's, there's issues on both sides, but yeah, it's, it's something that, that, you know, has kind of come up through those conversations. And I think that, Fencing is certainly a good option if it's something that we want to do is keep them close.

Thank you. What you do is you don't put yourself in a position where something bad can happen. You don't keep them close. You don't keep them close. That's a no-brainer. You don't put the dog park beside the playground because you can get a kid to go over there and the wrong dog. All it's going to take is one serious incident. And then you can say, shut the dog park down and put a privacy fence up. You just don't even entertain that concept. You just push it away and say, this isn't a note. You don't put yourself in a position of consequences that may happen. You think it out. What are the consequences that may happen? This may happen. You don't put them aside for now. That's simple.

You don't even entertain it.

Just move along. Next. You don't entertain that. Plus, we also can have a playground there. We need to have two playgrounds here. Actually, we've got three across the street, slash playground, playground. But anyway, we'll get to that later. We've got a dog park that's not beside a playground. All it takes is one time, and who will be to blame but the town that put the dog park beside the playground?

And no dog was biked. Mm-hmm. I'm being facetious.

Well, Mr. Beard, this is a great amount of information you and your team have really gone overboard to try to get everybody possible to have some input on this. My understanding of tonight, we're primarily here We are primarily here to listen and get the results of your surveys and your studies so far. I don't think there's a particular question or decision we have to address this evening. I think I also understand there might be some possibility of a different boathouse location may take a month or 2 or a few to find out. what those options are so this is kind of an information sharing you've already gotten some some feedback some first impressions uh from council i'll be glad to start at one end and come back and we'll let's ask the council members of time one at a time start with mr vance and coming this way uh first impressions observations general concept again no decision has to be made but just what's your takeaways from what you've seen so far is this all the presentation

I just had the other, with regards to the, this was the dog park slide showing that folks were wanting to keep something that was a little bit more shaded. And then the boathouse location showing that the co-location with the nature play was something that was favorable. um and then the our social media post because it's social media it's very open-ended um we had folks uh suggesting the repaving and expansion of the existing asphalt trail so that's the walking path that goes around that's something that's that's needed out there we also had uh multiple individuals uh wanting a public swimming pool um out there um We've dipped our tail in aquatics, and enough said on that.

You have a picture of the master plan for 95, and that was the same. That was the number one priority back in 1995. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, but then also paving of parking lots, that's something that is, um, you know, it's definitely, uh, continues to be shown on our plans going forward. Um, and then, uh, kind of the, the wishlist, um, goes, goes on with a skateboard and action park, volleyball courts, bike trail around the lake. Um, so not just on the park, but around the lake and then, um, Playgrounds for kids under three and playgrounds for big kids, which. We kind of are already planning for so. And yeah, this was this was my, you know, our next steps is really kind of seeking some guidance on. You know, the park driveway options, what your what your thoughts are on that and then. continuing forward on the boathouse relocation. As you mentioned, yeah, we're gonna continue working on that. That's probably three to four months for us to do our due diligence on that alternate location. And then we can come back and present something to you on that.

Thank you. Yeah, so this is a great information and again, kind of 1st impressions ideas from council. Let's start with Mr. advanced 1st impressions.

Yes. Oh, yes. Mr. thank you for your. Your presentation and my general direction based upon what I've heard what I've read what I've seen is that using possibly concept B as the. General framework for developing the master plan, and particularly for the driveways and also for the preservation of mature trees there. And I support moving the boathouse with the warning of the cost to make sure that it's feasible for us to do that. And you've already said that you don't have costs yet, but to have those cost estimates would be very important when it comes to looking at the CIP and other financial plannings.

Yes, sir, absolutely.

That's my general guidance and direction. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Dellinger.

Yeah, just wanted to thank you all for doing the outreach. community engagement is ultimately our superpower here in Garner sometimes. And we get better ideas, newer ideas, different ideas, and our notions and preconceptions can kind of get flipped upside down. So thank you all for doing that. To echo what Mr. Vance said, I think numbers, even though it's super early, I think this goes along with the drive of having a more comprehensive perspective on our capital improvement plan and making sure that these pie-in-the-sky long-term projects have some range of dollar figures associated with them. They don't get kind of, there's no point in working on this if there's not going to be money for this for 15 years, right? But trying to get those numbers, Even if they're off to the side, you know in the wish list so that that's kind of evolving So it's in in the perspective in our perspective and view As we're having conversations about capital improvements over the next 5 10 15 years the other recommendation I would make is Taking some of these elements from the master plan that. Can be implemented kind of like the sun sale things, some of these things that can be implemented. Without a full redo of the entire part and also breaking down to go back to. We're talking about like Benson, maybe these. They're large chunks of this, right? There's the boathouse relocation, which is part of that. There's the. the two scenarios with the driveway which one does what and then the relocation of the parks you know big big numbers big ranges you know within 40 i mean but we kind of given us some idea as to when there may or may not be funds to to do some of these things will be really helpful i think

Yeah, I think one kind of way to think about it is, you know, we have things that kind of need to happen quicker than others, like playground replacement or paving. And so it kind of just, it's almost like you could have your You know, your phase one improvement is playground, driveway, and that way you're making, you're setting the infrastructure in the right location for all of these other things to happen in the future, but not, again, putting it in the same place it's at now where obviously the park is successful we have tremendous visitation out there it's it's beautiful well-loved park but we want our things to be accessible we want them to last for you know at least another 25 years so it's kind of setting up maybe those what are those chunks and what does that cost look like that ballpark range for those chunks maybe not just for a la carte, this and that and this. It's realistically what all happens together. I think that's it, yeah, we can look at that.

Mr. Vance, you had a second half to your question.

Oh yes, but just want to add in also in looking at the concept A where the kids really like the larger playground, possibly if that can be incorporated into the framework of the concept B in some way, how we can bring the best pieces of A into B or vice versa, but focusing on B.

Yeah, and I think I think, you know, with the separation of the dog park and the playground, you're opening up a little bit more room on concept B for a larger playground area in the location where it was preferred. during the outreach. So I think there's already wheels are turning.

Gotcha. My last comment was also along the same lines of the demographics of the respondents. And it's a lot of younger folks with kids. And you can pass any part at any time during the day. And they're kids on playgrounds. So more playgrounds will need more. And they'll need to last to your point.

And one last thing, Mayor Gupton, is that as we go through this process, we want to think about how can we maintain the natural character of Lake Benson going forward as well.

I'll finish.

Mr. Stout.

That was my question. Councilman Vance asked. Yeah. I'm sorry.

In case you think of another. Mr. Singleton, first impressions.

Well, I said this at our budget meeting, and I'll say it again. This is a nice wish list, but this is a pipe dream. It's too much money to do either concept. We're committed to doing the boathouse, and we're committed to redoing the trail around the Veterans Memorial, but this is tens of millions of dollars, and we don't have money for it. I mean, our bond referendum that we're talking about, $75 million and $60 or so million are going to be tied up in a public works building. Several million will be tied up in a fire station, too. Probably be so much we won't even, the only thing we'll be able to do for fire station six will buy land and maybe get a plan. This is incredibly expensive. And so I think we just need to rein it all in. We're way over our skis. We didn't even replace the playground at Centennial Park because we're going to wait for the grant that we're supposed to get. So if we can't, you know, for a $250,000 grant at that park and we're not going to do that there, This is millions of dollars we're talking here because when you relocate restrooms, you've got utilities that cost money. Again, we're committed to moving the boathouse, and I think you're going to have to work within what we have to figure out how to use it because there's just not the funds available. And again, if we have this referendum for public works and fire station, it may not pass. So you got to think that. We got to have a backup plan A, B, and C for those two projects. So this is going to be extremely expensive, and we just need to pull back the reins because all this is not going to happen. I mean, go back, look at the original plan. We had the nature center out on the point there, and that's what was talked about in 1995. And I'm not joking about the pool. Seriously, the number one meet in the town. We did a poll. The poll was printed. The paper was a pool. So you look at the things that we planned for there, and a lot of those things came in. The community center never went there, but anyway, that's where the veterans morgue is, so sometimes things work out. But we just need to be realistic with people, and a lot of these things just cannot happen. It's nice having one big playground there, but at a park this size, you need multiple playgrounds. I mean, again, just look at across the street what we've done with White Deer Park. So I think we just need to realize this looks good, it sounds good, but we just need to focus on the boathouse and doing minimal other impacts and rerouting the trail around the Veterans Memorial and the emergency access, of course, that we've already talked about a couple years ago. And that's what we need to focus on. A lot of this stuff just cannot happen because of the cost. Period. When you want to pave everything, you talk about a sweet price, but if you look at that, that's just a massive increase in cost, and we have to prioritize how we want to do this. I mean, concept B, you don't even keep the shelter there. Why are we gonna tear down a perfectly good shelter and a restroom? So we're gonna have to pull back the reins and be realistic and focus on the boathouse and how we can incorporate it in what we've got. and use those dollars to take fund balance and do that it's not a budget we don't have it in the cip as mr dillinger said however and that's not going to be cheap we know we've already got kind of already hinted at what it's going to cost so we just need to be realistic here this looks good and sounds good but um we're going to focus on what we've decided to focus on and stick with that and then put those in place and then work around everything else it'll take years to incorporate some of these changes And the shake height's not a bad point that Mr. Dellinger mentioned at the dog party. If that's even feasible, it may not be feasible.

Council member Singleton, if I can just remind the rest of the council, part of doing the master plan work for Lake Benson, though, provides us an opportunity for accessing additional dollars. So although this is a very ambitious plan, and I agree with you, and a potentially expensive plan, we have found that once we have the plan in place, it makes us much more competitive in order to go out and seek grant and funding opportunities. And so Part of the overall strategy for the conversations we're having today in terms of the master plan is getting feedback as to what we'd like to see, then having a plan to work from to develop strategies for how we would get there. It may mean we have to pull back, to your point, and sort of do the things we have to do immediately, but if we have an opportunity to plan these things, it puts us in a more competitive advantage in terms of leveraging dollars, whether it's grant dollars or private grant dollars and donation dollars as well. So I just wanted to share that with council because I think your point is well taken in terms of what are sort of the immediacies in terms of some of the things we're going to be able to do. But every funder is going to want to see what your plan is and what you estimate the costs are going to be before they're even willing to entertain an application.

Oh, good point. I agree with that, yes.

Great information, great input, great discussion. Mr. Matthews?

Thanks for all the work. I think it's great, as mentioned earlier, getting citizen involvement and going out there where the citizens are at. People are actually using it and giving you feedback. They're the ones that they'll use it more. And with our population growing like it is, we're pushing 50,000 and more coming in. more families coming and so we've got a reputation of having great parks and people thoroughly enjoy them. The sound like that B option is really kind of floating around a lot stronger than some of the others and I agree that boathouse does need to be moved and I hope when we move that little shack but when we build whatever we're going to do let's let's make something we can be proud of and it can be really used and And I agree there might be some sponsorships out there or some naming rights we could find out that would help us. But let's make it really nice where the families can use it and have even more boats or kayaks or whatever. But we've got to get it out of that curve because that's the most dangerous. I wonder if somebody's not been killed there. I'm just been waiting because the parking lot is packed in there and you just can't get out of that incline. Most important that Greenway and Southern sidewalks going. Come right through there anyhow, and that both houses got to go. So I agree. It's a good priority. Good move. That is something to be used immediately. And. Is 1 of the key priorities and the bypass around the veterans memorial? I think that's something we've been pushing for quite a while too. So. A lot of good stuff and I agree. We've got to put it all on plan and see what we go out and sell to some outside potential revenue and. Because we don't set it up and plan for it, it's never going to happen. So, some things might happen quicker than others, but let's put the plan in place. Here's what we want to do. So, if somebody's going out selling, looking for a grant for. so much for this and this and we've been pretty fortunate on a lot of those grants so people like what they're seeing so let's not slow that momentum down and there's always going to be financial issues but thank you again for what you guys are doing this is a parks has been a big thing there of interest of everybody and we've got some great ones and uh even with our splash pad i was earlier today there's like four or five little mini buses out and that place was packed I know we've had some ups and downs with it. That's one of the best little investments we've made because there's kids having a blast out there. And so we're making good decisions. It's just some things taking a little bit longer, but thank you for what you're doing and your research. That's interesting numbers you were popping up there. Kids do count.

Oh, yeah. Yep. I mean... the the way that the way that we had the the board set up i apologize i'll stop talking here in a second the lake benson park 2041 is what we put on there you know that'll be that'll be uh 25 years from now 50 years from when it first opened so you know this the way that i'm presenting that to our residents and and you know the kids at the campus this is this is going to be over a long time we're not going out knocking everything down and rebuilding it all at once. It's it's this is our vision for what you guys are going to be able to enjoy for years.

Again, great information, great dialogue. We could talk about parks all night, but we're about 20 minutes past our mandatory recess here. So if it's okay with council, would you guys get a teeny weeny quick question?

I've got two teeny weeny questions. One, I think as we're doing the sort of smaller bits and pieces together, think about potentially merging the boathouse with a shelter. Yes. So one end is a boathouse, the other end is a shelter. So instead of having multiple structures, the other is, and this is really kind of nitpicky, and I see where there's rabbit hole here. Is there any reason this map is like south-north and not north-south?

Like those maps? Yeah. It's just so it fits onto a standard formatted. But it would fit. I mean, you could go.

Sure. I just think.

Yeah, we can do the next round with a more vertical alignment.

Yeah, if you could have north go north, I think it would be more consistent with other maps. Yes. And that would be intuitive.

Yeah, but this is the way you see it.

Okay.

This is what you said. All good.

And the good news is we don't have to make any decisions or take any actions tonight, except we received information, sparked good dialogue, talked to any of the folks in Parks and Rec, particularly Matt Beard. He's got some ideas here. So that being said, I'm going to declare our official recess here, and I'll give you an extra three minutes for good behavior. Be back by 8 o'clock sharp. Please. Thank you. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. From recess. Thanks for your promptness. Thanks for the people who stuck around for the second half. This is where it gets really good. Item H on our agenda is updates to council. And item number one is committee reports. And since I'm already talking, I think I'll go ahead and give my committee report. I'm the liaison with the Public Art Advisory Committee. We had our meeting last week and the biggest milestone of all, we got our bylaws approved. Everybody passed that. It took a while. Bylaws were in place and we got to actually review some examples of public art. Things that we liked and didn't like. Some of them were seats and benches and functional items, but we had a lot of fun looking at that stuff. And we realize we have a lot of work to do yet, but off to a good start. That being said, let me pass along to our other council members to see what reports we might have related to committees. And let's start with Mr. Vance this time.

Yes, sir. The nominating committee will conduct the interviews this week for the Housing Advisory Committee. We expect to complete the process and bring our recommendations forward to the council in the near future.

Thank you Mister Dowager.

No reports this evening.

Mr. Stallings.

So as you've heard earlier, Garner Youth Council will be meeting tomorrow night for their first meeting of the year. I'll be in attendance for that and I don't want to steal any of our economic development. because they will be presenting in a moment. So as always, we had a DGA meeting, Downtown Gardener Association meeting last Thursday. Pretty comprehensive, covered a lot of topics, but we'll hear more from April about that in a second.

Okay, good. Thank you. Mr. Singleton?

No committee report.

Mr. Matthews? No, sir. No committee report. And that brings us to item number two, manager reports. And fresh off the airplane from Chicago, our manager's here.

Good evening, Mayor, members of council. We've got several reports for you this evening. First is the development services update for quarter two. And so, Mr. Hodges, I'll ask you to present.

Thank you, Miss Miller, Mayor and Council members. Your quarterly development services report is in your packet. As a reminder, we produce this not only to provide updates to our Council, but we also share this with members of our development community. And so some of the things that are covered in here at this time, you've had recent updates on the transportation plan and microtransit study you received an update on at a recent meeting. There is some information about new available space, but I'll let Mr. Groover cover that when he gives his report in a moment. We do have an update here about our downtown stormwater plan. Engineering has been leading these efforts for several months. It is a 72-acre study to study how we can provide alternative means of stormwater so that we have enhanced development opportunities in our downtown, and work is continuing on that. And staff will be making a final recommendation on the preferred approach once that is done. So we're excited to see that moving forward and open up some other opportunities in our downtown. Also in the development services update is your quarterly development statistics. We did see continued increased numbers this time with 977 permits issued, 431 COs, almost 12,000 inspections completed. over 800 co-compliance cases completed or investigated and 565 fire inspections conducted. There's also your annual statistics since this is wrapping up the end of last year. And again, I really want to give kudos to our development services departments for the number of work, the amount of work that they're keeping moving. For the year, we had a total of 3,767 permits, 1,595 COs, almost 43,000 inspections completed, and all of these are being completed next day, which is less than the two-day statutory requirement. Over 2,000 code compliance cases investigated. and over 2,400 fire inspections that were completed. So both of those reports are in your packet there. Also placed at your seats tonight was a page that you'll see some additional charts on. There's some green, blue, and orange colors. It says year over year comparisons for Q2. There'd been a question from council member about Did we have some comparative data? So this is just an example of some of the type of data that we could compare over. Most of this we have over now a four-year period. So if council wants to take a look at this, provide us any feedback. If there's any of these that you would just like us to do, periodically or if there's any of these that folks feel like would be important to include on a quarterly basis or a year-end basis we'll be glad to do that. We'll be reformatting this to better match our development services report but just want to show you that as an example of the work that our staff has been doing to put together some reporting for you and receive any feedback that you may have for us. That's all I have Ms. Miller. I'll be glad to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Hodges. Are there any questions?

With the rapid growth that the town is seeing now, just wondering if we're able to keep up with the capacity to provide services at this time?

In terms of the development services, we are. So the inspectors needed to complete these inspections. We are staffed. we are keeping up with those and any vacancies that we've experienced at least with the development services departments we've been able to fill those quickly so we currently are at almost full capacity with the development services departments we have one project management position that is open and being hired for now in engineering that largely helps us manage our internal capital projects so it's really not impacting our ability to serve our external development customers thank you

And are there any additional questions for Mr. Hodges or the development services team? All right, if not, Mr. Douglas.

Just a comment. These are, this is good information presented very easily to digest. So we've come a long way in our, not just our data, we've had a lot of data, but the presentation is very digestible is really digestible, so good job there. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for that feedback. So second report this evening is our Q4 economic development update. And so Mr. Groover and Ms. Wood, ask them to come up to the podium.

Thank you, Manager Miller, Mayor, and Council. Appreciate the opportunity to go for you tonight. We're gonna mix up the order a little bit and have April start off, and I'll wrap things up.

Hello, Mayor and Town Council. It's great to be with you tonight and share an update on our Garner economic development team or from our team. I'm going to be talking about entrepreneurship and small business first. So an update on Launch Garner. All of our students have completed their mentorships. They will be graduating next Thursday and we are excited to celebrate their accomplishments. The application portal is open and I checked it today and we already have 12 applicants. I would encourage each of you, if you know someone who is interested in Launch Corner, please have them reach out to me. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Or they can also go to our Launch Corner website. Also the Duke Energy Foundation grant, just to give you an update on that, this was $15,000 grant that we received for projects in downtown. We have had six projects that have been presented and approved by DGA. And we have had actually since this report was published, we have five of those that have been completed. So some of the projects include bee removal from the Banks Bed and Breakfast. We had some additional seating and patio outdoor area zen yoga and wine that was expanded. additional improved lighting in the key team office and interior enhancements at locks, naturals and more, which included six additional salon spaces, which allows them to serve more customers. Uh, we also, since this has, um, was reported steep right up, completed their projects as well, um, in the tea shop there. So we have awarded money to those organizations. Also, several of you were there with me, but we celebrated the grand opening of the newest Bojangles. Several of you were there. It was a great time. It was packed. I think this is something that the community was excited about and we are glad to have them expanding in the Garner area. The second part of our economic development framework that I would like to speak about is the community promotion and marketing. So since I reported last, I think we've had two Groovin' and Garner concerts. We opened the season with Rockzilla in May with about 550 attendees. Then we had Jim Quick and Coastline in June. We did have some rain that night, but we had 450 people who attended. And then this week we have Envision coming on Friday afternoon. The name of their group or the name of their music session is Soul Reloaded. So they cover everything from Motown, funk, pop, dance. So I hope that you all can join us for that. And then lastly, the Future Leaders Camp. We hosted 15 students from the Future Leaders Camp with Community of Hope and they came to downtown Garner. We went on a tour. They had an opportunity to speak with some of the business owners about entrepreneurship and what it's like to own a business. And then we also took a tour of the History Museum. And then the second day they came here and they had an opportunity to sit in your seats and the town council members and it's always great to hear their ideas and what they would like to see happen as you have seen tonight from some other presentations

Thank you, April. So as Mr. Hodges mentioned earlier, the new Garner Business Park building six just came online. We were happy to share the information this morning at the Garner Chamber of Commerce Impact Conference. Mayor, Mr. Vance, we appreciate you coming out for that. It was a great event where we were able to provide economic development update. including this building, among some others there. And we were happy to share with the group there that we have 10 new buildings for industrial uses coming online with a whopping 1.2 million square feet for new jobs and investment. So we're glad to share that information with the community and glad that these sites are coming online. Opportunity zone 2.0. So I know there's been some interest on opportunity zones and what that federal incentive means and kind of that process. So we've been working on this for the past few months here. We were able to submit our three opportunity zones that met the criteria. to the North Carolina Department of Commerce who then sends those along the recommendations county by county to the governor who ultimately makes his picks and then nominates those to the Federal Department of Commerce. So the opportunity zones were essentially created to help boost economic development investment in economically distressed census tracts. So the three that we were submitted, one we were able to work with in partnership with the city of Raleigh to submit a joint tract in there. And then we've submitted those tracts, met that deadline, and we are in a kind of wait and see mode where the governor will announce in december is what we're told of when of what the sites of the census tracts that made the cut so they'll announce those i feel very fortunate that we were able to submit the three that we were knowing that the 12 municipalities in wake county everyone you know more or less was going to submit one so the fact that we were able to get three in there and then partner with the city of raleigh on one Um, so, and then you can see they're wrapping up for our business retention and recruitment numbers there for the RFIs that we received mayor. Mr. Vance. I know you'll remember that awake counting partners this morning mentioned a little bit less numbers as compared to last year at this time. So, and I've. can testify that the RFIs are a little bit lower than previous years. So you can see there that the last quarter received 30, the result in about 8,000 jobs and roughly over 4.4 billion in investment. So happy to answer any questions you may have.

Questions?

Yes. From your perspective, what can we do to turn those RFPs into actual jobs here in Garner?

So that, yeah, that's a good question and kind of a complicated answer because that really is, the RFPs, those are companies that are either working with a site selection consultant or reaching out directly to our partners at the state. So those kind of trickle down based on their need. So that's directly tied into their need, looking for new sites. So they bundle up those. And then we receive those from the state down to the county. And then we look at them to see if they're a good fit for us or if we have the space. That's why the much-needed 1.2 million square feet of industrial use coming online is very important because now with those buildings coming online, I'll be able to apply for or submit for more RFIs than if we don't have any available product.

As I said, RFPs, I meant to say RFIs.

Yes, sir, RFPs, RFIs, yeah, kind of interchangeable in there, but yes, sir.

No problem. Okay, thank you.

No questions, some comments later.

Okay, Mr. Townsend, questions, comments?

Yes, I was happy to be at the Bojangles ribbon cutting, so definitely excited about that. I actually visit there almost every day, so that's one thing. I'm also excited to see that we're looking at the opportunity zones as well, too. It's good to see us being proactive in that regard. and how we're trying to leverage federal incentives to get more investment in our community. So it's definitely exciting to see.

Thank you. Mr. Singleton, questions, comments?

No questions. Mr. Matthews? Just two things. The opportunity zones of the three, do we already have water, sewer at those proposed locations?

Intermittent in all of them. So I have the map here of the three that we submitted. There we go. You can see census tract, my readers on here, but basically right along Wilmington Road. And then to north of that, the second one is south there. So, you know, consider kind of the 401-70 split right there. And then the third one down here along 70. Okay.

Do you have any numbers on our response to them? How much are we getting out of them? What's our feedback? So people sent in, we received them and we sent something back. Are we getting any feedback on numbers? Yes, sir.

So that's one of the areas. Yes, sir. And I can get that data to you on the ones that we've submitted. And I know the ones that are kind of still alive and they're kind of a little bit longer in the process, but happy to provide that data. And I also failed to mention that I'll be sure to send out the presentation that we provided at the impact conference TO YOU TOMORROW SO THAT YOU HAVE THAT INFORMATION ON HAND. YEAH, BUT KIND OF GOING BACK TO THE RFIS, SO WE, YOU KNOW, WHEN THEY COME IN, OBVIOUSLY, YOU KNOW, YOU'RE LOOKING AT WHAT THE REQUIREMENT IS, THE JOBS, AND THE SPACE. now with having a lot of the space coming online i'll be able to submit more frequently for those so but the ones i have been able to submit for i'm keeping track of with our partners at wake county and they're keeping me updated on you know i had one that i submitted a couple weeks ago that they were expecting a preliminary decision earlier and we were just told that that was delayed so i'm keeping track of those and happy to report on those

Yeah, on these reports, if you could 30 slash, then how many we responded to this, and we've got six pending or what have you. It'd be nice to see that data.

Absolutely, yeah. We'll modify our information going forward just so you can see kind of the ones that were sent out, the ones that we were able to respond to. And I keep that level of detail, obviously, you know, the site that we submitted, and then keep the timeline in there. So happy to include that.

Well, while we're still on economic development, I'd like to expand a little bit on the impact conference that we went to this morning. It's the annual event put on by the Garner Chamber. It recognizes some individuals who have made a big impact during the past year. They also have several economic development speakers, including somebody from Wake County Economic Development. And probably the most interesting at all was Eddie Williford with Gregory Pool Equipment Company. And I called him aside before he spoke. And he just wanted to give a big shout out to all of our planning and zoning people for a project. assistance they had been, and particularly he wanted to mention what a good job Nate had done in staying in touch with him and working through that. I also had several favorable comments from other community developments, development partners, and citizens about both the downtown Garner activity that they've seen and Ms. Woods' attendance down there and her attention to detail, as well as Mr. Gruber's. I believe there were a number of us there. I believe our town attorney was there this morning Mr. Stallings, Mr. Vance, Mr. Hodges. I was mostly interested in the cookies over there from Chick-fil-A, and I didn't really pay much attention to the rest of it. But it was a big event, and we were well represented, and the information that our economic development team put together was well received and widely applauded. So thank you for the good job you've done over there. Anything else on economic development?

I have one more question. I'm assuming the census tract that we're partnering with Raleigh, the city of Raleigh on for Opportunity Zones is 528.02, correct? Yes, sir. Okay, thank you.

Nate, I'm sorry. Mayor Gupton also, I think Ms. April Wood, did you mention her name being a part of the group there? April Wood as well, she was a part of the impact.

staff that was there as well overall i'm just mentioning that okay did you did you have a question comment yeah two things um one on what one of the things that has come up in conversation again with some of the nominations committee interviews that mr vance and i've done is people's appreciation for all the events we do in garner and i think what we're learning is that as another superpower we have is all the events we hold so people don't have to go to Raleigh or do those other things. They can have smaller events, but just as meaningful and kid-friendly and stuff like that. So I think that's another area where we need to continue to lean in. We already do great events, but I think we have a lot of feedback, but there's a lot of appreciation for those events, and they want more of them. The question on the census track, I have a question too. I don't have a lot of census tract vocabulary or familiarity. So the gray, the hatched area that crosses 70, that is part of 528.02 or 541.52?

545.02. So I was going to help Mr. Groover since he admitted he did not have his readers on tonight, and so I'd hated to correct him, but I was going to go back to Mr. Solling's question. The census tract that we partnered with Raleigh on is 545-02, and it goes down to Highway 70. It's very difficult to show on these. And so the dark black line right under the census tract number is the Raleigh border. The census tract border in this case happens to be Highway 70, and then it follows the lighter hashed. And that board, we purposely started with that one and did it jointly with Raleigh because it includes some of the properties that council members have asked about recently. And I gave a little spoiler alert in my email to you last week that Nate would be talking more about it. That does include the properties along Highway 70 down to Yergin Road. So if you see that sort of perpendicular border to that census tract, that is Yergin Road. So if that gives you some perspective. The census tract that is within the 7401 split is a singular tract outlined. And it is not a lot of opportunity because it is largely Greenbrier and Pine Winds and a couple of other things. But because it was contiguous to the other, we felt like it was important to include it. Another thought is if there's ever a day in which we all can't imagine Lowe's Home Improvement not being there, but Lowe's Home Improvement has been in another building in Garner before, that opportunity zone would open up the entirety of that shopping center for redevelopment. So that was one of the primary reasons for including that.

And before, one of the census tracts was the area above 70. Did all the development on Jones Sausage Road knock that out? Or do we know what the criteria specifically was for this round of?

I think we are just given a map of eligible census tracts. Okay. And the only three that were eligible in Garner, Mr. Gruber has submitted for. So one split with Raleigh and two others. So it's HUD's definition of, Okay. Of the census tracts, and they're very similar to the census tracts that are used when we're talking about LIHTC housing. They don't exactly overlap, but they have similar characteristics.

Okay. Interesting. Yes.

I have another question. Just for clarification, you said 545.02, and does that include 528.02, or is it just 545?

So two separate there, but yeah, to Mr. Hodge's clarification, and thank you for that. So the one that we collaborated with Raleigh on is the 545.02 separate from the 528.02.

Okay. So we're submitting three on behalf of the town of Garner and partnering with Raleigh on one.

Two separate, one with Raleigh. Okay. Thank you. Good.

All right. The final report this evening is your August talk of the town. Mr. Hodges, anything you'd like to highlight?

apologies my talk with the town is not in front of me as it's supposed to we do have a number of announcements that are in your talk of the town we also have our monthly statistics from Garner info so if there's any particular questions you have about those we'll be happy to answer those the only thing I want to bring just highlight in terms of the talk of the town is that the Garner Police Department will be hosting their barbershop

wrap sessions again and so information has been included in your talk of the town and we'll send information out to the community about this as well very successful and well attended as well as the coffee with a cop sessions as well so both both of those will be being hosted here next week So the only other report this evening, Council, I have for you was I had the privilege this morning of attending the Commission on Fire Accreditation International hearing with our fire department, with Chief Penny, Deputy Chief Hathcock, and members of his team to essentially have a series of questions asked of us in terms of the reaccreditation process with the fire department. had an opportunity to hear from the commission itself. Overall, the presentation and hearing went extremely well. The commissioners commented being very impressed on how well the department was able to do the reaccreditation work at the same time, transitioning into a municipal department with the town of Garner. We're highly complimentary of our leadership team and the process we engaged with a peer team in terms of the overall review and assessment. We were approved unanimously today for reaccreditation. Very excited and proud of our team to share that with you. We'll be asking the fire department to come to a future meeting for a more formal recognition of this accomplishment, but wanted to share with you that we were able to attend that hearing actually this morning in Chicago, and we were unanimously approved for reaccreditation, so very exciting. Those are all the reports I have for you this evening. Happy to answer any additional questions Council may have.

Any other questions? Okay. Well, hats off to the fire department. I mean, not only were they merging with the town for the last year, but they were going through the 5 year reassignment re, accreditation program that they really did a super job. We break on them all the time.

It's quite the achievement. It's quite the achievement.

It really is. Thank you for your participation in that. That brings us to council reports, and I'll go ahead and jump in. I have one I just have to mention. This was the 80th anniversary of the Indian Independence Day, 79 years since they gained their independence from Great Britain. That's interesting enough, but they had the very first observation that day in Garner. uh shiny stars a local non-profit organization uh put it together invited a number of us who attended and boy you talk about a bunch of food music entertainment flag hoisting flower unveiling it was just a spectacular event uh something new to us and i believe we have diwali in the works coming up for october early november so uh We really appreciate our new residents and the culture and the color that they bring. It's very, very interesting for all of us who were there.

And I think they're interested in having a big, you know, waiting list for having a big outdoor event. As you said, this is our newest kind of population and they're really interested in what's going on. And you're right, it was a lot of fun. I think we had more pictures taken than anybody with the federal government.

They think local officials are big deals, don't they? I'm telling you. But I didn't tell them otherwise. Well, while we're on reports here, council reports, anything else, Mr. Matthews?

Let's see. There was a school thing I only yielded out to Gray, since that's his big deal, the bash.

And, but...

any updates on those wonderful deer signs on buffalo road there mr hodges um you're asking me uh i i'm looking at miss harrison she does i do not believe she's got a definitive answer back on those so we'll check in and follow up on those

Okay, council reports Mr singleton.

Yes, mayor Matthews mentioned a couple of weeks ago. We had the back to school bash and since our information, 1447 backpacks, the school supplies were handed out this time. They stretched it out over 2 days, which I think really people really liked. We're about parking or to worry about the mass in the hall and the mass in the rooms because there's so many people there. Police. The fire were there. Communications were there. It was greatly appreciated to have our town people out there at the event. Mr. Matthews and his son-in-law and his daughter, they worked hard. I helped them hand out food. The food bank this year, not the food bank, I'm sorry, Interfaith Food Network, Food Bank was unable to provide food this year because of the loss of grants, but the Interfaith Food Shuttle brought several pallets of fruit and potatoes and bags were created and handed out. Local businesses handed out bags and people were able to take those home with them and were greatly appreciated. You know, you say 1,447 bags were handed out, but that's about twice that many people. if not more, because sometimes there were family with multiple kids, you had parents that were there, but it was warm, but really good work, and then just seeing what the community reaches out. Well, over 200 volunteers put in countless hours for about two weeks leading up to that, so I appreciate everyone's support. I want to thank staff for y'all got this in the email last week responding to the boarded up houses I turned up in May. We have three boarded up houses in North Garner and we have a house that is overgrown. That's dangerous and I appreciate inspections following up and staff following up on that. Also, I appreciate the information. Following up with the Highway 70 business property issues, we talked about the former Ragazzi's, the former Golden Corral, former hotel site, and the other restaurant site whose name escapes me all of a sudden. They explained, yes, they explained why the boarded up windows were up at Ragazzi's. But again, we, you know, about 25 years ago, we changed policy here and because of the issues they create having things boarded up the blight it uh it appears to be and so i appreciate them working on that issue so they're going to be doing some renovation there so at least something's happening there but i appreciate you getting back with being following up on those issues that's all for now

Yeah, thank you. It takes a lot of eyes to identify these issues and bring them up. We think a million people a day see them, but it takes one person to raise their hand and say, what's going on with it? So thank you very much for bringing these to our attention. I keep encouraging all of our residents to use that Garner Info app. It's a quick way to report any kind of challenge, any violations of codes, a dead deer in the road, a stop sign is down. This is a good way to get that reported. Keep encouraging that use. Mr. Stallings.

um yes so um for my report um the town manager brought it up um but i definitely want to thank chief adams and his team for doing the barbershop rap sessions um we've done two so far i was at the first one that we did at heavenly cuts i'm glad to see that we're going back to do another one um i talked to i'm mad i missed the one a week ago um at diamond cuts but i talked to the owner and it According to him, it went extremely well. I was at the Heavenly Cups one, and one thing that was strikingly interesting to me was, because we sat and we talked for about an hour and 15 minutes at the Heavenly Cups one, was the amount of young folks that were in there. that we're having conversations with our law enforcement officers about the importance of building a relationship with the people who serve us. And if you're building those relationships that you that you normally don't see situations escalate beyond the level of what is common decency and respect. So just having those conversations, I think, is important and just Being out in the community and open ourselves up and being able to answer the tough questions, even myself as a council member. So if any of my fellow council members are available to go to that, I definitely encourage it because I think it's important for them to see us as well as seeing our law enforcement officers out in the community having those conversations. And that's that's all.

Thank you. Mr. Dell.

Yeah, just a comment sort of around economic development since I didn't get the opportunity while we're talking about it. And really just making sure that we're being holistic in how we're talking about economic development, but also that that holistic perspective comes down into tangible land use decisions that we have to make. Because ultimately economic development comes down to land use decisions. And having sat in this seat since 2019, I think we're in a different position where our opportunities are now visibly finite. but they're transformational if we can seize them. And that means we have to make sure that we are taking care and doing substantive analysis of opportunities when they come before us, not just with new development, but also redevelopment opportunities that are also gonna come before us along our heavier traveled quarters. This all loops back into, no pun intended, that Blue Ridge loophole. because it is going to take a chunk out of our budget. We don't know how big that chunk is going to be, particularly vulnerable to it because of our rents here in Garner. We're also vulnerable to the kind of flattening of the market over the next two and four years of property re-evaluations. So all this ties into evaluating our opportunities for the short term but also the long term. The reality is some of the decisions we made had an odd consequence of making us more vulnerable to the Blue Ridge loophole by approving lower value projects. So there's a catch-22 in some of the decisions we've made. I think the other thing, too, is we need to strongly communicate that we are, as I was probably communicating at the impact conference, we are open for business in Garner. But not all businesses are created equal, and not all are gonna contribute to the character and the community and the finances of the town. So we need to be fair to our residents when we evaluate these opportunities that we're taking the long view in our deliberations. Also looking at some other analysis, we have the most number of industrial parcels in the county. But when you start to look at the value per acre and square foot, we're on the bottom end of that. So this is where that Bojangles is actually awesome, because when you look at that Bojangles and how much net revenue that one little acre is going to generate versus 15 new town homes, that's the kind of perspective where we're bringing amenities and convenience to the community, but we're also buttressing our tax base with commercial activity and revenue. So I just want to make that point as we're having these economic development conversations that we're not just focusing on what we do well, which is flex space and industrial. Sometimes if you do something really well, it becomes a habit and you need to expand your mind sometimes on what the actual other opportunities are. So I say that again, as we move forward and having conversations over the next years, we have a missing middle of commercial in Garner. We don't have a missing middle of housing. I know Mr. Singleton loves missing middle as a phrase, but we have a missing middle of commercial. And to the extent we can mix that with our land use decisions and residential development

uh i think we'll be better off in the short term and the long term uh if we can do all those things so that's my only comment okay yes i'd like to echo mr stallings is saying that i appreciate the police department taking the time out to meet with the citizens where they are and have those important conversations and build those relationships which are really important and uh And that is, I believe, one area in which we can really make a difference in connecting with the community and establishing those relationships and let everyone know that we're all in this together. And to echo also the Mayor in reference to the recognition of the Indian Independence Day, That was a great event. It was a packed full event and one in which a tremendous amount of history was learned by myself. And just to learn the contributions of our Indian community, I would like to give them a happy belated Independence Day. Welcome. That's it.

Indeed. Indeed. So I think that brings us to our regular agenda. Do we have a closed session on the agenda today?

Yes, Mr. Mayor. I'm requesting a closed session pursuant to North Carolina General Statutes 143-318.11a1 to enter a closed session to prevent the disclosure of information that is privileged, confidential, or not a public record. and also subsection A3 to consult with the town attorney regarding litigation or settlement of a claim.

So moved. Second.

Okay, we have a motion by Mr. Singleton and a second by Mr. Stallings that we move to a closed session per our attorney's advice. All in favor of moving to a closed session, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anyone opposed by nay? Hearing that, we will move into a closed session, complete our business, and return here as soon as possible. Thank you.

and we're back in our regular session after the closed session i'll call on our attorney to give us a brief summary of what transpired thank you mr mayor the town council met with the town attorney and management staff regarding potential litigation or settlement of a claim and gave direction no official votes were taken no official votes were taken in the closed session

Okay, thank you very much. That being done, I don't see any other items on our agenda. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Motion by Mr. Matthews and second by Mr. Singleton to adjourn. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none.