Board of Aldermen - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call to order, um, the June 3rd to 2026, uh, board of Alderman meeting. Uh, and we'll start with the invocation.

Bless this town and may it remain a beautiful and friendly place to live. We pray that this board makes fair and informed decisions this morning. We also pray that our police officers, firefighters, and members of our armed services here and around the world remain safe as they risk so much for our security. We also pray that our town be spared the ravages of hurricanes and other natural disasters, and that everyone associated with the town remains safe and secure this summer season. Amen.

We'll do the Pledge of Allegiance. First, I would ask people please to silence your phone, making sure mine is silenced as well. I'd like to get a motion to approve the agenda. Make a motion. Do I hear a second?

Second.

Any discussion?

Yeah, Mr. Mayor, can we add an item C? This is at the clerk's request to add the beach wheelchair donation to the consent agenda as item C. The police department has requested the acceptance of a generous donation of a beach wheelchair, which the town generously donates for free services to people. And this one's being donated by one of our former beach ambassadors, Ms. Caroline Osillo. Okay. and we appreciate that donation, so I would like to move to have that added to the agenda.

Just real quick, if we put in the consent agenda, we're good with that? All right. So do I hear a motion to approve the agenda? Are you making a motion to approve the agenda as amended? I'm making a motion to add that to the agenda. And then do we need a second? Yes.

Second.

Any other discussion? All in favor? Aye. And thank you very much for that donation. I very much appreciate it. Larry.

Good morning, mayor and board members. I'd like to highlight a couple of things for the manager's report, some noteworthy dates. June 12th is Jacksonville's Stars, Stripes, and Sounds. It will be held at Jacksonville Commons Festival Grounds. You all have received an invitation. July 3rd through the 5th is Ocean City's Jazz Festival. Let me back up. June 24th, we've got a meeting scheduled to consider and adopt the budget for fiscal year ending 27. You'll hear this again, we may recommend deferring that meeting to the 30th due to stuff happening in the legislature, state legislature.

Yeah, Larry, you might want, we'll talk about that when you go through the budget process. What I would suggest, Board, is that we hold the 24th, but maybe through the clerk, possibly schedule another one Larry for the 30th maybe and we'll talk about why we're looking at doing that it has to do with legislation in Raleigh so maybe we hold both of those just for now but if you could just note that on your agenda and then we can talk about it later with relation to the budget all right Larry sounds great thank you and then July 7th 11 a.m. 11 o'clock we've got a workshop scheduled for

mandated two-hour ethics training that recently elected officials are to complete, and then we're going to piggyback on that workshop an overview from the North Carolina League of Municipalities, their lobbying programs and services. Some other administrative activities and some insights. Emergency operations plan. Over the course of three or four sessions, the staff have dissected the emergency management plan for the purpose of familiarizing, reorganizing, and updating the plan. A number of agreements are being validated, for example, an alternate EOC, which in the past has been the Onslaught County Library in Snease Ferry, emergency lodging, fuel resupply, and then storm debris. Also, material has been posted on our homepage to provide community awareness of the hurricane season and practical things that they can do in preparation. The plan is slated to be presented to you at your July meeting for consideration.

I'm sorry. Larry, before you leave that, sometimes we have had a public forum around hurricane preparedness. Do we have anything scheduled for the public to come in and for us to present and be able to discuss their hurricane preparedness as well as ours?

We can do that. I hadn't planned on that per se.

Okay, we have done that in the past to kind of go over with the public what they should be doing at their own homes or just their concerns around that. I'd be happy to help with that one, having been trashed in the last hurricane.

Thank you. Next, in regards to mosquito control, the staff is exploring mosquito control services through partnering with Onslow County Environmental Services. A draft MOU sets forth the relationship on an on-call, as-available basis with hourly and mileage rates for spraying and monitoring functions. The monitoring function involves using traps and landing rate counts as a basis for Identifying areas to be sprayed rather than treating and spraying areas randomly throughout our community. Uh, treating a hypothetical five to seven mile stretch of town roads is estimated at about between 700, $800. And, uh, what I'm, what I'm considering as a, as a pilot program, this service could be initiated. for the purpose of mitigating mosquito infestations in neighborhoods and to prepare festival grounds for special events such as the Ocean City Jazz Festival. I anticipate the MOU with the county initially as a pilot program, which if the services are mutually beneficial and agreeable, that we could scale the services for routine use in the future. Flood mitigation in the area of Ocean City. Last week, I responded to a representative from the Coastal Federation regarding a potential partnership that would expand flood mitigation strategies in the vicinity of Ocean City Jazz Festival grounds. Collaboration is ongoing with representatives from Coastal Federation, the Ocean City Community Council to develop a scope, project scope, project budget, and draft application. Potential sub opportunity is leveraging the town's existing flood mitigation grant as a local match within the proposed application. A material component and potential obstacle is developing a third party commitment. For example, the Coastal Federation to make a financial commitment that financially holds harmless the town for unforeseen financial contingencies that could extend above this second potential grant award. Time is of the essence. The application deadline, I understand, is June 30th. If the team is able to draft a suitable application, I intend to refer to the board for approval to submit at your June 24th meeting or the on-call meeting tentatively anticipated for June 30th. and pavement condition surveys. As you may recall, we hired a firm by the name of Pavement Navigators to complete a pavement condition survey of our streets. They have completed that survey, the assessment, and we are scheduling a presentation of that assessment results for your July meeting.

And on that, it's just the all of North Topsail Beach pavement that is not New River Inlet Road nor Island Drive, correct?

It's only our town roads. Our town roads, yes.

So when people complain about the other areas of New River Inlet Road and Island Drive.

Mark, you might want to just add, when you went to the jump on me, they told you they did a survey of our roads and said there's nothing that's going to be done.

Correct, at this time. And the next meeting is Thursday of next week, and we'll be there.

that concludes my my summary of some activities okay just real quick and then i'll ask for the comments uh we talked in the last week about having doug carter come in uh to he was going to start once we got at least a draft budget to work on can we have doug give us a presentation at the july meeting as to where we are in terms of modeling something you talked about with the grants and some other things and i think fire chief's going to talk about something today we need to understand what resources we have to do the beach project. And every time we do something, if it's a matching grant or whatever, that's funds that aren't available. So I think that it goes back to what the priorities are that we've got. One of the things that gets lost in a lot of these grants is that they are reimbursements. So you've got to put the cash out first, and I don't know about that particular one you're talking about with Coastal Federation, whether that would be something reimbursing. But I think, I don't know, I'd look to the rest of the board, but I think it would be good for us to have something from Doug at the July meeting with some options in it. And what I would suggest we do is, I've got a list of questions I wanted to ask Doug. Maybe we could agree in the next week to 10 days, send in our questions to Larry to have him run it by Doug. Because one of the things Connie and I talked about is if you remember the last time that he did the SOBs for us, he used FEMA reimbursement as collateral. So in terms of money that we might have to use or hold back in the fall, for in case there's a hurricane and something he before i think connie you correct me if i'm wrong he actually went through and said i can get these things lined up you don't have to execute them yet but we would have an idea how much money we could borrow what the terms that we're going to be so if something were to come through all we would have to do is the board would have to approve it we'd have to execute the documents and the money would be available so i think those are the kind of details that we need to get him started on Especially not knowing at this point not knowing the legislators doing or anything else I think it'd be a good thing for us to get started with him in July So if you would follow up is that okay with the rest of you all that I? Think we want to take a look at what that looks like as quickly as we can right That makes sense okay. Thanks.

I Just had a small thing with the county with the mosquito control do we know if they're using environmental friendly chemicals There are environmentally friendly ones actually places in the area that they can use it off like you were talking at all stages of the mosquitoes life cycle and these ones don't harm pollinators people's pets and or the surrounding ecosystem. I would assume they'd do that out here. Well, probably anywhere in the county, but I don't know if they're still using the harsher ones.

I thought you were going to bring up the Google thing. Did you see that where they want to release 60 million mosquitoes that are apparently all male and males don't bite or something? There's something crazy going on with mosquitoes right now. I've never seen that before.

Don't get me started on conspiracies.

I believe so, but I would defer to Chris to confirm. Okay.

Yeah, you can hit it. You want to have him answer it now? Sure. Come on up, Chris.

Good morning. Yes, to confirm, they do use environmentally friendly chemicals, and they target spray times that are nights and evenings, if they can, to prevent other flying insects from being hurt by it.

Thank you very much. Yes, ma'am. So do your people have to be certified to be able to help with the spraying, or will the county do?

That'll be a county lift, administratively and by personnel. That's a good, I'd rather not have our people doing that. Yes.

Thank you. Any other comments? All right, Alexis, do we have people who signed up to speak?

Yes, we have three sign-ups. First, I have Ms. Christine Robinson.

No, sorry, I thought we were signing in.

Oh. Thank you for coming. You're welcome.

We recognize you.

Okay. Mr. Steven Newbern? Okay. Other than that, no, sir, we have no sign-ups.

Let's move into public presentations. Is Fran available? The freeway is here. Yes.

Hey. Hello. I will give you the, I'm Fran Way. I'm a coastal engineer. I've been working with the town for about 10 years now. And I'll just give you a quick update of the coastal projects. And then we will get into, let me share my screen. And we'll just get into some of the newer developments. A lot of these projects, you know, we don't do a lot of coastal engineering in the summertime during the peak tourist season and turtle nesting and hatching season, but we do have planting going on. And then obviously we do have, you know, permitting and planning going on. Here's just a quick update of the five phases of reaches of beach from New River Inlet phase one down to Surf City phase five. You can see that the town, you know, we're putting the town is planning, you know, nourishment projects up and down the shoreline. And then the Corps also has their own little projects up here. And then where we'll talk about North North New River Inlet here and right now.

Hey, before you leave that, Fran, before you leave, you can leave it. You can leave the second slide up. Just this. I've had a lot of people reach out to me on this. As far as I know, since I would say basically since I've been here, putting aside the phase five stuff that was done in what, 14 or 15. Every project that the town has done so far has been a third-party funded project, either FEMA or grants by the state. Is that correct?

Yes, it is.

Because there seems to be confusion that the town has spent money in different areas. And my recollection is that's not the case. So go to your next slide real quick.

Sure.

And then one of the things I asked him to do in this slide is the sand that comes up in the north has not been included in the project stuff. Again, it's not our project. It's an Army Corps project. And we know in 2026, 27, there's going to be another dredging project, but we still don't know the volume yet, right? So what is that, 260? That's over 300,000 cubic yards. I know it's not the best sand, but again, As far as I know, no town money, obviously, if you had to front the money, get reimbursed. But basically, everything that we've done has been either a reimbursement project or a flat-out grant. Is that correct?

That is correct. And then, so then, obviously, it's variable as well. You can see here that this is the 2023 where they put 160,000, 163,000 cubic yards. They built a beach out, and they got about halfway through – the Topsail Reef condos. So this is in front of the Topsail Reef condos. It was, it's, you know, very easy. The town, obviously, the more material they can put, the better. Last time they did it, it was only 77,000 and they didn't even get to the Topsail Reef condos. It's beneficial and it's in the system and it helps. But, and we do continue to remind the core, the navigation district that We do want them to maximize the material. And now they can use shallow draft, state shallow draft inlet funds as well. They've got a memorandum of understanding with them. So they are well-funded now. There was a while, 10, 15 years ago, where the core navigation district for AIWW-related, inlet-related, they weren't spending any money at all. Now they do have... They can get this material, and we'll just continue to get them to maximize it. And that builds on the next project here. On May 20th, myself and Larry met with the Marine Corps, Camp Lejeune. We met with three folks from the Marine Corps. We met at town hall. We met with three folks from the Marine Corps and one from the county. And this is related to last month. I talked about the military installation readiness review, the MIR and some of the county was working with the Marine Corps on that. Well, the Marine Corps now, when we met, when Larry and I met on May 20, just, you know, a couple of weeks ago, they They've kind of changed their operations here a little bit, and now they're getting some larger ships that are going to use Camp Lejeune up here. They're going to use Camp Lejeune. There's Mile Hammock Bay up here, and then there's even some docks on the Intercoastal Waterway and even on New River Estuary. They want this to be 12 plus 2. Basically, they want the New River Inlet to be deeper, wider, and more navigable. And so they talked with the town because obviously our environmental impact statement that we're doing now involves the terminal groin, but it also involves dredging. And what we're proposing is 500 foot wide, 18 plus two, so very deep and more than enough that would aid them for navigation. So they're very eager to kind of work with the town. And obviously the Marine Corps and the Army Corps are very close and they speak a lot. And obviously the town talks with the Marine Corps and the Army Corps. I think our next step, and this is for the board to talk about, is like somehow the Marine Corps, the Army Corps, and the town, we all have to kind of get together and work on this. And I do think this will help with the town's efforts because the new river, the terminal growing project and the channel dredging, will help out the Marine Corps' purpose. And then another item here is that Cedar Bush Cut, this area that's always kind of, it's always shoaling right here. This is in Cedar Bush Cut. It's not a whole lot of material. It doesn't really make sense for the town. And it is beach compatible. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for the town to mobilize something for that, for about 50,000 cubic yards of material. But now the Marine Corps, to get up here with those ships, The Marine Corps does need this area cleared, and the Marine Corps needs more of this area cleared back here as well. They always need that 12 plus 2. And as Chris Gibson and I were talking earlier, the shallow draft inlets, they're dredged to 150 feet wide and 12 feet deep plus 2 feet of over depth, and that's a 12 plus 2. But they only last that for about a month on these inlets because they're so dynamic. So if they want a consistent 12 plus 2, they are gonna need a deeper and wider channel like the town is proposing for the terminal growing project. So it really does seem to meet well. And then if the Marine Corps and the town can work together with the county, it really does seem like this can be a win-win. And so, Mayor, do you wanna say anything else?

I was just like, go ahead, Cap, and now I had a couple of things.

Yeah, Fran,

Given some events that have occurred up on the north end here, what is the possibility or likelihood of moving that dredge farther off of the shores of the north end? Obviously, the deepest is right there. But obviously, many constituents, and as we're all unfortunately aware of the tragedies that are occurring up there, is there any way we could encourage them to shift that blue line right there a little farther to the northeast just to give a little bit of beach to the people that are visiting in the north end?

Yes, I do think that that is an option here. Because you can even see where... The inlet is trying, it seems like it's going this way, but it's also kind of going this way. And so I do think that is an option. And obviously, you know, historically, it was more, you know, even the creek has migrated south towards, you know, North Topsail Beach shoreline. And it has been like this, you are correct, it has been like this for a while, where the deepest part of the creek has been, you know, trained up right against the shoreline. And it is not ideal. You're correct. So that is something we can talk about.

And to keep the point, I was going to bring up the same topic is, you know, we're talking about deeper, wider, uh, possibly faster currents and everything else. You know, it's, it's, uh, one of those deals, just like the shifting saying, we're going to have to, as a town either put, I mean, we've got signage up there galore, but we didn't need to make a Memorial up there, get the point across. or change the verbiage that is not a beach access. It is a river access to get people to understand it. It is not ankle knee deep waist deep. It is ankle deep knee deep. It's over your head and takes you out. So that's something we're going to have to work on.

But also keep in mind, we worked with the county on this and by law, we're not allowed to keep people from going into the beach and stuff. And so it becomes, you know, because we talked about all the signs are in Spanish, but all the other things are on there. I think that's something we'll be looking at an actual I can talk about it now We're having discussions with the county about doing some stuff We talked about and I talked to a couple of them Monday at the Commission meeting. We're gonna put some proposals together And I would look for the fire chief. We're not we're not there yet Be honest with everybody given the budget things that are going on right now We decided we would take a look at this thing and figure out what the priorities are and I told them within the next month we'll be going to them with a couple of options and But obviously, normally the focus is going to be on the north end to figure out what we can do there. But I think the key is, if you've been up there, no matter what we do, when you get close to there, it's not the flat beach that we have in the rest of the town. It's a straight shot down. And Every day when I walk on the beach, I was there yesterday and the day before when that happened, people are swimming in water that they should not be swimming in. And there's nothing we can do. I mean, I tell them to get their kids out of there, and they do. But, I mean, that's the reality. It is something we need to take a look at to figure out what kind of signage we can do. um and i would look to the fire chief you know work with the police chief and stuff particularly as we work with the county because i know they've committed to work with us to make to do some stuff on the beach so go ahead thank you thank you by the way just one quick one what i like about this more than anything else is when we talk about remember we had that that hiccup for a while we thought they were going to start over with the permitting process we talked about the last meeting If this becomes an issue of national security, there's a lot of barriers that are going to go down pretty quickly. If our groin becomes national security and we can get the Marine Corps involved with us, I would feel a lot better about pushing this through much more quickly than otherwise.

And just to reiterate, somebody was showing the intercoastal waterway with a large barge with two ospreys on it that were going up the intercoastal recently, so they're definitely going to need something.

They want to go to 100-foot ships is what they're talking about, and that's completely different than what's out there now. Go ahead, Fred.

Yeah, and then just to talk, and I talked with the mayor, talked to Chris Gibson a little bit, A lot of this material is beach compatible. Here's Cedar Bush Cut. This is usually beach compatible. This should go, you know, on to hopefully North Topsail Beach, possibly Onslow Beach, but I would say this is probably worth priority. And then obviously this is all beach compatible. Back in here, there is some beach compatible, obviously. That's where the Corps does their navigation dredging and the channels to Jacksonville. But some of it isn't. So they do need a disposal area for that. So that The DA emptying disposal area 143 would allow, you know, has more disposal capacity for the non-beach compatible material. So that could also help out the DA 143 effort. We can go through, these are just the phase five projects and the phase four. These are kind of just the older projects, just they are holding up well, they're doing well. The disposal area 143, beneficial use. Chris Gibson will talk more in detail about this later. And so I'll just leave that up to him. For the plant springing, it's about two-thirds finished for the PTC8 mitigation, the dune from basically right around as soon as you get onto the island up to the Topsail Reef. Well, basically about the St. Regis. The St. Regis north of there, There's a little bit of scarping. We're not terribly confident that the dune sprigging will have a chance to really get root very well. But we are trying to get as close as up there as far as possible. And since it is hand planting, they can kind of get a little more creative with the planting. We don't need those machines and then but you know they are two-thirds of the way finished and then they'll you know they're doing some watering and there's some some fertilizing and we do have you know even the material that we put right around marine away over a year ago that dune is still there now so that's over a year so you know we do think that that this this these plants will have a chance for most of the shoreline these dune plants will have a good chance to kind of root and really kind of get nice and mature.

The failure rate, maybe Chris knows, is it 20% that they, 20% failure rate or something on the plantings? That's okay.

And then this is just, go ahead.

I'm sorry, we guarantee that there will be an 80% success rate. If it's less than 80%, we'll come back and replant.

And then when is the Vitex? And a lot of times when they're doing their Vitex inspections, they can also kind of, you know, look at, you know, Dune Health, CO Health and that sort of thing. So, you know, it's not just, you know, once a year or so they're going out there. They are looking at this, you know, they're keeping an eye on it. With the PTC-8, there is still technically 12,000 cubic yards material that we did not put out there that is FEMA reimbursable. We're just kind of seeing kind of what this hurricane season brings, and then maybe we can get a very, and that should only be a two-week project if we need something to do something here coming up this fall. And then, you know, there are, you know, there's CAMA permit restrictions, and then obviously there's funding. When we do get this, the mayor mentioned there is funding, you know, When we're getting state funding, it's, you know, usually, you know, public beach benefits. And that's kind of how we get this grant funding. It's always like public beach. So, you know, a lot of times we can't really help out individual homeowners or private efforts because, you know, a lot of this grant money is really just public beach oriented. So, you know, private dune walkovers and private dune work, we can't help with that. Uh, and then just back to this, and this is the, the inlet hazard area stuff. Uh, we're still early on in the process. Uh, you know, it is a more area of the, the phase one will be in, uh, jurisdiction of the inlet hazard area. It's generally not great to have that, but, and then other communities are fighting against it. We're still early in the process and the town really doesn't have to make any decisions now. but we'll just keep following this. And then for the New River Inland Management, just to summarize, the meeting, there was a meeting in April with Dial Cordy and the Corps, and then we have some more. And then we had that really good meeting with the Marine Corps in May, Larry and I at the town, on New River Inland and Cedar Bush Cut. And so in terms of, you know, and now I see the the town, everything, you know, in terms of like Freedom of Information Act and having things publicly available, the Marine Corps and the Army Corps sometimes have potentially confidential materials that they kind of pass back and forth. And so we do have to work with maybe the attorney and the town because, you know, we are probably going to have when we're, if we are start coordinating with the Marine Corps and the Army Corps, We probably will have to have, you know, some potentially confidential kind of coordination. And, you know, that happens right now with the EIS where the Corps is, the Marine Corps, sorry, the Army Corps. We got all these Corps. The Army Corps, you know, and the town have some of that right now. But that is something, you know, that we will have to discuss, the board and the town attorney. And then, you know, disposal area 143, we'll get with Chris Gibson will give us the update on that. And we'll just continue with permitting coordination and try to finish up that planting here this month. And that is the update.

Any other questions? All right. We're going to move into the public hearing.

Thanks, Fran.

Thanks, Fran. Just as a preamble, just to lay a little bit of foundation for what we have a statutory obligation. Alexis, you can tell me if I'm wrong to have a public hearing on. the proposed budget. There's a lot of things going on in Raleigh right now. Legislation, two different pieces of legislation. One has already passed, which is the referendum going out to have people vote as to whether the state, the legislature can do certain things, which they already have the power to do. That has passed. There's a Senate bill that would freeze the valuations at last year. which is the property tax evaluations. And so the purpose of this meeting today is just to have the public hearing, get feedback. It's not a work session. What you see and what's been available to the public since May 22nd, okay, is what we call the town manager's budget, which by law he'll go into in a little bit, which he had to publish. It is a consensus budget of the board. It is a revenue-neutral budget by the board. In the past, we probably would have passed the budget today, but since we have no idea what's going to happen in Raleigh by the end of this month, and you heard Larry and I talk about this before, about having one or two subsequent meetings this month, He'll walk you through why that is in terms of the revaluations. But by law right now, we can only use the revaluation that occurred as of January 1st of this year in terms of setting the tax rates. And then once we set the tax rates, and he'll go into it, those will be the tax rates for the year. This is not unique to us. All the other towns are struggling with this, trying to figure out what's going to happen. But again, we've had numerous work sessions on this. We've got a consensus budget that was put together. So the point of today is not a work session. It's to get feedback from the public. They have the public hearing, which we'll start with. And again, there'll be at least one, if not two more meetings that will be discussing the budget. The 24th is currently scheduled and tentatively we're looking at June 30th. Um, so is there anything else I need to ask? Add Larry before we open the public hearing. All right. Can I have a motion to open the public hearing? I make the motion to open public hearing on the budget. Do I hear a second?

Second.

All in favor. Aye. All right. Public hearing is open. We'll turn it over to Larry.

Thank you. Thank you, mayor, uh, mayor and board of Alderman. The preparation of the annual budget is one of the major responsibilities conferred. by general statute upon the managers in North Carolina. The staff has prepared financial documents for your consideration, and the mayor is just going to give you a brief overview of that effort. And we're prepared to summarize that budget material for this public hearing. Slide, please. Uh, the proposed talking points to, uh, formally introduce the budget, uh, to you and to the public, uh, are highlighted, uh, on the screen. Uh, this is a shared presentation and it'll involve myself, Wayne and Lexi. Uh, these are the topics that we'll discuss based on the budget process. uh... mayor alluded to uh... reevaluation and some legislative activity in in the state legislature the principles and priorities that we used to uh... to build a budget uh... but uh... summary of the actual budget schedule of fees classifications in a high-level uh... overview of the budget ordinance slide please uh... reprint small need new classes uh... It's fair to say that I grabbed a hold of a fast-moving train on or about March 30th, also known as your budget process. This slide summarizes the process, which included the following material steps. There was, if you will, a needs assessment from the department heads. The, uh, the team sorted and filtered those needs. Uh, and then, uh, subsequently the finance director and myself assembled a draft budget, many draft budgets. I would say many draft budgets that were, uh, discussed, reviewed, presented. uh, informally to the board of Alderman through multiple workshops. Uh, Wayne and I integrated the board's consensus input and guidance to, uh, uh, array, uh, resources, uh, and expenditure allocations. Um, and that was used to prepare, transmit a, what we call the manager's budget. Uh, along with a budget message that describes, uh, major initiatives, et cetera. Um, and, uh, advertised the public hearing that we're at today. Um, and also made that information available to the public. As the mayor alluded to the subsequent to the public hearing today. The final action is the board's adoption of the budget and tax rate, which must happen prior to 1159 p.m. June 30th. Or the world will end as we know it in North Hopsville Beach. In the right margin box is highlighted the statutory requirements, and it's just basically... Safe to say that what we've done is tried to organize meetings and dates of those meetings to meet the statutory deadlines that are prescribed at general statute in terms of public hearing, a date to adopt the budget, there's so much time that needs to elapse, and then the big date is June 30th, the adoption of a budget. So that's merely a summary of those key moments. This is an illustration of the mathematical steps needed to calculate the revenue to tax rate pursuant to the North Carolina General Statute 159-11E. I'm basically just summarizing this. Step one involves the current ad valorem revenue times multiplied by a growth factor. The second step is the adjusted Tax revenue amount is divided by the reevaluation amount to identify the revenue neutral tax rate. Third step, doesn't apply in North Topsail Beach. There were no annexations or de-annexations, thus there are no adjusting events. The revenue neutral tax rate is currently calculated at 32.82 cents per $100 of value. The 2026 reevaluation for North Topsail Beach is subject to change due to the appeal process of and by individual property owners that are ongoing. As the board members may recall, we've had several revisions, although minor, in the declared reevaluation amount. We expect a final update mid-June. from the Onslaught County Tax Office.

Just before you leave that, just to remind people, you can appeal your valuation, okay? And that's what he's talking about. People are already appealing those type of things, so you have the right to appeal that. That's why this will get adjusted one way or the other. Probably not up, but it will probably get adjusted down as the normal. Is that correct, Larry? Yes, yes.

In the revenue neutral tax rate, as Mayor was alluding to, we expect will change for intensive purposes for the public, probably unnoticeable. We would expect in the tens, hundreds of a cent, so somewhat immaterial from an aggregate revenue estimation perspective. A mitigating factor complicating the ad valorem revenue estimation for the next fiscal year is the legislative activity in the North Carolina House and Senate, which involves primarily two bills, or were two bills. Senate Bill 889, which we refer to as the moratorium bill, and House Bill 1089, constitutional amendment. House Bill 1089 has been adopted. The mayor alluded to this, and it puts forth a constitutional amendment that could impose property tax levy limits. It was adopted May 20th. It will be a statewide ballot initiative in November. If it passes, the state legislature would be able to determine how to calculate the levy limit at the local level and any exceptions to that limit. Senate Bill 889 is more technically known as the property tax reappraisal moratorium. Its purpose is to pause the use of the 2026 property valuations in Onslow County and 11 other counties for one year. As of June 2nd, yesterday, it's paused or being held in house committee for rules. It's unclear whether it'll move, get traction, So as a consequence of this latter bill, Senate Bill 889, I've offered two tax rates that correlate to the two different property values, basically the current value or the 2025 valuation, and alternately the 2026 reappraised value. On this slide, it tried to perhaps painfully illustrate what those amounts and rates mean. I apologize for the busy business of the slide. I'll try to orient you to the data. Looking to the left, the second column is the current fiscal year. Tax rate, value, and revenue. Note in very fine print at the bottom of that slide the 96% collection rate. The significance of the collection rate is we are limited by the previous year's collection rate for estimating next year's revenues, ad valorem revenues. Past years, the staff used 96%. That was not our collection rate. The staff used 96%. I've used 98% for the next fiscal year's budget for those associated revenues. Our collection rate from last year was 98% and change. I don't recall the actual amount, but close to 99%. So going back up to the table, the third column proposes a tax rate based on the 2025 property values, which are the values that were used to estimate Avalorum revenues for the current fiscal year. The fourth column proposes a tax rate based on the 2026 reappraised or new values. And the fifth column illustrates the revenue neutral tax rate and and so forth. Column 3 through 5 illustrate the revenue neutrality, if you will, although the revenues do differ slightly. Why do they differ slightly? The collection rate, 98% versus 100%. 100% is shown or reflected in the far right column, 98% in the two center columns. And then also recognizing the growth factor of 3.12%. which is represented in the fourth and fifth column. Again, the revenue neutral rate is, let's see, we're saying on this slide, 3269.

You might want to explain that. What he's talking about is that putting aside the reval, there has been a slight increase in property values in the town from new builds and other things. And that's what the 3% is based upon what's happened in the previous couple of years, correct? So that's built into, that's why it looks like, well, why did the property values go up? Because a new house got built, because something came into the tax base.

Yes, that's affirmative. Any other questions or points before I move on? slide the preparation of the budget we use the following principles and priorities uh... principles are and we used uh... realistic revenue expenditure estimates to uh... to match reoccurring revenues with expenses expenditures we tried to balance citizens interests for public safety uh... with employee well-being and thirdly building and preserving a fund balance priorities We sought to maximize resources for beach nourishment initiatives, secondly, to remain fiscally sound, third, to continue to provide enhanced public safety, fourth, to have a high level of preparedness to respond and recover from emergencies, support and balance demands for residential development with conservation of the island's ecosystem, and to provide a high level of services

for our community i'll now i'd like to now refer to wayne for the next six slides or so that summarizes the budget so i don't want to stand in front of everybody so i want to be near the microphone but i'll try and step back for you all a little bit this is kind of the uh breakdown of the different uh general funds and at the Revenue collections and the different categories of revenues that we bring in it kind of reads down and then left to right Fund 10 is our general operating fund and these are the different sources of revenue that we get the taxes Some local option sales tax. These are other governmental revenue sources that we have than some of our services and permitting interests and some other revenues. So for the general fund for 10, your total comes down to projected revenue collections of about 9.7 million. Capital improvement funds, it's kind of, A little bit self-explanatory, those are major capital projects that the town may be doing. Usually fall into that category, larger purchases, things like fire trucks, building a fire station, things like that. Then these are the revenues that come in in those categories. This is where we get that from. This again is part of the tax collections that Larry has been talking about. And then there's also some revenues that we get from the county. Your total for your capital improvement projected budget is about 1.6 million. Then our fund 30 is what we call our shoreline protection. This is where a lot of our beach improvement and those type of projects, that's where these funds reside. Again, these are the different categories that the funding comes from. Aside from taxes, we have a couple other programs that bring in revenues. It's the paid parking. The sea oats planting program, that looks like a repeat there. Then we get some interest on money and we have had a commitment from the county for an additional 150,000 to help. So our capital fund for shoreline protection comes to about 6.1.

Before you leave that real quick, we've changed, I believe, we've changed the amount of property taxes moving into the shoreline protection fund to make sure that we had, out of like operating revenue, to make sure that there's money in the shoreline protection fund to be able to do our projects, correct? Yes. More pennies have moved from property taxes into shoreline to reflect the board's priority that we do the beach projects. Because that's, when you look at this, it's, It doesn't jump out at you, but I think we've done that as a focus on the priority being the beach project.

We have, and I don't know if Larry wants to address it, but I know we have a backup slide, I think, that had the changes in the revenues, or we can address it later.

to this board is public safety and everything else aside is getting the beach project done and making sure that we've got the money put in there. And so we've got one more $1.8 million payment in November, and then we are debt-free on the beach projects.

Yep. Slide, please, Ricky. Okay, so that first slide was the different funds and the revenue sources. This is those same funds, again, reading down and then kind of left to right. These are the expenses that hit those funds. The Fund 10 that we call our general fund, it pretty much is your departmental operations. So you can see kind of at a high level The different departments within the town and the associated budgets that go along with those. And again, it will match your revenues to expenses will match. So our expenses will come in at about 9.7 to match what the anticipated revenues are. Again, capital improvement. Some of the major things that are going on right now is fire station, getting that finished up. There is payment on fire truck through a grant that we have with the Joe EMC. So the expenses for that come out of there. Some of these are just general grants if you will, replacement equipment, just wear and tear on a lot of our public safety equipment, so they have to replace things. We do have in here a, we are looking at a new ladder truck, and we have shifted to be able to hold cash in our funds. We have shifted from outright paying to it to exploring, like doing it on a loan base, so an amateurized payment schedule when we do purchase that truck, it'll start in at about $218 a year.

And just remind people, that is not cash going out. We don't expect the fire truck to be here, where's the chief, two years?

Two or three.

Two years. So it's basically putting funds aside to when it comes in. Obviously, we're going to pursue another 0% interest loan, which is the current one, or other financing options, but it's to note that we anticipate getting that fire truck

um and to set aside the money even though it's not cash going out right yeah and we explored this under two options just scenarios like an outright loan and an average interest rate of around three to four percent or if we there is a a grant that can be applied for um that would give us a zero percent interest so uh and again for the first is to take two to three years to order it and receive the truck, then we would start paying, but we were going ahead and setting aside that payment for these two years in that window, which we would then use as a down payment to reduce the principle that we have when we do actually make the purchase.

And just understand, again, I know I'm getting, I'm the numbers guy, I'm getting too much details. The reality on that is we do not know what the payments are going to be. We don't know what the final cost is. It's an estimated amortization. All we're trying to do is set something to understand that we've got money set aside because of the priority. And then last board meeting,

the chief did a very good presentation about the need for the fire truck so we'll be looking at all the options financing whatever this is actually just to make sure that we understand that we're making a commitment down the road to do the fire truck correct correct um a couple other things in the capital improvements there's funding there that is for future capital improvements and those are things that just um maybe projects or things that come up throughout the year um And then there are some fees associated with the county with their tax collections. Shoreline protection, again, this is what we call often our beach fund. This is the payment that the mayor referenced a little while ago. We have one more payment on that, which is in December, then that debt will be gone. These others are some lease payments and some different contracts that the town has and the associated expenses that go with it. Then again, your expenses are gonna match up to what the estimated revenues were. Slide, Ricky. Okay, so just to highlight a little bit, just some of the, in the process of the budget, some of the major initiatives, just kind of high level. I don't need to read all these to you, but maybe some highlights. We are gonna initiate a compensation study after the first of the year. being July 1st. We're looking into that now. That's an estimated cost for the study and then there are expenses as far as potential implementation and we're looking at a phased implementation which will go over several years. Some of these like vehicles are kind of standard replacements for public works and for police, just wear and tear on vehicles. They kind of cycle through every few years. Another highlight is We are actually in process. We have begun, and tell me if I speak wrong, Chris. We have begun the process for this building. There is an issue with erosion control underneath our feet and also renovation of the decking, which has got a lot of wear and tear, and we're having some safety concerns there. The erosion control portion, we are actually...

I thought that was this year.

The erosion control is going on right now. Okay.

Because everybody got nervous about being in the room when the presentation was last week.

Yeah, the erosion control portion of this is under process right now, and actually a lot of that funding, most of that funding is coming out of existing funds that were budgeted this year already. The phase two would be then the replacement of all the decking throughout the whole building, all the wood decking you see, which is budgeted for next year. So it's kind of in process, but it will carry over into next year. Another maybe highlight to hit, our public's work building has needed a little bit of love for quite a while. We just got a new roof put on it. So now that we put the roof on it, it has been evaluated structurally and we've determined the structure of the building is good. So we're going to kind of renovate the building, fix siding, any type of issues that are involved with the building. So that's... Highlight for something that's in upcoming Several of these others are as I mentioned are kind of ongoing Different vehicle replacements. This is just the general funds that we keep for You know boardwalk repair park repair any kind of maintenance along those lines So that's kind of the some of the highlights of some of the things in the budget Slide Ricky Okay, a couple things that this is moving over to 12. which is what we call again capital of improvements. There is just in the budget, as I mentioned earlier, a fund for future capital improvements. Any improvements we identify during the course of the next year, that's where those funds reside. This is the reference to the fire truck that we just talked about. Just elaborating a little bit, it's about an estimated $1.8 million vehicle, but we are looking at amortizing it and to reduce it to where It'd be about 218 to 220 in payments. We talked about that a few minutes ago. Fund 30, again, it's the beach re-nourishment project is the biggest portion of that. Again, there's that last expenditure that's gonna go away in December 15th will be done. And then the rest of that focus will continue on on our beach re-nourishment projects. Ricky, one more. Okay, a couple things, just highlighting a couple changes from the initial early stages of the workshop, things that at this point we removed from some of our initial considerations. I mentioned the compensation study originally. We looked in the budget at a possible market adjustment, largely for our public safety, but across the staff. We deferred that and took it out of the budget because we're going to go ahead and implement that salary evaluation study just to see what, we want to make sure we do it right. We encompass not just salaries, but tiers and possible career ladders in the different departments.

And as you mentioned, there's money set aside in the previous slide to implement that. Yes, there is. So this looks like a takeaway, but it's sitting in a different fund, basically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In Fund 10, and actually, Apologize there's a repeat there We'll talk about it in 12 So a couple things that were deferred there has been discussion about An emergency operations center building there's different Approaches I would say that are going on talks with the county so so as far as putting money into purchasing or renovating or doing something with an actual emergency operations building of our own. We've kind of pushed that out a little bit to see where those discussions go.

Well, and also, just for reference, the only thing that changes in there is the contingency goes up. It's not like the dollars went away. The board can decide that these are priorities next year. So there are funds available to do these. They're just not targeted to specific projects.

Exactly, yeah. And one other thing that was discussed early on, and again, keeping in mind what the mayor just mentioned, the fire department has explored a fire rescue boat, a little bit more conducive than the one that they have. But again, we deferred that from being just a line item in the budget to we will look at the possibilities maybe in the future if they need that. And again, we can go down the route

Oh, that, that, and also discussions we're having with the county and safety and stuff on the beach and stuff. Uh, and their willingness to fund some capital stuff for us. Right. We'll make a big part of this. I mean, you know, it's the old Danny DeVito thing. We want to use other people's money.

Yeah. I'm all for that. And again, when, when the time comes, if we do go down the road of, of exploring a boat, we can look at a loan and amortizing it to keep our cash at hand. instead of paying outright, but it's an estimated cost of about $400,000 for the type of boat that the fire department would need. You already got me there? Okay. The fee schedule, and the details of the fee schedule are in the agenda packet. They're available online. It's many, many pages, so it was a lot to try and put on it. a single slide, so I kinda just, in discussions with Larry, we decided just to give a couple highlights of what's changed. A large part of the fee schedules, the services that we provide, merchandise, different things for the town, most all of that has stayed the same. A couple of the changes that did go into place, for the planning and inspections, Deb has worked really hard and has Adjusted our fee schedule to be conducive and in line with what the county charges for the same services These are all your inspections your permits planning and zoning so that there is a change there and then we also in The police department we have had in the past where we do offer off-duty security with some of our police officers and we've made The change that we made there is the off-duty officer hourly rate is gonna change from 40 to 46. And in the past, we had a flat rate for vehicle usage, but we're now gonna incorporate, it's like $25 an hour. it would fluctuate depending on the type of service that they provide.

This is a response we talked about last meeting where the board was going forward with allowing an HOA or another facility to have our police, off-duty police officers, provide security at those type of things. And so you just built in the rates so we've got that since the board's consensus was to go forward with that last meeting.

Yeah, and we've created like a template contract, if you will, or MOU, so if anybody approaches us for those type of services, we've got a structured template for what the agreement would involve, and it was basically the fees that I discussed. Okay, so that kind of gives you some of the budget stuff. I believe classifications. I'm going to turn over to Lexi.

Yes, so for classifications, we saw two changes. The first one would be under grade 11. We added accounting coordinator. This would replace the temp position that we currently have. This position was graded based off of different, based off league data, data from outside organizations and neighboring organizations that have similar positions. The other modification was a title change for the Planner 1 position. It was changed from Planner 1 to Planner. It did not change in grades. All right.

Slide. So this slide offers a high-level summary of the budget ordinance, proposed budget ordinance. We are not asking for action on that ordinance. The purpose of the budget ordinance, it's a legal document authorizing the appropriations and expenditures for the fiscal year. Without it, services, operations, and the staff disappear. Going through, again, at high level, Sections 1 through 6 refer to Funds 10, 12, 30, their resources and expenses. Section 7 and 8 refers to Fund 31 and 50. Section 9 and 10 refers to Fund 32 and Fund 60, which involve PTC-8 grant and the DRMG, North Carolina Emergency Management Stormwater Project grant. Section 11 describes the tax revenue distribution between Fund 10, 12, and 30. Section 12 sets parameters for the manager's transferring of funds. And Section 13 provides for the carryover of encumbrances and expenditures or expenditures that were opened this fiscal year and are being completed next fiscal year. Section 14 defines the salary adjustments for cost of living and merit slash bonus. Section 15 sets forth the schedule of fees. And Section 16 through 18 sets forth some regulatory and compliance provisions. And 19 sets forth classifications and full-time equivalent authorizations.

Which you'd look to be approved at later on this month?

I certainly hope so.

before June 30th.

I certainly hope so. Yes. We'll hold a candlelight vigil. Uh, all right. So, uh, uh, we anticipate the next, next meeting on the, for the 24th. We refer to that over and over again, uh, for the purpose of adopting the budget. However, with the, um, dilemma, so to speak, uh, that Senate bill eight, eight, nine has, and to the extent that it remains in committee, uh, I would recommend scheduling a call meeting. for June 30th at 11 a.m. for the purpose of adopting the budget and considering any other business meeting the desires of the town of North Topsail Beach.

So I think the next step is, again, it's not a workshop. We would invite people that want to comment in the hearing. Is that the way the hearing works now?

Yeah, so if members of the public would like to comment.

So is there anybody from the public that would like to come up and comment on the budget process? Okay. So a motion to close the public hearing? Do we hear a motion to close the public hearing?

I'll make a motion to close the public hearing.

Do we hear a second?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Talked about this as a board. Nobody will remember the 43. If we go to 33 from 43, nobody will remember that we got stuck in this thing. I'm hopeful from talking to different people that the Senate is not going to take action, which would be nice. And then just two reminders on this. One is you are able to appeal yours. Kip, you talked about that in the last meeting, the ability to appeal your valuation. And also, remember, the way that this works is each house is different, so that when we talk about revenue neutral, it doesn't mean that your tax on your house is going to stay the same. It may go up, it may go down, depending on that valuation. But the rate reduction we're talking about, by my calculation, is about 25%. I've spoken to the county they're looking at dropping the county rate by a little over 10 cents as well They are waiting for their they got the same issue that we have which is not knowing what's going to happen with that bill But they have done some rate stabilization stuff to drop this there. I just looked at it their budget is was just published, what is today, Wednesday? It was published Monday evening. So if you go on their website, you'll get a look at that. There's some nice allocations for us in their budget. Highlights are right now, knock on wood, Kip and I already talked about this, Ocean City Jazz Festival looks like they're on their budget for 20,000 to help them this year. share the table I think is 20,000 and we're in for 250 so we'll see how that plays out they are struggling with the budget Whitney was there and knows part of that discussion so hopefully everything will stay the same but they're looking at that as well and so appreciate the work the county's doing this to keep the rate down so next item of business is going to be the Sorry, I just moved my agenda. Is consent agenda I'd like to get a motion to approve the consent agenda With our normal caveat because I have questions for the people that the managers are here So what I'd like to do is get an approval or motion to approve the consent agenda We'll do the motion the second and then we can have if we've got questions for individuals do it that way Is that said okay?

All right, so a motion to approve motion to approve the consent agenda.

Do I hear a second second? Now I'd like to have Wayne come back up. Wayne, you already know what I'm going to ask you because I talked to you in the hall when I was signing checks. I can't help it, Wayne. Whenever I look at this stuff, cash is still king. We got the $13 million back. Very happy about that. As I read where we are currently on this, with the Marina Way thing, and I was looking at section, the grant FEMA 43C under number five, 4.3 million is what we have spent, correct?

Yes.

Okay. We've gotten 24,000 back. Two questions for you. I'm assuming, have we submitted all of that money?

Oh, wait, wait, hold on. Um, that's the PTC eight.

Yep. That is ongoing. We have submitted just so people know that's the Dune crossover at Marina way. Yeah. We have, we have FEMA has, has agreed to reimburse us for that, but we put the money up front. So we've spent the money cause we've gotten the other big number back from FEMA. But as I read this, FEMA is still going to owe us money under this project. Correct?

Yes. Yes. That, that is ongoing as far as, um, THE PROJECT IS STILL ONGOING AND WE ARE REQUESTING REIMBURSEMENTS AS PORTIONS ARE COMPLETED. SO WE DID JUST GET ONE REIMBURSEMENT THAT IS NOTED THERE IN THE FINANCE REPORT OF ABOUT $24,000. In fact, I saw an email, Debra Mack is still helping with the FEMA project.

That's still within a contract we signed with her. Yeah, yeah. Honestly, the $13 million, that's the best $30,000 this town has ever spent to get her on top of this stuff. We've gotten $13 million back, and she's hound-dogging the rest of this stuff for us.

Yeah, so it is, yeah, that will be reimbursed as the project is completed. We apply for reimbursements as portions of work are finished. We're actually in process for applying for another reimbursement already. So, yes, we will be getting that those funds back. That will not be funds that will be the town's cost.

And now you already know my second question. I know you reached out to them already. We are holding two point. eight million dollars of money we owe the state that shows up in our cash is not our money and it's because we've asked for like fifty thousand of that um afforded to larry we've already had council had already told us that the town manager has the ability to pay that thing without board approval so i would still like us to consider paying that amount withholding what we need because when i look at the cash report That's not our money. We're segregating it. And so people understand this. On the Phase 4 project, we've talked about this 100 times. It was supposed to be a reimbursement project. They sent us the money up front. And so we tried to reserve against it. So during that period, we collected interest on money that was supposed to be a reimbursement. And that ended up being a couple million dollars in interest over a period of time. Plus, we didn't spend it all. Alice reached out over a year ago to them saying, do you want it back? Can we spend it someplace else? After, what, nine months, they came back and said, now we want it back. So Deborah Mack then came back and said, there's some other administrative costs associated with that that we'd like you to consider not giving back. But it's a small amount. It's less than $50,000.

I think it's around 50 or 60, I think.

So what I'm saying is just, and again, it's not a big deal, but we're earning interest on it. We're giving the interest back to them. I would just like to have, we're looking at how much cash we've got and forecasting that stuff. I'd like you to consider, and again, it's your call, Larry and Wayne, is I would like to get that out of there. I don't like to have somebody else's money sitting there. Okay.

And I can follow up with environmental quality, too, because it's been a two-part question in the discussions that they're not responding to. Number one is could we add in those administrative expenses? But number two is how do we pay them back? They normally do not get money back because it's normally cost-reimbursable. So I'm trying to find out if we do go down the path of paying them back. Provide me with wire transfer, cut them a check. So there's two parts to the question, and they have been very unresponsive.

It's just, for some reason, it's a thorn in my side because... I really like to pay attention to the cash and we're going to have Carter's doing the forecast for us. Right. So we know we got some money. They'll be coming back on the Marina way stuff. I just want to make sure that we're clean when we're doing the forecast as to what is actually our money. And that's the only thing we've got like this on our balance sheet that I'm aware of. Correct. Okay. Correct.

But is it the board's direction though, that we go ahead and return this money? except for the portion that we think we're applying to keep. Because if it is, we should pursue with the state comptroller or whatever. He is. And that's what you're saying you're doing.

He's doing that, right. I understand this was a while back because council weighed in on this that Alice at the time had the authority to, they didn't need board approval or anything. It's a normal bill. It's a normal practice. Okay. It's just... Look, the balance sheet is clean and what your reports are clean. To me, it just looks strange to have that money sitting there.

But the board is saying for Larry to pursue returning this money to the state. Is that my understanding? Is that fair?

Okay. That's just a consensus thing. Keep pursuing it until we can get it wrapped up.

Because that money is still drawing interest, and we're going to have to pay the money plus the interest back, correct?

Only the interest we get.

My point is we don't need to keep doing the state's accounting for them. Let's just give them the money back and be done with it.

And to be honest with you, what I'd really like to see, and I don't mean to push on this thing, is – In three weeks, we're at the end of this fiscal year. I know. I would really like to not have this sit in the books when the auditors come in.

And I even raised that question with my contact at Environmental Quality. The year-end's coming for both of us. What do you want us to do here? And I think my last question... Yeah, I... my last correspondence with him when I believe it was like on the 15th or 16th. And, and, um, I have not gotten an answer.

So, so my suggestion would be go higher up the food, go higher up and work toward making the payment from somebody who's gonna accept the check or wire. Okay.

That's all I had for Wayne. Have you guys got anything else for Wayne for Wayne? Yeah.

Wayne on the fee schedule table of contents, when we're talking general fees, police planning, inspections, fire parking, going forward, I'd just like to understand, and this gets minuscule, but I'd like to know the GL accounts that those fees are going to.

And then on an annual basis.

you know what we're collecting and my concern too in planning and zoning fees how are we accepting monies right now is it all electronic are we still taking checks uh it's a combination some folks pay by check they have the ability to pay online via credit so it's a combination right now okay and is it your office who's reviewing all that revenue coming in

Yes, yes.

Okay.

It comes in through our office. We allocate it to the proper GL codes and apply it to the general ledger.

All right, thank you. Anything else?

Okay, the rest of the team's here. Anybody else got anything else? We're going to talk to tell the fire chief about his, his grant application, but I think that's a separate, this is minor, but, uh, Chris, could you step up for a quick second?

Um, great job on the pier for everybody that's involved down there behind fire station. It, uh, looks really good. Um, we do have a lot of North Topsail beach. Well, I shouldn't say a lot, but we have several that are in wheelchairs that enjoy going out there as well. They're very happy that the seating is not out there at the end so that they can. Turn around rather easily. Uh, there was rumor that we were going to put seats out there. Um, if we're going to leave it unseated or we put in seats out there for the dolphin shores pier, they just completed.

Uh, yes. The intent is to, to install bench seating out there on the gazebo.

Well, just to concern them accessibility for them turning around. And the other issue was, you know, the hooks, the cut bait, uh, the shrimp. and everything else that ends up being on those seats as well. Is there any way we could get some solar lighting out there to deal with some of the activities that go on at night that shouldn't be going?

I'm already looking into solar providers in different areas of the town, and that would be one of the spaces.

Yes, sir. That's all I've got.

I don't think you'd put them on oceanfront, but it is something to think of when you do any lighting to make sure that they have the things so that the covers so that the lights are focused down and not. Not all over the place. The what?

Or do the amber lights. Or the amber lights. That's right.

Amber lights are perfect.

Okay. Yes, ma'am. All right, so.

While I have this on, though, to talk to you for just a second, there are some areas of our beach that I've noticed while I've been out there that some of the stay off the dune signs have disappeared. I don't know if it's purposely. So if you get a chance, I noticed especially down by the top sail dunes, I was down there this morning with a turtle nest.

Yes, ma'am. And around the pier. Yes, ma'am.

Yeah, if you could just monitor just to see if, or some of your people, to see if, where we're in need of them. But, yeah, the Topsail Dunes area.

Yes, ma'am. We're working with the town manager and trying to put a plan together for a standard in terms of how far apart those signs are placed and in what locations.

Very good.

Thank you. All right, so let's go on to Chris. Continuing business, Beach Project's update. Just so everybody knows, this is to give just a continuing update. You know, we've hired him to do all the permitting and do all the other stuff for us. It's going to be just a quick one. Hang on, we've got another question. He's going to come up for the grants.

Okay. That's what I'm asking about. I need to ask a question. Okay. You're fine. Come on up, please.

Well, if you want a question, Chief's right there.

Uh, fire chief, can you just give us a brief update on the fire station?

Can you give us an update on the fire station? Stay up, stay up, Chris. This is going to be two seconds.

That's right.

Um, we're moving forward. They're doing forms and all right now for the concrete to go down. Um, they're still saying June 30th, uh, window for turnover. Um, so I mean, that's, that's pretty much it. yeah it's a window and as far as it's still open as far as your other equipment and things you need to build out the fire station on the inside have you gotten delivery of all the items you know we we pushed it all off till the last week of june okay um just based off their timeline um we may be pushing it back another week but we've ordered furniture gym equipment all this that all the pos and everything have been done and placed um we're going through and ordering trash cans and stuff like that now but until we're in there and the furniture's in honestly i can't predict everything that's okay all right okay thank you just to follow up to our question um i'm assuming we're going to do some ribbon cutting yes because we really need to make sure we get the commissioners there since we have the fire tax money that's going to yes yeah um so larry and i have already had the conversation i sent some verbiage to lexi for a bronze plaque to dedicate You know, so we're working behind the scenes, you know. Okay. I just want to make sure.

Feeder in the water. We need to make sure we extend, you know, to the commissioners.

Yeah, there's a lot of people that have to be invited, you know, commissioners, Jones-Oslo, you know, Onwasa. The community. Onwasa? Community. Really?

Yeah. All right. I'm on the Onwasa board. That's why it's a joke. Okay. Now, Chris.

Okay. And chief, I just wanted to thank you again for your time the other day at the firehouse and giving me the rundown. It was very informative.

Absolutely. All right, Chris. And again, this is just going to be a view of everybody up. He's pursuing the process. He's under contract to the town to do this kind of stuff. We've come into some bumps relating to, uh, DA one 43. And basically he's getting, he's got a letter that's going to go out to them. And then real briefly, um, We've talked to Senator Lazar about this. He is going to be fundamentally behind us in terms of whatever resources we need, including having people at future meetings with the state. So it's more of just an update for everybody, Chris. So go ahead.

Okay. So I know we have some relatively new aldermen, and Larry's relatively new to all this. So I was going to go through a brief just kind of overall of the project of what we're doing. Um, as you know, Fran talked earlier, um, the Southern shall we say the Southern half of the beach has already been nourished and is now an engineered beach. The town has done. up to where the bridge comes across. We are working on a project to finish out phases one, two, and three north of the bridge all the way up to the north end. Our proposed project is to use the old disposal site that's up here. It has been closed down for many, many years. The Corps of Engineers had previously used for disposing of material from the Intercoastal Waterway. Sampling has been done up there. It is beach quality material. We would run a pipeline down the intercoastal waterway, come across down, I guess that's roughly the 1600 block of New River Inlet Road. There's a little bridge there that we can slide underneath, so we don't have to cut the road. Go to the south, finish out to the south, turn back, go to the north, and finish up the project. That's kind of the plan of things. Next slide, please.

the dredging, the slurry comes out is what this is going to be. It's more of a, it's not going to be a truck project. It is not a truck project.

This would be hydraulically. Um, this will be hydraulically dug and placed. Um, again, kind of going over the things, uh, da one 43, it's located up there at the corner of the intercoastal waterway and Cedar bush cut. basically said all of this just while ago. So let's go on to the next one. One of the things that this project is going to do, it will restore this to being a disposal site for the Corps of Engineers. We're gonna take two million yards of sand out of this island. So that's two million yards of sand they can put back in. So this is beneficial use on both ends of the pipe. Currently the Corps of Engineers is completely 100% out of disposal site capacity for non-beach compatible material in Cedar Bush cut the intercoastal waterway and channel to Jacksonville. They are not scheduled to maintain channel to Jacksonville going forward until they figure out a disposal option.

Chris, with that, with, with that being said with what we just talked with Fran, if we can get this done in a timely manner, then when they get ready to try and. increase the depth of the inlet. Now they'll have a place that they can put this new sand and we will basically be restocking our, uh, deposits of sand for the future. Is that correct?

So you're exactly right. Uh, it's. So when you look at it, if I were to give you a brief overview of what they're talking about doing, sand that's going to come out of the inlet and cedar bush cut back to the waterway is going to be able to go straight to the beach. Once you get into that really heavy new work, which is they would be deepening about eight feet in channel jacks, that material is... So yeah, that would end up going into this island. When it would be pumped into the island, the silts would run down to the low end. The sands would stay up at the high end, so they would split themselves off naturally. It's called winnowing. And then you would be able in the future to re-harvest the good sands that had been segregated from the bad sands. So that's kind of why we like to reuse these sites.

And so a lot of this is going to come down to timing because we would love to get this done to make that.

It all comes down to timing. Money comes down to timing. I wish we had everything in place right now because right now, Industry is tying up some of the hydraulic dredges. So the price on hydraulic dredging, it is a buyer's market right now. And so I wish we were farther along in that because we could take advantage of that and could see some significant savings. The price of work that's going out right now is cheaper than it was four years ago, even with fuel prices being up. One of the things that we have to do when we go through these sites, and we did it once for the town when I was with another firm, And the state has a 10 year limit on coring that they're no longer viable after that. So we've gone back and we've done this twice. And our understanding is the core did it once before. So it's been done three times to prove that the sand on this island is very good beach quality sand. There's really not any question about it. There are some new techniques that there was some concern about materials that were down deep. There is a screening system, an automated screening system that happens on the beach so that things that come out are automatically screened and put directly into the back of the truck So problems with shells or clay balls or rocks like we had once upon a time, all of that gets taken care of right at the end of the pipe. It doesn't get distributed. That's a new system that came out about six years ago. And we intend to implement on this to make sure any debris that we have come out of here, whether it's, you know, leftover tree stumps or whatever that gets destroyed. that we don't get removed when we do the original grubbing, that all of that gets taken care of and y'all get clean beach. Next slide, please. Great part of this, again, we did the geotech in here. Numbers to look at, third column is the big one. The native grain size is 0.23 millimeters. We're at 0.21. which is very, very close. That's two hundredths of a millimeter difference in grain size. That's very, very close for here. The offshore sands that we see in Onslow Bay are typically 1.16 to 0.18, which is much smaller. And when you get down into that class, you're really talking about timeframes where material will last 30% to 40% less than it would if it's the same size grain. This is the natural size that goes with what the wave conditions are here. Main reason for this, this is a flood-dominant inlet, meaning that sand flows into it, not out like a river system. New River is actually a bay. It's not really a river. So all of the sand that's in here and is in the Sound actually came off of the oceanfront over the past millennium. So that's why we're able to match up here rather than sans that came and went offshore in the previous before the last ice age kind of deal that those are much older sands that were when this was this area was more of a riverine environment next slide please again looking at color here one of the things to note you all see what we put down at surf city over here so you've got the color of what's in surf city and you've got the color of what's coming out of da143 i think what came out on surf city was very very pretty sand this past 2024 we're looking at the exact same kind of stuff so we're not looking at a a gray muck something that's going to um overheat and cause the stuff to have all kind of you'll tell me it's all male turtles hot sand makes male turtles cool i'll get it backwards i knew that if you get the if you get the wrong color they all turn one sex and then they can't mate so Yep, so it's one of the things we have to do. Not only do we have to get grain size, calcium carbonate size.

This is an educational meeting today.

It was very good. So we have to match grain size, calcium carbonate so we don't have too much shell in it, and we also have to meet the color standards so that we don't have a detrimental impact to the turtle sexes. So all of those things looks great for DA143. Next slide, please. Again, we have elevations on the site. They range anywhere from the wooded area that you see at the south end is only about elevation 10. The big white area is elevation 45. So we're looking at taking almost 60 feet of material, 60 foot layer. The great part about that, it makes dredging cheap because the sand just rolls to them. They don't have to go and dig it and pick it up. It actually falls to them. It's very well-sorted sand. We do have some intermittent layers of silty shelly stuff because it's an anthropogenic site. It was pumped in in different phases, so you get some of that winnowing that happened. But we do have the FRS system that will clean all of that up. And, again, color is good. And, like I said at the bottom, the FRS system will take anything that's three-quarters of an inch or above right out of it, put it in the back of the truck. There is an area to dispose of it by the boat ramp. At the bridge, there is an old disposal, core disposal area that's there that is open and is easily accessible by truck. We've driven out there, so we can just take it, haul it right out there, drop it off, all good. Next slide, please. pipeline route, which a lot of people are kind of curious about. How are you going to get across the island? We're going to come in on Cedar Bush Cup because there's no marshes over there, so we're going to come in at that end. Plus, that's a good sand down in that end. We're going to work down toward the tree line. Originally, we were going to take out the tree line and use that whole area. We got some pushback from Wildlife Resources under the initial comments that they made, the few comments that they made at the beginning. So we said, well, there's not that much sand down there anyhow. Bag it. It's expensive to clear. It's really not that big a deal for us. Pipeline will come down the little, what I call the golf course area down here. Hopefully we can get an easement from them, come along the edge of their property, slide right under the bridge here so we don't have to do any open road cut. There's actually enough height under that bridge to slide a 36 inch pipe. Slide right under there. There are no houses there. I double checked. Somebody told me there might be a house there now. There is not a house there. So we're in good shape to come across onto that. And then we'll go north and south from there. Could be a booster on the beach. Would be nice to set one up back there in the back on the waterway right there. This is a good length. They're halfway the length of the line. So that makes for good pressure in the line on that. Continue on. We've talked about most of all of this. One of the things, northern dunes, this was important. We did have dunes that were put in in 2013. Because we're in an hazard area up there, you can't build new dunes. We're rebuilding old dunes. So that's a good thing. Otherwise, we would be stuck with just building flat beach up there. That's the big takeaway from this slide. We will look at the dunes that we put in. We would love to do the double dune like we've got at Topsail. However, we're not going to have enough sand to build a wide enough beach to protect that dune, so it's going to be a build-out on this one that will be smaller than that. Over time, as we go through this project, and this project matures, looking a decade out, eventually we will get there, but we will not have enough material on this first go-round to do that and not have your dune getting scarped on a regular basis. Next slide, please. This is kind of the template. If you look, the one on the right was what was originally done up at the north end when CP&E did it. Over on the left is a typical template of what we're looking at doing. We would come off of the existing dune at the bottom of the sea oats. We don't want to bury anything that's existing. Come up to roughly a 12-foot elevation, come down 105 on the front, That's a great slope for getting sea turtles to key in to stop walking. That one-on-five gets them to cut. When they go up that one-on-five, they hit the next flat and they drop their eggs. That is, we did a ton of research on that down in Florida where we had a statistically significant number of turtles. 900 per linear mile we averaged each year. One every six feet. So we had some good statistics to work with to see how we could do different things that would actually... it wasn't well one did this and one did this no 45 did this and 62 did that and so we actually had some numbers that made some sense we could work off of flip to the next one again some of the previous work that's been done here especially permitting which is important there was the EIS completed for the entire length of North Topsail Beach you got a 30-year permit off of that federal permit And in that, at the time, DA 143 was identified as a potential bar site. The phase one project completed the dunes up at the north end, which is a picture of you actually having dunes up there, which probably if we didn't have that picture, they wouldn't allow us to even think about putting dunes up there. We've been through biannual placement at New River Inlet from New River Inlet Crossing. Fran showed you those dates earlier. PCC Truck Hall, Florence, as well as some Isaias, I believe we got. And then we also had the phase four, which we took the Florence money and used the Florence money to leverage the state, the 10 million bucks from the state to do all that. Big thing here is you do have an EIS in place for a beach re-nourishment for the whole beach, so we're not going through new permitting on that as we do this.

The beach- Can you tell us where we are? You're probably gonna hit it permitting-wise.

I think it's probably my next slide. So this is kind of what all has been done here so far. Next slide, please. Okay, here we are. Where are we now? We have a permit level design. We are 95% complete except for tweaking whatever agencies may want us to tweak in there. But we have a design that we could go to bid with right now. We're that far along. We have the permit except for the easement for DA-143. We have the entire permit package assembled. We have the package, because we were talking about voting on this a couple months ago, We have the package for putting in the shallow draft inlet grant request. That is set on go. We have a ton of stuff that's on go waiting.

We had approved that even last year to go ahead and file that. So you're going to, as soon as you're ready to file, you know, as soon as we're asked for the grant, it got held up, council, you remember, because we were told we had to basically reserve cash against that. You came back and said, no, we don't, for various reasons. That was the only holdup. Otherwise, it would have already been done. Is that right? Yeah. So I think that's been a go from the board for a year, I think. Yeah.

We were held up in March, I think we were going to do it this year, February, March, and you kind of told me to hold up.

That was because the issue came back from the accountants about how we were accounting for stuff, which we then sent to council, and council said the whole thing was if you applied for a grant, we got accounting advice that said we had to set aside the money for that grant, even not knowing we were going to get the grant. which makes no sense. You don't have a contract. So the whole idea was we had to stop it, because if that was the case and you asked for it, we would have had to put $30 million off to the side for something we didn't even know we were going to get. Council came back and said, you don't have a contract. You're good. So there are no impediments that I'm aware of that would keep us from filing that. And we've already given the approval, right, Connie, in past meetings? Yes. So what I want to do here, this... Before I leave that, just so everybody understands, the shallow draft fund is a fund that anybody can apply for. And we don't know if it's first come, first serve, but there's a limited amount of money in that fund. So you want to get your foot in that as fast as you can. And that's the matching fund we've talked about using kind of from the beginning.

Yes, that's correct. So this is again, DA 143. I want to talk a little bit about our hold up here and I'll talk to the I got more word tech, more more word slides here. But this is this is a really good picture that kind of sums everything up. So the the orange areas are where the Corps of Engineers has easement to use the land. All of those places that's under federal easement, the Outside the blue line, all of those easements were granted in 1930 as part of the original intercoastal waterway. That was where they were going to put the waterway and dispose along the side of it using sidecast methods. They came in and instead of pumping into some confined disposal site back in the 1930s, They just came along, took the dredge, flopped the pipe over into the marsh, let it rip, and then moved ahead 1,000 feet and then moved into the pipe along 1,000 feet and let it rip. And that's why you have all these islands along the east side of the Intercoastal Waterway. That's how they were created. They are not natural. They are man-made, every one of them. All of this was big marsh. Going back, I've heard stories past now, but like from my wife's grandfather would tell stories of them driving cattle across the marsh up here. um before the intercoastal waterway was in and they would drive them over to the island and let them feed on the salt marsh and then drive them back to to take them to market later in the year but this was actually not the intercoastal waterway topsail island was not really a full-blown island the sears landing area was at least connected where it was closed marsh So at any rate, they got those easements in 1986. Um, after, so the area that's bounded in blue was owned by the Bostic family. Uh, Marty Bostic was the mayor here circa 2000. Uh, first time I got to talking about this Island was with Marty. Um, and he was like, he thought he actually thought his family still owned the Island at that point in time and said, let's put the sand on the beach. Um, and we started looking at that, uh, in 2001 and, um, you know, it didn't come to fruition. Um, Looking hindsight being 2020, we gave and got prices $2 and 12 cents a cubic yard to put it on the, we could have done this whole thing for 4 million. And the Corps of Engineers was coming in with a waterway dredging project and the town backed away from it. But, you know, hindsight's 2020. This area that's circled in blue is also that same property boundary is is state owned land managed by North Carolina Wildlife Resources. They call it Uni One. So even though the Corps of Engineers has full right of entry onto this site, they could go out and level that site if they wanted to. Wildlife Resources has recommended to the state land office that we not be able to take sand out of that purple area. We're looking at alternatives. We've been in discussions with the Corps, very positive discussions about whether or not we can have them do work for others. And it's a color of money thing where we would pay the Corps and they would do it under their easement and their authority because we already have all of the easements on the beach in place. We already have the beach permit in place. We already have the design form. We already have the geotag. All of that's in place, and we're talking with them right now about how to do an MOU. To do that, if the shallow draft MOU did not have a $5 million cap on it, we probably wouldn't be talking right now. We would already be under contract with the Corps.

Galveston District. That's why it's important to have Doug give us that forecast in July in terms of what we can and can't.

So, and to let you know, these projects are not uncommon. I went and counted up half a dozen in North Carolina that I've worked on personally where these islands have been rehabilitated and used for beach renourishment or other environmental restoration. There was just an $85 million project in Galveston that was done on the Houston River where they rehabilitated a disposal island and at the same time rehabilitated a bird island in Galveston Bay. Christopher Bada, who's a friend of mine, used to be chief of navigation down there. That was his swan song project before he retired this year. So he was very excited about that and dropped me a couple emails because of what we were doing up here. Slide on to the next slide. So again, where are we now? We are at the 95% design level. We are at a hiccup with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources because of their management role with the state land office. The sad part about this is without the easement, without having an easement, we cannot have a complete application. And without a complete application, we can't have a determination of no to appeal. So they've got us in this kind of catch 22. So... So we have written, we've written a letter, what they did. We pretty much got ghosted by wildlife resources and the land office for nearly a year. And we were in the process of scheduling a meeting to meet with them in February emails going back and forth between us and the major permits coordinator with the state, uh, as well as folks in wildlife resources. And then out of the blue, we get a one line email, not even a letter. letterhead we get a one-line email we have done extensive research and we do not and we're opposed to your use of this island blink that's it we don't know what extensive research they did so what we've done is we've compiled I've taken about three months we've compiled all of the research that has been done on this island and this method and this method in other parts of the state and put that together to explain to the state not only that this is normal, but also that they have, as a project sponsor for the Intercoastal Waterway, they have an obligation to provide land for disposal of dredge material from the federal navigation channels. So where do they plan to pick up the other 45 acres they need? not a cheap thing to do in Sneeze Ferry to pick up waterfront property. I don't think Camp Lejeune is going to do it and let them do that. We look at this and the cost of doing what we're doing versus doing a truck haul project for beach and then buying another piece of land and developing that as a disposal area, we're talking about spending $40 million. The alternative would be about $120 million. so we're offering a win-win on both ends of the pipeline for a third of the cost and you've got folks that normally wouldn't be active looking to be actively involved in this a municipality why would they care about the federal channels um we have if we're looking shallow draft funds that's coming from Tax on boater gas fuel. This is a user-funded project. It's not a general fund project, typically.

Before you leave that, though, unless you're going to make the point, the thing that is so frustrating about this is now that DA-143 is full, all of the disposal sites that the Army Corps could use are now full. Correct. And the Army Corps could decide to go in on their own, and they don't like this. Doing our project allows the Army Corps to clear 30 years worth of material for their dredging at no cost. And we would use the sand. And the irony of this is, and you correct me if I'm wrong, under their least cost, if they go do this project, they do not need to do remediation work. They don't need any of the things we're talking about doing about habitats and all that stuff. gone and so the army corps is basically with us on this i think so far i've talked to senator lazara When we get this meeting set up, he's going to have a representative there, and it looks like the Army Corps will be there. But there's got to be some pressure. We don't know if there's just one person, one individual within there that sends back a one-liner. But it makes no sense because environmentally it's positive. Economically it's positive.

From an environmental side, to go offshore and harvest the sand, to harvest 2 million cubic yards of sand, assuming you harvest five feet deep, which is a normal amount, we would have to disturb 250 acres of undisturbed land versus taking 29 acres of previously disturbed land. I mean, the environmental side, if you focus specifically on maybe the possibility that a red, cockaded woodpecker that's never been seen in Onslow County might fly by and see a dead pine tree on this island that was dead just the right way, And whatever, if you take that approach, then anything's always going to be a problematic, but, but if you look at it overall and what it does to the other environmental impacts that we avoid, I think this is really the way to do it.

You know, and, and, you know, you've, you've briefed us on this and, and, you know, it's your, it's your project. that you're managing for us is you're getting ready to drop the hammer on with, with the document we've got. And I know that Lazaro's office is fully engaged in helping us push this through.

I didn't want to bring anything up and I didn't know if you have any more slides or presentations, but my big concern is I know over a year ago, you know, we were talking about cutting vegetation in September, doing this in October, doing this in November. Where are we at now? Because it's season, it's time to start kicking and screaming so that when October gets here, we can be moving forward and twiddling our thumbs and saying, blah, blah, blah, blah.

My next slide.

Okay, awesome.

Next slide, please. So here's time frames. So you're absolutely right. If you're looking at, okay, we going to get this done this fall uh i'll tell you i'll give you a proof view of my next slide possible but not probable let's be honest about it um there's some coordination that's going to take some some some legislators pushing on some bureaucrats to make this move if we do an mou with the core and go that route likely to see an mou would probably take to december Those are actual realities. There's not a whole lot you can do about that. Some of the stuff that we can do, you're looking at somewhere here. If you're realistic, everything starts starting today. Realistically, we're bidding this time next year. We can do the financial planning, the grant applications, all that can go coincident. We don't need to do that after we get the easement or whatever. We can go ahead because all those packages are already ready. That money is behind us. It's a sunk cost at this point. And we want to keep working with the Corps. We're hoping the last conversation I had with them on Friday was that they wanted to know exactly why we'd been turned down. They wanted to see the letter. And so I sent them not only the one-sentence email, but all of the whole email changed. to preface all of that, because I think the Corps does want to push on them to say, hey, look, this is, you can't keep us from using the island because that's what it sounds like you're trying to do. So we're going to get some push there. We may, you know, with this, I've got some contacts in D.C. that may push on this for us as well if we have to. I think the DOD side of this, that's going to really make a difference. And that could expedite this because I've seen us go from concept to actually project completion in 18 months, redo and appear for the Navy to bring in a carrier to be refueled. They gave us 18 months to be done. We went through an entire EIS process, designed, built, took the old pier down and built it, 18 months. Cary came in, they jacked it up, and took the nuclear reactor out of it. So these things can move if you've got the right people behind them, and DOD is definitely it, especially given the world as it is today. Again, I mentioned similar projects being done. Nothing that we're trying to do here is out of the ordinary or doesn't have precedent. That's the big takeaway from that. And I think I've got one last slide here. Again, time frames, possible, not probable. Most likely winter, 27, 28, and I think I was going to say taking all things into consideration. Again, clearing of the island would need to begin in the summer. Actually, if we're not going to do the wooded area, we can get a little bit closer to the time frame. That's not as critical. The wood area is probably going to take 60 days. The other parts, the up top, is really just a scrape and grub. That's probably two to three weeks. So isn't as hypercritical as before. Um, it'll probably take them a month and a half to string the pipeline and, uh, you know, sand movement because turtle season starts around Thanksgiving. Um, it's going to take 2 million yards, about 500,000 a month. This is what you can kind of expect out of this, maybe a little higher.

So you're saying get everything else in place, get the funding in place, get everything out, get the modeling in place, you know, for us, the financing and everything else. so that we're ready to pull the trigger when this thing goes. Because one of the things you've talked about and I've talked about with you and Fran is our commitment as a board is to get a project done in one, two, and three, not one or two or three. So depending on the size of the project and everything else, we want to get it moving. But I think the consensus has always been to get all three done at the same time.

And I know some people are probably sitting here, well, why don't you just go ahead and go offshore and do this? And there are about 20 million reasons why we don't want to do that because that's literally the cost differential in these two. Plus, you don't get a benefit on the backside. You still have somebody still going to have to deal with the disposal situation.

Well, I don't know.

You have any more slides?

Let's see. Flip one more slide. I think it's questions. There you go.

All right. Didn't want to jump the gun. Playing devil's advocate, as I'm well known for, that means we've got two more hurricane seasons to go through. Heaven forbid that happen. Are we back to square one, or are we still able to move forward? Do we have to reevaluate all phase one, two, three, four, and five after something comes through?

That's a great question, and it's one that I'd like to give you an answer that nothing would change. Realistically, though, here's what's going to happen. We're still going to have the same amount of sand. Right. So we will have to do some sort of a minor modification of what we're doing, depending on where the sand goes. If you have an event, well, You may look at it and go, as you're looking at the upland, you go, oh, man, we got hammered. But then as you look at the whole profile that you're building, well, it's just right over there. It's out by the bar. So maybe the top of our template needs to be thicker and the bottom needs to be thinner. It may not change the volume overall that much, or it might. But basically the yards per linear foot are still going to work out to be what they are, and we'll build the best we can with what we've got.

Right. I understand that. I appreciate that honest answer, and so does the public. The other concern is that's also two more seasons without it being an engineered beach. How is that going to handle financially there?

Well, I think that's – we don't – I mean, right now – and you're the expert on this – if there was a storm – If there was a storm, FEMA will still rebuild the dunes. All right. So you've got that. We also have the dredging. We don't know how much dredging they're going to do, which will be this fall as well. Because one of the questions I had is if they're dredging, does that impact a thing? What you're telling me is it's probably not. And so, because the whole project is only a couple of months if we do it. Once it starts operation, it's a couple of months.

So to reiterate what the mayor said, as you've been going along, you've got the the category B investment that FEMA will do that they've done from 210 north and will continue to do. In the south end, FEMA will come back if you have a storm and you have major losses. They're going to do dune and beach because it's... Right, there's four and five. So any beach loss or dune loss... If it's significant enough to trip a disaster declaration, FEMA will help you out on that.

The other part of that, too, is just the other things that reciprocate from that is we will go from a tourist town to a ghost town for about two to three years while everybody is trying to rebuild to start getting their rentals back. So a lot of concern there with it being two more years. The sooner the better is all I've got to say.

Sir, if honestly, if I, if I could, if I could start right now, if I could start right now, I'd have doing right now, we're doing what we can. Unfortunately, bureaucracy is bureaucracy and you always kind of hold out.

We just, we just want to lay the groundwork for the general public to know that we understand there are other implications that can happen between now and then. So people aren't Monday morning quarterbacking us two and three years from now.

Yes, sir. Understand that perfectly. And we will do everything we can to preserve. the situation we've got through work that we've done like off of PTC8, the plantings, all of those things, continuing monitoring the things to see how we're, if there are things, we've got a little bit of money left over, is there a hotspot that we need to hit next fall? All of those things, I think Fran and I are going to coordinate with very well to make sure we do the most expeditious things, the most economical things, and the town does stay ahead of things where they can and where they can afford to stay ahead of them.

Chris, what does the board need to do to support you and Fran more in this effort? Are there other phone calls, other things we could be doing that we haven't made or need to do?

I think the best thing that we have done is the letter that I've been working with the mayor and the mayor pro tem on, putting that together. I think we have a very succinct position on a town-supported position. All that will come out. I don't know if that's been shared with the entire board or not. That has been very positive. What the mayor has done working with Senator Lazara is great. Our TISPC constituency that went to Raleigh, talking with Carson Smith, because he's our House rep here to make sure we've got folks on both sides, the Senate and the House, that are pushing our bureaucrats forward. to do what they need to do. That is, I've always advised holding off on that legislative push because once you start doing that, people get bowed up. But we've reached a point where it's time to get bowed up.

so you know the other thing too is i'm not trying to put a rosy look i would to mark's point i wish it was happening right now but the other thing too is we've also asked lazar because i talked about it again about having a special fund put aside for us if that goes in there that money will be there for us um and it's another thing because right now with the It's a nice way. What's going on in Raleigh with respect to budgeting and everything else? You never know. That's why I think it's important we get the shallow draft request in, we get everything else in, okay, get the letter out and get it moving. And I think to Mark's point, if it comes down to this becomes a national security issue in terms of that stuff, you never know. I'm assuming, and Connie, don't get mad at me, um teresa batts was saying that they've got a waiver on turtle season for their project they do they're going to do that i'm assuming we is that something that I mean, cause you can get this done a couple of months. You can get this done the summer too. So there is about having two seasons.

So there is a distinct possibility with this time, as we go, as we go through the permit process, that that's a distinct possibility. Um, because you did an EIS for the whole beach. That's always been the problem is that there's not an environmental document. There's usually, there's not a biological opinion to work off of, to,

make that permit adjustment you actually have that in place so yeah that's that's a distinct possibility i mean i'm just throwing it out and back to mark's comment about if it's two seasons versus one season right um and also because of how long this would actually take um it would be more of a finite type of thing so who knows we might be able to get it in before the second season mark this is my question and the great thing about it is if you can do summer work summer work not only

It isn't as critical here because this isn't a dredge working offshore, so the safety factor isn't as big a deal. But because there is such a seasonality to it, what it does is there are dredges that are freed up in the summer, and so the market is more of a buyer's market than it is in the winter.

And I think from the town's point of view, and I hope I'm speaking for the town, is the sooner the better, even if it's in summer or winter. I mean, you have to look at it as a positive. We do it in the summer, at least, then tourists start seeing how much money and time and effort and energy it takes to build these dunes, and maybe they'll start staying off of them more than doing it in the winter when they don't see the work being done. But before you close, I sincerely, from me, would like to say thank you for all the work you have done, you are doing, and you continue to do for this town. Thank you, Chris.

You're welcome. And also, just one point to your credit to back up what Mark just said. If you want to go see what a double dune looks like, go up and look at what Topsail looks like. When they took us up there before, that was a single dune. Now it's already turned into a double dune. And they have been very good about restricting building and everything else up there to protect their dunes. Yes.

We actually have down there, we put in the second dune and then we have a third one that is naturally grown, that has seeded itself. The dune that we put in that was at elevation 12 is now typically at elevation 16 to 18. We have people that are complaining about losing their view from their first floor and have asked us about cutting it down. I like that complaint when I get that one. But we now have a dune in front of that that is almost at elevation 10 in some places.

before you leave that though on the very south end where there used to be 30 foot dunes on the ocean side there they haven't done a project there have they because those dunes are down to about four feet so you're talking about like at serenity point yeah so as you get down past the houses you have to remember over time that that place is has waxed and waned yes but when i was a teenager

All right, Serenity Point didn't exist. You came out the inlet and you could throw a rock and hit those condos. All that land is new land over the past 45 years.

Right, but 20 years ago there were dunes there.

Sure, and we had, like I said, where they are rebuilding the houses at the south end, south of Seavista, prior to Hurricane Fran, there were 15 houses there. And all of those got knocked down. And if you go down there and you look at the... the few lots that haven't been redeveloped, right, you will see in the back of the dune, you will see sand fence posts where the dune was in circa 2005. And all of that, these houses are being built in front of where the sand fencing was in 2005, and they've got 80 to 100 feet of dune in front of

Wow.

So it's, if you have to look at it, you know, people look at it in a finite, we've had somebody that moved in two years ago and was complaining about the loss of dunes at, at Serenity point. And it's like, ma'am, let me show you a map over the past 20 years and see how it's gone and where you are compared to where you were 20 years ago. And that's the one thing that I love to be able to say about that. And hopefully one day I'll be able to say about your beach. Down there, we are at pre-hurricane Fran, not Florence, pre-hurricane Fran conditions. So we have set back erosion in that part of the island 30 years.

By stealing our sand. Is that where it came from? Council? Council, we're going to have to figure out how they're going to give that sand back to us. One grain at a time. Thanks, Chris.

Yes, sir. I'm glad to do it, and thank you for the opportunity.

Appreciate it, Chris. Thank you, Chris.

All right. New business.

Under a request for right-of-way encroachment to construct beach private beach access from you this is the one I think you brought us in the planning board.

I

Yes, I took it to the planning board's last meeting on May 14th, notified Mr. Rao that it would be before the Board of Aldermen today. Unfortunately, he's not available. He has a business meeting in Kansas for eight or nine days for an extended period of time. So I don't know if the board would like to proceed or if you'd like to continue it to your next meeting.

Consensus, wait.

And full disclosure, this is the Ocean City Beach community. Mr. Rao reached out to me via email on April 10th asking me some input. I never responded back, and we haven't had any communication about it because I was gone. But I think we should still afford any citizen that has this sort of an opportunity to present. And if you think he would be agreeable to it and you're agreeable to it, I would make a motion then to table it until the next month's meeting.

Okay.

I would move it till July because the other two are going to be budget meetings this month. Is that okay?

I'm sorry, that's what I meant, the next monthly meeting.

Yeah, he said that.

How long did you say he was going to be out of town? Eight or nine days.

Oh, days, okay.

Okay, well then we don't need to take action.

So I'll make a motion to move this. Second. Okay.

Yep. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Now, here comes the chief.

pay uh... so i'm just seeking permission from the board to apply for the a f g grant uh... we do it every year is for work plan for you know equipment and stuff like that we try not to you know uh... the first year here i was here i applied and we get the uh reimbursement from fema to buy all new air packs which is like a hundred thousand dollars uh so it's heavy hitting equipment you know to replace old outdated stuff so do you have like a because i thought there was a little bit of a town match in there is there not So it depends on what we apply for. Um, if we apply for apparatus and boats and stuff like that, there, there will be a town match, not a match, but a percentage. And it's usually anywhere from 10 to 20% until I actually fill out the application. It doesn't tell me what our match will be. So once I have the information, I can provide it to the town manager on that. Um,

Because that would be important for the board, 10% of a million is one number, 10% of 100,000 is another number.

Absolutely. So I can't apply more than a million dollars is the most I can apply for due to the size of our town because we have a population of less than 100,000. So we're capped at a million dollars.

Okay. And just real quick, you just used the B word. I'm assuming you're not applying for a grant for a boat.

Uh, this is actually the grant we've applied for. We've included the boat on in, in the last four years.

But that was the, not the big boat. That was a smaller boat.

No, sir. That was, that's been the boat every year.

The 400,000 vote. Yes, sir. And they've given it to us. Never.

No, no. It's always no until you ask. Okay.

I'm going, but I'm going back to her point though, is, is.

If, if they said yes, we'd have to come up with 40 grand.

yes ma'am and so do we have that currently in the budget anywhere for this year we don't have anything in the budget that's why we're bringing it to the board um there's there's no there's and we have there are dollars in contingency funds that we can move right the question becomes on something like that is a discussion about if and this is my personal opinion if we're talking you know you know my feeling on getting a fire boat um because that's something you'd have to demonstrate to me is actually how many fires you're going to be able to put out on that. Because looking at it, you know, and that's the kind of stuff. My point, though, is if it's $400,000 and we've got to put $50,000 for a fire boat, not knowing what the maintenance and everything is, if this is replace the boat that you've got or jet skis, that's a completely different number. So maybe I can ask council that if we apply for something, Until we accept it.

Well, it's going to replace our current boat. We're not keeping a fleet of boats, right?

Well, my other concern is if we are getting the grant and we have to come up with $40,000, are they covering the other $360,000? Yes, sir. So you're getting a $400,000 boat for $40,000?

Right. Do we then have ongoing maintenance of $45,000 a year or $30,000 a year for maintenance for a boat that we have unbudgeted? Right.

But we have a boat, and we have that budgeted now, so this would be a replacement if we do boats. We're also saying this is for more equipment, not just a boat.

We're hyper-focused on a boat. The equipment stuff is fine. My issue, though, is, and you know my position on this, i have a fundamental problem understanding why we need a firefighting boat okay to me that's you have to come to the board and say when i look at the stuff in the bay and i've talked to people on the bay you can't get to my house with a fire truck well it's like calling it a fire truck right um it does more purpose than just the fire truck

So the boat serves more purposes than just the fire boat, right?

That's just what it's called. Let me finish first, please. If what you're going back, what Kip said is technically correct but not accurate. We do not have a fire boat right now. We have a boat that we use that's about $100,000, right? To replace what you have in kind right now is how much money?

Yeah, it's about $100,000.

All right. Now we're talking about a $400,000 fire boat. Okay. My company paid for those up in Boston. The maintenance on these things is off the charts in terms of how you maintain them and everything else and the use of that. Okay. If you're asking my opinion, Emily, one person here is to replace what you've got now, I would have no problem with it all. All right. We're talking to county about doing stuff to take the step, to take that from a hundred thousand dollar boat to a $400,000 boat, I think needs to come before the board with more detail like you did with the fire truck.

Yeah, so on this grant, I only have 30 days to apply for this.

And the grant, when you apply for it and you say SCBAs and gear and this and that and a fireboat, they won't say no to everything because of the fireboat. They'll just say, all right, we'll give you the grant for this gear, this gear, this gear, and not the fireboat.

It's just like the air packs, right? So the air packs were $120,000. They said, we'll allot you $86,000.

Yeah, that's good. But those are things, what I'm saying, that's replacing current stuff, right? And I go back to Mark's point is, if you know for sure they're not going to give you 100% of what you asked for, then make sure you get the stuff that you really want on the front end.

Oh, absolutely, yeah. Another concern, too, is if the DOD does step in and want to make this a bigger inlet with bigger boats and bigger airplanes coming in and off, we're going to need something in the future, looking at 10 or 15 years down the road.

But I don't, I just look at every angle. We're getting into way too much detail. I think the consensus is to let him apply for stuff and then see what comes back. What I'm saying to you, can I just finish, please? Okay, is, and again, it's because I've gone down this path and how expensive some of these things get, is a fire boat's not going to be able to put out anything on the beach. It's all going to have to be in the bay. You can tell me that you can get that thing in two inches of water to put out a fire on that side. What I'd like to see is what is the plans for that. There is no other firefighting boat that I'm aware of For us right now, what we have is a rescue boat and I'm a hundred percent behind replacing what you got now. Cause I don't think it's sufficient.

Yeah.

Right. The difference to me is now that you're gearing this thing up to be a firefighting boat, which is completely different than a fire rescue boat.

We're talking about, I mean, that's just a title of, I mean, because it's under the fire department, right? I mean, I can just say boat, I can take fire off the front of it. I can just say boat.

I think he was talking about the functionality of it. It's different. It's an added functionality. It's the firefighting portion of it. Like he says, a fire truck is called a fire truck because it It's owned by the fire department, and they go to medical emergencies. It's not a burning house if they go into a heart attack or go into any other type of medical emergency. It's a vehicle used to get there. So I think we're conflating and calling. We're hyper-focused on the – and I'm sorry. I didn't mean to step over you, but please.

I'm only talking about the gear that sits on the front of this boat that's on tugboats that we financed before my company. And those are completely different types of boats. Go ahead.

Okay, a couple things. There's a reason you want to go from a $100,000 boat to a $400,000 boat. I don't think I've heard that reason.

Yes, ma'am. You were not here. You were on your trip. I was traveling.

Thank you. It was good. Good. Glad you enjoyed it. So you did that big presentation. But if they've turned you down for the bigger boat for a couple of years, is there a better chance of you getting approved for something else this year?

Yeah, so we're going to apply for the other stuff, the equipment that we need as well. Because in these things, everything's based off of priority, high, medium, and low. A boat is medium. So when they have... 500 departments submitting high priorities obviously they're going to fund those right okay um it's just an option to add to the application okay um obviously the higher needs that we need are going on the application first and if they fill in those slots and the boat doesn't make it all right so out of the things that you think we actually might get out of this grant

And we still have to come up with some kind of contribution to that if we get the funds, correct?

Correct. Well, not on all that stuff. No, no, no. Just the big ticket items, boats, trucks, apparatus, stuff like that.

The rest of it we get in the grant at 100%. Correct. Okay. Thank you.

Some of the stuff, but we do like two or three so we don't hit the town with a $300,000 bill. That's a normal response. Absolutely.

You did say you do this annually? Yes. Do we just need to start making that point in the budget so that we have that in the future? But I would make a motion, but I think it would be best with me having served on the Volunteer Fire Department not to make the motion.

I'll make a motion. I'll make a motion that we authorize staff to apply for the Assistance to Firefighter Grant, the AFG. I'll second.

And I will say we're still waiting on a response from last year's applications.

Have fun with that. There you go.

All right. We're now at open forum. How does everybody else vote? I thought I just said all in favor. I thought you said aye. Okay. Aye.

Open forum.

Yeah.

Okay. So we have one sign up for open forum. It is Mr. Anders.

Mr. Anders, 136 Segal. I want to definitely thank you for talking first about the north end up there. When I moved here three years ago, I knew nothing about it. 90% of the people that go up there that I walk constantly every two days up there, they have no idea what is up there. There's nothing telling them what's up there. It's sad to see families, 50, 60 people backed up there and families sitting up there having their usual nice day and their children are up there at the water three feet away from the biggest danger of their life. I think if you go look at the statistics for that 300-yard area, we have more deaths in that 300-yard area than anywhere in the coast of North Carolina. You look at five in the last five years. I think there's eight, somebody told me, in the last 10 years. There's no real total fix to it. We all know that. But starting point, as we mentioned a while ago, a large, large billboard sign when you first drive into Access 3 that has all this on it. Danger, rip currents, danger, drop off 20 feet maybe right here. All these dangers. These people have no idea what they're sitting up there all day long, what's in front of them. We have little signs, yeah, that's behind it. Most people don't recognize them. Most people don't even realize they're there when they're facing the water most of the day. So it's not a fix. It's just something I think we've got to get it out boldly in front of these people that drive through Access 3 or walk through Access 3 that you are entering a danger point. We charge these people $20-something a day. So we're promoting that area. We've got parking lots. We're promoting that area. And they have no clue what they're stepping into up there. And this is not one of these we can push down the road. We've got to do something now to bring this to a large, hey, guys, you're entering a danger zone. It's a public safety hazard, but it's a great little place for people to go. We all understand that. So I just want to make sure we do not table this like we do a lot of other options. Like we talked about the speed limit thing on Seagull. Somebody's going to get hurt on Seagull Lane. There were 60-something people there two weeks ago walking that road. Every day people walk dogs and stuff. We've got to be proactive on a couple of these public safety things to protect people that don't protect themselves. Thank you.

Is that it? Okay. Attorney's report. Jeff.

Jeff Meyer, 2224 New River Inlet, Unit 138. I know Tom Leonard was very active in the federal flood and the Cobra, and I think the battalion would drop over to Larry, because he had been the one speaking on it. Can you tell me who on the board or what we're doing to continue to pursue that?

We don't, hang on a second, we don't respond stuff to that. We'll handle it in the comments at the end. All right. Okay.

Thank you.

If we get into this back and forth, it doesn't work, but I'll be handling it. I'll be talking about it when I do my comments.

Uh, nothing to report.

Mr. Mayor Mark, uh, condolences. Thank you. Condolences to the family and a great job to the fire department. Uh, again, that is a issue that, uh, has been going on since I've been here for 10 years. Uh, I used to work up there, um, I had life jackets with me and my ambulance when I was sitting there doing the parking. I pulled two or three out before the fire department ever got there. It is dangerous. It is hazardous. Please, if you rent, make sure that you let your renters know and keep them educated. And as well as if you're in the area, just give a gentle reminder. Sometimes people do not take... constructive criticism very well. When you tell them that it's very dangerous, they will yell at you and tell you to leave them alone. I've been down that road. Um, but again, great job to our staff, police, fire, public works surrounding mutual aid departments. Um, and, uh, I know somebody had said that we received a call, a fire call and we weren't able to respond. But the fact of the matter is, life's life goes before property. Uh, that's why we have mutual aids. Surf City was able to respond to the other issue. So again, I just want to say thank you to everybody involved. Thanks to people come into this room. Now I see more people and faces coming into these meetings. Uh, there is a jump of meeting next week. Thursday will be there to discuss some of our road issues. Other than that, thank you. Great.

Mark stole some of my thunder obviously thank you to our public safety for this past week and getting the alert last month for a near drowning where an officer went in and was able to help rescue a person that the officer sustained some injury and is fortunately recovered to my understanding but Talking about events, uh, so far this month, um, obviously we attended the cops and canines event here at town hall. That was very well attended a great job chief. I don't know how many people you had in attendance, but when I was here, it looked very well attended, very well received. And I thought it was a great way to showcase our police department and our canine units. Um, so thank you. Thank you to all the staff. The town staff was out in force to help support that event as well. So I thought it was a very successful event and I hope that we plan to do that again next year. On May 28th, I attended the Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission to the public comment earlier. The Cobra issues and those things are still being addressed. There's a lot that I could go into. I'd be happy to discuss it with you or any other constituents to save time and be a little bit brief. Beyond that, I've obviously stayed engaged with some of our residents and some of my constituents, including some recent meetings. Ocean City Beach Citizens Council had our first meeting of the season, so discussing neighborhood priorities, town priorities, and ongoing historical preservation efforts. I'd like to thank the constituents who have continued to reach out to me directly over the past month to share their concerns and ideas and neighborhood issues. I've tried to always address those and address each person. Sometimes I'm a little bit slow in doing that. To juggle this, this month I've been fostering a 10-week-old puppy. So from Long Road Home Rescue out of Wilmington, anyone who knows that's raised a puppy, it's basically like having a toddler around. My days are spent constantly pulling random objects out of his mouth, frantically checking what he snuck off to, pulling random objects out of his mouth, frantically checking where he snuck off to. preventing accidents that occur inside the house, and trying to preserve my shoes and flip-flops from becoming new chew toys. So I've been a little busy with that, but I do strongly encourage anyone to, this pup is an amazing pup, help rescue our pets. As Mark kind of addressed switching gears, obviously it's important that we discuss the safety of our visitors and residents here. We're saddened by the drowning that occurred this past week. I'd like to publicly recognize Marquis Andre Page Jr., who lost his life in this absolute tragedy. It was a tragedy for his family, and it's a tragedy for our community. My understanding is he was trying to save a four-year-old family member. and uh... succeeded but lost his life in remit you know we believe uh... no is is lost out to sea out in the end that we're not sure but you know it's heartbreaking it's a stark reminder of how dangerous our waters can be uh... and how easy it is for visitors and long time residents alike to sometimes get a little too complacent so improving our safety messaging and enhancing public awareness about the inlet hazards and rip currents are an absolute priority of mine over the next couple of months. We must do everything in our power to ensure that our public communications are clear, targeted, and highly visible so that we can prevent another tragedy like this on our beaches. Upcoming events, everybody knows, you know, the island, we've got a bunch of things going on. Surf City is hosting Soundside Wellness at 9 a.m. to noon this Saturday. There's a Flag Day ceremony Friday, June 12th in Surf City. Concert series starting up down in Topsail Beach as well. And I won't say too much other than turtle talks are going on, and I'm sure somebody else will mention that in their report. Finally, looking forward into July, and I know we'll have time to discuss it at the July 1 meeting, but I did want to mention that the jazz festival is coming up. Tickets are still on sale, so please, if you're interested and want to support our community, go online, purchase those tickets. So July 3rd through the 5th, it's a major cultural event. cornerstone for our region, celebrating and preserving the rich legacy and history of Ocean City community. Saturday, July 4th, in the morning, there is a Learn and Hike historical event. It's a truly unique opportunity to hear the real history of Ocean City directly from Mr. Ken Chestnut, whose father was the pioneer force who founded this community. It's an incredible education event, and I highly recommend checking it out before the afternoon holidays.

Where is that? Because I want to make sure I go to that.

I think they're meeting up at the church, but you have to register online because it really does get large and unmanageable. So you get online. They are charging $10, and that's just to try and recoup some different things. Perfect. No, I'd really like to do that. If anybody has any questions, please feel free to reach out to me as well, and that will conclude my report.

Thank you. I missed the May meeting. I was traveling. Had a good time. Glad to be back. I'd like to encourage everyone that's an owner on the island to check to make sure you know where your reentry permit is should we have a storm. And I look forward to hearing more about our storm preparation next month and getting something scheduled for the public. I have been responding to a couple resident issues since I've been back. And please buy your Jazz Festival tickets. It is a tremendous community event and really good artists show up for this event. So please do that and please watch your speed along the straightaways on Island Drive. Some of us in the straightaways don't like to be the human shield when we go out and we really need people to be watching that with all the beach people crossing over. And that's what I have. Thank you.

I like calling you pro tem. That's fine.

I've been called much worse. As far as what is going on with COBRA and our other coastal issues, I went up to Washington, D.C. with a group of the Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission Talked to some of the legislature slaters up there and also I'm in direct contact with the mayor and I are in direct contact with our lobbyists all the time and Also working with the with the state as well. We've been Rick will probably talk more about that as well, but we went to Raleigh and we've we've visited an awful lot of elected officials so um also i want to commend both the fire chief and the police chief for their professionalism uh as they are on tv representing the town um both for the holiday welcome and for the unfortunate event at the at the inlet your professionalism, compassion, everything. It made me very proud, very proud to have you guys representing the town. Thank you so much. And I agree that the board will be working on discussing and working on ideas to try to bring more awareness uh... to the issues down there i know that it's you know i live right i live right down there and it's a great place for especially there's an awful lot of uh... people with mobility issues and people that are maybe a little more elderly that they pull up their trucks they do it that's the only place right around here that they can actually just pull out there access the beach to go fishing it doesn't change the families and stuff to who are doing want to do more recreation stuff than just fish so uh... i somebody on the board this morning said we need to let them know that is that's not the ocean that is a river that is a river and it is not a safe river but will will the board will be discussing this this isn't anything we're gonna let go On a lighter note, Topsail Island now has 22 turtle nests. Yeah. Mr. Fred Fontana found the last one this morning, the latest one. Of those 22 nests, it's not a competition. However, we're in the lead with 12. This is a pretty, we've got quite a few this year compared to what we would normally be at at this time. Also, we do have turtle talks in here in this room every Tuesday at nine o'clock. Tell your friends, tell your family. It's a great thing. It only lasts about 45 minutes, but it's good for all ages. And I hope everybody has a safe and happy summer and 4th of July that'll be coming up in Ocean City and everything else. Thank you.

And I'll do it briefly. On the COBRA stuff, we're actually more aggressive and much more involved than we were before. We've actually taken two different tacks on this thing in terms of dealing both with... with Murphy and now Rausser. And I can tell you that between the two of us, and Larry had a hold of it before, We're taking different tact in terms of getting the things that we need. I'll hit this briefly because we're trying not to put it in there, but Congressman Rausser actually has been successful in putting our legislation into an appropriations bill for the first time ever. And that is... When we got our call from our lobbyist, if she could have sung a different song, she was that much over the top because that makes a completely different path than what we've been doing before. When we stepped in, and Larry stepped into it, and then Connie stepped in as well, We decided to start like, okay, so why for years has this not gone anywhere? Spent a lot of time talking to them. I was at a fundraiser for Murphy last week. He's all in in terms of helping us directly as his rouser. and the people at the state, including Senator Lazara. So I can tell you, now dealing directly with our lobbyists and what she's been able to do for us, and that's something, frankly, we ought to consider next year, maybe in a budget amendment, is to perhaps hire more of those people, lobbyists, for us in terms of the cost and the benefit. The tack that she took was not attacked at the town was taken before, um, to get this in the appropriations bill. And, um, I know Kip and Connie are in this, but we're, we've been asked not to make this a, a huge issue. Um, uh, because that's the appropriation is basically the budget bill. Um, so we're now, you know, it's the old Nancy Pelosi. You'll know what's in the bill when they pass it. Um, so we're hoping that this path will work. Um, Other than that, I met with a number of the county commissioners. They're looking at a semi-revenue neutral. They're very concerned about their stuff. They're actually having to dip into their rainy day fund, I want to call it that, which we have not done. Other towns have done that. We've been very good at making sure that we've been fiscally responsible, paying off debt, as Wayne talked about before. We got one more payment and then we've gotten rid of 15, 18 million dollars, saved millions of dollars in interest. The money that the county is giving us on the fire tax, they've committed to keep going forward with at least what we've got now. It was talking about getting rid of that. and discussions that we had with the commissioners directly. We're also moving forward with some of the beach safety stuff that I know the fire chief is working on as well. But like everybody else, when you sat in their meeting last week, 85% of their budget is fixed by law. We're in that little 15% in terms of what they're willing to do. And they are very committed to this beach and this town. And I think that, you know, Kip, you've met with them as well. The attitude they have towards this town is we are now their beach town, we are now their beach community, and they are willing to put money and resources into this town, which they've never done to the level that they're doing before. So with that, what I'd like to do is get a motion to go into closed session. I don't think it'll be long, but I'd like to have a motion to go into closed. Oh, what? Go ahead. Motion to go into closed session to consult with the attorney or... Go ahead. Okay.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. We're in closed session. Motion to come out of closed session.

Motion to come out of closed session.

Second. No decisions were made in closed session. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you all.