Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Commissioners do hereby proclaim April 10, 2026 as local news day in the town of Nags Head and commend its observance to all residents. This is the first day of April, 2026. Having heard the proclamation, a motion to adopt would be in order. So moved. So I have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. I opposed. Thank you. Our next proclamation is for Dark Sky Week, April 13 through 20th. a proclamation supporting the dark skies bright stars initiative. Mayor, yes. I think Chris Trembley was gonna make a few remarks. Thank you, Chris.

Oh, I need to look at my printed agenda this morning. Not not the one on the computer. Sorry about that.

Morning, mayor and commissioners. Thank you for giving me the opportunity today to speak to you about the dark skies bright stars initiative and the progress that we have been making. We are going into our second year and I feel that we are making great community gaining great community support winning the hearts and minds of the community. For instance, Nest has been a fantastic partner in the community outreach that we have been providing with monthly dark sky sampling and testings that we do um each month uh on a new moon. They have been vital in reaching out to the Outer Banks and Nagad fishing peers and advocating for amber lighting. Joe Costello, our deputy planning director, has brought in his GIS skills and has created and maintained our online mapping of dark sky and dark sky quality. Also want to say thank you to Roberta for um really carrying like Facebook and marketing and how we present our materials out to the community. Paige Griffin, our event coordinator, has played a vital role in the community engagement in doing what she does best, event planning. She has supported dark sky demos at Dowy's Park during the farmers market. With that said, the town will be hosting a stargazing party event for the Dark Skies Bright Stars initiative on April 18th, 7:30 to 9:30 at Town Park off of Barn Street. We have caring contests set up for the school and we will be posting the pictures and giving away prizes for the winners. We will be handing out these red flashlights. I think everybody's got one.

Mhm.

The red flashlights and lanyards to the first 50 kids to the event. Um creating engagement for teaching about longwavelength lighting and how that, you know, long wavelength lighting is good for the environment. And um hopefully they'll use them on the beaches this summer and create more information about um lighting. Um we'll have drinks for the kids. U also the cups that you see which has a QR code that goes directly to the Dark Skies Initiative page which has the mapping on it. Um we're encouraging the community to bring blankets and chairs to gaze at the stars. Um it's gearing up to be a fantastic familyfriendly event. Um, and without further ado, the proclamation.

Thank you and appreciate your all your work on this, Chris. Thank you very much.

Whereas the town of Nagshead recognizes that the preservation of the night sky is essential for the protection of the natural environment, human health, safety, and the quality of life of its residents and visitors. And whereas excessive and misdirected artificial light contributes to light pollution, which negatively impacts wildlife, disrupts ecosystems, waste energy, and obscures views of the stars and planets. And whereas dark skies are essential for the health of nocturnal species, including sea turtles, migratory birds, and other wildlife that rely on natural darkness for survival. And whereas scientific research indicates that exposure to artificial light at night can disrupt human circadian rhythms, contributing to sleep disorders, and other health issues. And whereas the preservation of dark skies contributes to tourism, recreational activities, and the overall enjoyment of the natural environment, which are vital to the town's economy and community identity. And whereas the town of Nags Head has launched the dark skies bright stars initiative to raise awareness about the importance of reducing light pollution and to encourage responsible outdoor lighting practices. And whereas the town of Nagshead is committed to promoting public education, voluntary residential light evaluation, and sky quality monitoring, particularly on new moon nights to better understand and mitigate the effects of light pollution. And whereas the town encourages businesses, residents, and visitors to be respectful neighbors and allow others the peaceful enjoyment of their property and to utilize fully shielded outdoor lighting fixtures, use lighting only when necessary, and choose warmer color temperature lighting to minimize glare and light trespass. Therefore, we, the town of Nagsad Board of Commissioners, do hereby proclaim support for the town's Dark Skies Bright Stars Initiative and Dark Sky Week, April 13 through 20, 2026, and

encourages the community to join in efforts to protect and preserve the beauty and integrity of the night sky. Be it further resolved that the town will continue to work with local organizations, businesses, and residents to promote best lighting practices, enhance public education, and support efforts aimed at reducing light pollution. This being the first day of April, 2026. Having heard the proclamation, a motion to adopt would be in order. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying I. I.

Opposed. Thank you. Uh our next proclamation is on tickborne disease awareness month. Whereas tickborne diseases including Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, awakiosis and other waterbornne illnesses pose significant public health risk in North Carolina. And whereas the state of North Carolina has recognized April as tick and mosquito awareness month to promote prevention, early detection and education. regarding vector-borne illnesses. And whereas certain tickborne diseases, including Lyme disease, are serious bacterial infections that can affect the joints, heart, nervous system, and other organs if left untreated. And whereas tick bites may go unnoticed due to their small size and symptoms may not always include a recognizable rash, increasing the importance of v vigilance and medical evaluation when illness occurs. And whereas early diagnosis and prompt medical treatment significantly reduce the risk of long-term complications associated with tickorn disease. And whereas prolonged or untreated tickborne illness can result in significant physical hardship and may also contribute to emotional and mental health challenges for affected individuals and their families. And whereas the town of Nags Head coastal and maritime forest environment creates conditions where tick exposure may occur through outdoor work, recreation, and daily activities among residents, visitors, and employees. And whereas awareness, personal protective measures, routine tick checks, and proper tick removal techniques are effective tools in reducing the risk of infection. And whereas fostering an informed and supportive community encouraging individuals to seek timely medical care and helps reduce the stigma associated with tickbornne illnesses and related health challenges. Therefore, we the

town of Nagad Board of Commissioners do hereby proclaim April 2026 as tickborn disease awareness month and encourages all residents, visitors, and employees to practice preventive measures. Remain vigilant when engaging in outdoor activities and support continued education regarding tickborn illnesses. This being the first day of October, 2026. Having heard the proclamation, a motion would be in order. So move. I have a motion. Is there a second? I have a motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying I. I.

I. Opposed. Thank you. And finally, um, but not least importantly, child abuse prevention month. Whereas children are vital to our state's future success, prosperity, and quality of life, as well as being our most valuable assets. And whereas all children deserve safe, stable, and nurturing homes and communities that foster their healthy growth and development. And whereas child abuse and neglect are community responsibilities affecting both the current and future quality of life of our communities. And whereas communities that provide parents with social support support, knowledge and parenting and child development and the resources they need to cope with stress and nurture their children help ensure that all children grow to their full potential. And whereas effective child abuse prevention strategies succeed because of partnerships between citizens, human traff, schools, faith communities, health care providers, civic organizations, law enforcement agencies, and the business community. Therefore, we the town of Nagsad Board of Commissioners do hereby proclaim April 2026 as child abuse prevention month and call upon all citizens, community agencies, faith groups, medical facilities, elected leaders, and businesses to in increase their participation in our efforts to support families, thereby preventing child abuse, and strengthening the communities in which we live. This being the first day of April 2026. Having heard the proclamation, a motion to adopt would be in order.

So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. All in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Opposed. Thank you. Uh that brings us next to uh public comment. And we welcome attorney Wamble. Good morning. Good morning. And uh I will turn the meeting over to her.

All right. Thank you. Um so we've reached the item on the agenda for public comment. This is the time for citizens to come to the podium um raise their concerns or just give um general comment to the board. Um your time is limited to five minutes um a person and if you come to the uh podium if you'll please give your name, your address um and then um they'll the clerk will start a timer for you. Um please know that this is a time um it's not this is not an open dialogue between you and the board and generally they don't respond although they may respond later at or at another time. So, if there's anyone um here um who wants to give public comment, if you'll come up to the podium, I prepared a speech. I apologize, but I would like to read from it so I don't go off and I try to stay within my time limit.

That's fine. If you'll just give us your name and your address to start and then you can go right ahead. My name is Lori Patrick, 1106 Duck Road, Duck, North Carolina. I'm the owner of a home in two lots in the Pelican Park subdivision in South Nagsad. I'm here today with my neighbor Crystal Mishio, who also owns a home in Pelican Park. I have vacationed and lived in the Outer Banks since the 1970s, and I've observed the town of Mags Head take very decisive action to address unsafe structures and enforce code requirements when public safety was at risk. Today I'm here because I have a very serious public safety concern involving a boardwalk structure located on my property. This structure is now more than 50% buried in sand. Although this structure is very often buried in sand, it has never been properly maintained, and as a result, it is in a significantly deteriorated condition, including rotted missing boards, splintered handrails, and popping nails. I have owned and operated my own real estate company for 50 years. I was a licensed registered contractor for many of those years. In my professional opinion, I believe the structure presents a significant safety hazard and a potential liability risk. And I really do have to question why the town ordinances are not being enforced. Why hasn't the structure been condemned? And why hasn't an order for its removal been issued. I want to be clear, this is not about a private dispute or litigation. business is about public safety, consistent enforcement of town ordinances and rules, and ensuring that all structures meet applicable requirements. In December 2025, I requested a meeting with town officials and asked to review any permits associated with the structure, which was built before I acquired this property. I was advised that I would receive a follow-up within a few days, but as of today, I have not received any information. I've made multiple requests for clarification regarding the permitting and inspection of this structure. I've been told that a permit may have been issued in 2014, but I've received no documentation to verify this. Additionally, I have not seen evidence

of a final inspection or certificate of usage. So, no proof of permit, no documented final inspection, no certificate of usage. This makes this structure non-compliant. And yet, this non-compliant, unsafe structure continues to be used through present day, which not only increases my concern as we approach this 2026 rental season, it also increases my personal liability. I am aware other structures like Janette's Pier are proactively inspected, and when conditions are found making them unsafe, they're shut down. The action that this town just took with Janette's Pier demonstrates this town's commitment to protecting the public from unsafe structures. And yet, why has this town acted so differently concerning the structure on my property? Janette's pier was permitted. It did have a final inspection. It does have a usage permit. It is a compliant structure. It It has also been regularly maintained, so it has a history of being a safe structure. You cannot say any of this about the structure on my property. I have requested a qualified inspector from this town to meet me on site to evaluate the structure, but I have had no followup. I'm aware that a person in a town vehicle did go to this site. This person remained in the vehicle for three minutes and then left. I have spoken to Jonathan Kirks who's a town enforcement officer. Mr. Kirks admit to me has only been disposition for a year. He does not know all the codes he's responsible for enforcing. I believe a year is a long time to learn these codes and this is very relevant to whether this matter has been properly evaluated under applicable regulations. Given the visible condition of the structure on my property that is buried in sand with its prolonged exposure to harsh coastal conditions without any maintenance, I believe a formal in-person inspection was mandated. Although now with what just occurred with Janette's pier, I believe a formal order to immediately cease and desist usage of this deteriorating structure and a formal order to remove it is both reasonable and necessary. I believe anyone living in the Outer Banks, especially if their home is anywhere near the ocean, knows the

condition these wooden structures would be in if they're covered with wet sand month after month after month for 12 years. A lot of norers have hovered on our coast and done a lot of damage to our properties. I cannot stress this enough. The structure on my property has never been properly man maintained. I know I'm repeating myself, but the structure is not safe. And again, it is non-compliant. Someone is going to get hurt. This isn't a question of if someone is going to get hurt, it's a question of when. So, in conclusion, I am aware that a closed session is going to take place following this public hearing and the issue of this boardwalk is going to be discussed. I am asking that the town at that time take decisive action to address this unsafe, non-compliant structure and shut it down just like they just did with Janette's pier. I am asking for the town to order its removal. I am asking for consistent enforce enforcement of town ordinances and rules in a fair transparent transparent manner. I am asking that all structures meet applicable requirements or in the alternative. I am asking the town in this closed session to acknowledge that it is exposing me to very serious liability and litigation that I will suffer at the age of almost 70 irre irreparable harm from. I would like a letter from the town acknowledging this within the next 10 days. I do need this to be a matter of public record and I thank you for your time and listening to me.

All right. Thank you. Is there anyone else who I think I saw gentleman on the back row? Yep. If you'll come on up. You'll start by giving us your name.

My name is Michael Kelly. I live at 436 Villa Dunes Drive and I've lived in the town of Nags Head since May of 1972. Uh, I would like to take the time to thank the town of Nags Head and for all its support and all the time it has given to us for the Outbacks community especially and that we're very happy that this year we were able to complete our 35th annual St. Patrick's Day parade. the uh we have had two parades that have not because of COVID and health concerns that we have not uh we do put that in the 35. We don't uh abuse it. We just admit that we had to adjust. Uh I would like to thank very much the Megan Lambert who not only is here and serving us in a great capacity but she also allows us to put the u viewing stand and uh also Megan Vaughn who both ladies were here to uh assist us this year and give us direction. Uh also, uh the support of Miss Harrison, Mr. Sanders, and Mayor Cahoun is also uh recognized. So, we had approximately 8 to 10 officials at the reviewing stand, others from Kittyhawk, Southern Shores, and Duck and picking out the uh prize winners for the uh parade. Uh we also are very fortunate to have the Nagsad police which is became very organized and did a great job with the barricades and everything else. And I would like to thank uh Chief Perry Hail and all of his staff. Thank you

very much Barry uh for I'm not allowed to say that. I apologize. U the Nagad Public Works did a great job. did two miles of barricades up and down Virginia Dair Trail and had a great uh post parade cleaning and then something that doesn't usually hasn't happened but has been rose to the uh completion and doing a good job with uh we have not only Andy Garmin but uh we got Brit Ney Phillips and Katie the deputy clerk who've done a great job of assisting working with Kelly's Outer Banks uh the catering our catering uh portion and did a wonderful wonderful job. And then finally, we have uh an old school 20-year person that had been committed to uh the town of Nag Head being Bob Mueller, and he has done now approximately 28 years of running running the parade and doing an excellent job. So, we thank Bob very much and he offers condolences for not being here today. So also um at this time we're going to ready to what?

Yeah, we're ready to we're going to So is there anything else? I guess I should ask the uh anything else that should I can I say? We're gonna You're gonna share the video. That's fine. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you very much. St. Patrick's Day parade. 35 years of love.

Thank Thank you. And I have two two uh staff members that have done that did an exceptional job in competition with Miss Phillips and Miss Garmin. They were that they were that good. But we have Maryanne Newman here today. And we also have Jeff Valentine. And I think Jeff's got a little a few few statements. Thank you.

Good morning, mayor and council members. Uh my name is Jeff Valentine. I live at 2005 Amoral Drive in Nexit. Um, I just wanted to give you give everyone a little depth as to what the parade produces. So, quote unquote there. So, you can start with any one of them. There's a Facebook page dedicated directly to the parade. Um, putting up pictures, announcements, things like that. uh directions, people from out of town requesting um recommendations for places to stay, etc. like that. The coverage over the past 28 days was 200 and I believe that's 92,000. 921 people have viewed a picture or postings on that page. Um many of them from out of town. Um the videos that were the video that you just watched was also viewed by about 6,77 people. Um the contacts with this basically it's you can call them views whether they scan or you're just looking 292,000's a lot. Um can you switch to one or the other?

Okay. We took aerial uh the aerial drone footage from the parade and I took screenshots going south and north of Admiral and not including right at Admiral which was quite a grouping of people. Uh, northbound was AI an AI headcount basically program. Took the screenshots in there and approximated there were approximately 6,300 people northbound alone from Admiral or yes from Admiral and approximately 9,000 southbound. So you're talking about 15,000 people.

Um, and again it's approximate but more than guessing which which we've had in previous years. There hasn't been anything to really back that up. Um, knowing how important the parade is to everyone here, um, and again, like Mike said, we appreciate everyone's help with this um, and aid with this. We look forward to speaking to the town and the tourism bureau who we spoke to briefly yesterday in the near future and to discuss the future of the parade. So, thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else for public comment? Yes.

Hi, I'm Karine Saunders um with Outer Banks Insider and I'm an unincorporated DARE resident, but I'm just here today to invite the full board and um Nag said residents in general to local news day. Um thank you all for um accepting the proclamation that I submitted. I have submitted those to all of the local governments. If you haven't heard of local news day before, it's because this is its first year ever. Um Montana Free Press um actually launched this initiative and North Carolina has really taken it up across the state. Um we're having NC news cafes in various locations um spearheaded by NC local. Um I am organizing the local one that's in Nags Head actually at Wave Writers. So, it's Friday, um, April the 10th from 9 to 11:00 a.m. and you can come and have coffee on us and it's just a time of casual conversations, meet the journalists who are working hard um, in public service for you all and hope to see you there. Um, we'll have different news organizations. I think there's about seven from Curry Tuck to Ochre Coke that will be represented that I've reached out to and everyone is going to attend. Um, so yeah, we'll hope to see you at local news day. Thank you guys. Thank you. Is there anyone else who wanted to provide comment to the board? I think that is it.

All right. Great. Thank you everyone. Um thanks for everybody who's contributing so much to the to the town of Nags Head in so many various ways. We really we really appreciate it. Uh that brings us next to our consent agenda which you have before you with five items and a motion would be in order. So move. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Opposed.

Thank you. U. That brings us to reports and recommendations from the planning board uh and the planning director and we'll call on Director Wyatt, please. Thank you so much. Uh good morning, mayor and commissioners. I will um just touch on a couple of items in the director's report this morning and be happy to go into more detail um on any of these if requested. So, with regard to the planning board, uh their meeting on March 17th, they looked at three items. Um in particular, the Outer Banks Hospital request uh was pretty straightforward. It was focused on a minor parking reduction um needed to um provide some operational improvements. They provided a parking analysis to that parking reduction. Um the planning board voted unanimously to recommend approval um of that special use as it was presented. Uh the board the planning board also reviewed and recommended approval of um a proposed text amendment to establish a use restaurant waiting lounge. Um that item did generate a lot of good discussion particularly around connectivity uh between the buildings um and how the use functions operationally um if you have two buildings as part of

that unified development plan. Um the third item is they reviewed a special use permit to um essentially consider approval of the unified development plan for Blue Moon and uh the property just south of it for the purpose of um creating a restaurant waiting lounge. Um also our deputy planning director Joe Costello provided some updates on the Estrin Shoreline management plan. Um the board of adjustments uh they did not meet in the month of March. Um we've gone several months now without any variances or appeals. Um so I hope I didn't jinx that. Have something to present next month. But um the septic health advisory committee um they continue to really focus on trying to increase participation in the septic health program. Um we We have a postcard style flyer that we have sent out um over the years many many times. So um staff updated that with some of the newer information. Um the increased rebate um to 250 for septic pumpouts, things of that nature. All of that was included um on this outreach. We used access design and that should be going out soon townwide. So hopefully everybody receives that in the mail. Um, I will say that we do recognize there's still some hesitation from property owners um, regarding the fact that this program is voluntary and it's there to support and educate, not an enforcement mechanism. Um, I was giving a presentation for a community event recently and we heard from people in the audience that they were a little fearful of inviting the town onto their property

to do a septic inspection um for for fear that they might find something else or report something else. And I just want to reiterate um our environmental planner Connor Twitty, he handles this program. Um, when he comes to your property, the only thing he cares about is your septic system. he doesn't care about some extra papers or anything like that. You just want to make sure your uh your septic system is working well. Um and we tried to hit on that in our flyer as well. Um we also recently received approval for the division of water infrastructure zero interest um 0% interest loan program uh for that scope of work and we have a presentation on that coming up next. and the septic health advisory committee. Their next meeting is going to be on April 27th. Um, a lot of work going on with Estrin Shoreline Management Plan. Um, there's progress along um, all the areas. The Harvey Soundside Living Shoreline project is in a permitting phase now. Um, and we anticipate construction with that um, later in the year. Villa Dunes Drive. Um we're working directly with property owners to better understand constraints that they're experiencing there. Um and we're working alongside uh environmental consultant George Wood. Um with that uh Soundside Road, uh we have shifted away from the offshore breakaters or the islands. We're now focusing on um a resiliency burm with integrated storm water management. Um is a more natural, adaptable approach and it does align better with our long-term maintenance and environmental goals. Um we're also advancing a potential living shoreline project at the catfish farm um causeway area which um has both infrastructure protection uh with the causeway as well as uh notable

environmental significance. So these are all very complex projects um but they are moving forward and they're all beginning to take shape. So that's very exciting. um sand relocation program. Uh we do continue to see a high level of activity here. Um we received over 230 sand relocation applications. Um that's about 70 permits since we last spoke. So um that's a a big influx of uh authorization requests. Uh Dune cost share participation is also going really well. um we have about 115 applications received there and we have dispersed um approximately 340,000 of the 400,000 that was allocated. Um so that is is very successful. Um with regard to um Dowy Park events and art and culture committee um as always that's where a lot of the um work has been going on recently. Um they met in March. Uh the art and culture committee met in March and they voted to um continue the 2026 Study Park Farmers Market, the same structure that we have had previously. Um with all the full-time vendors coming back and their rotating vendors staying the same. Um so with that, as have been mentioned in the past, there's not a lot of room for new vendors. Um but there um should be a couple of rotating spots to get some new faces in there as well. Um the committee also and approved updates to the market rules. Just establishing some policies with expectations of air vendors and um a mechanism to enforce those should we have a problem um moving forward. So, our roles were pretty good. It just said that the event coordinator had full authority to enforce them. Um but we wanted to give a little bit more detail

there um and clarification. So, that's been taken care of as well. Um, Paige Griffin, our event coordinator. She has pretty much wrapped up all the summer programming. Uh, 14week summer concert series, farmers markets, um, fitness, wellness programs, family and children's events, wagon Wednesdays, so many things to look forward to and um, it's it's really starting to kick up. So, that's exciting. Um, and then lastly, I do want to show on the screen um that we did receive two new art panels um that will be going up within the town for art mast project. Um the first, this is the front and back. This was done by Noah Snder. Um I believe that is going to be going at June Street um officially and And um this one over here on the end, this was done by Don Gay Maraga or Red Dawn. I think everybody knows her. Um and uh this was a nod to Dowy Park and um also a nod to Carrie Oakmith Sanders and all of the dedication and time that that she has put into this community. So this one's really exciting. It's really special and we're um that's going to be going up at Bitter Street, I believe. I just wanted to point that out. Um, but that is all I have with regard to um what the planning department's been undertaking this month and I'm happy to answer any questions you have.

Commissioner B. Anybody? No questions. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you. No questions. Thank you. No questions. No questions. But since we just heard the parade presentation and since you're at the podium, I just want to uh thank again uh you uh the manager, all of those who had input into the new crowd gathering and and event rules that we adopted. And this was the first parade that we had under those new regulations. And uh by all accounts, everything went very smoothly. And so just want to express those thanks. Thank you. Okay. Sure. All right. And um then you're still there.

I am still up. Um so for this um I do have a brief presentation um to go through. Um hopefully everyone's familiar with this wonderful opportunity that we had um through the Division of Water Infrastructure to receive um $500,000 um to disperse through a % interest septic repair loan program. Um we have been notified that our scope of work has been approved. Um we've got signatures and I think all we're waiting for right now is just to ensure that the funds are available um before we start really um pushing our outreach. But um to just go over some of this um this is um this loan is going to be more of a targeted approach um and an expansion of our existing septic program and I just wanted to walk through how we plan to roll it out and what comes next. Um the program builds on our existing septic loan program. our existing program. Um it is a lowinterest loan. Uh you can get up to $12,000 uh to help with septic system repairs. That remains in place and that is going to be available townwide. Um but what this opportunity offers is up to $20,000 per property um with a payback over five years at 0% interest, which that is just a wonderful incentive. Um and we to have a lot of participation here. Um, like I said, we're currently awaiting the formal funding offer, but we did receive

word that the scope has been approved. Uh, so once we get that um, uh, in hand, uh, we'll be ready to move on this. And again, the goal here is, uh, to remove any financial barriers and encourage proactive repairs of septic systems, um, before potential future failures. So moving forward um talking about our targeted approach u we wanted to be very intentional about where we focus these funds. Staff identified 283 properties that present a higher risk or or more vulnerable um due to their proximity to sensitive water bodies um and other factors. Uh we mapped the properties that are adjacent to the marsh, the sound, large drainage areas, and then refined that list. So, we removed properties that have already had recent septic maintenance based upon Dair County Environmental Health Department records. Uh, we removed properties that have newer or nonconventional systems. Uh, we removed properties that have already participated in the septic loan program. And what we were left um with is a focused group of low-lying vulnerable properties um where any septic failure would likely have the greatest impact. Uh so the septic health advisory committee and staff felt that this approach helps ensure we're using the funds um where they can make the biggest difference and the most impact. And I realize the map's pretty small um but we do have those lowlying properties identified um in more detail. As far as outreach, um we recognize that outreach is going to be key to the success of the program. So rather than broad messaging, we want to take a direct and personalized approach. Um

each identified property owner will receive a letter explaining why they were selected uh for participation in this particular program. Uh what the opportunity is and why it is so important. Uh we'll also reach out to rental management companies for if applicable um because they can often help facilitate with improvements. We want to make this easy as possible. Um we want to provide a clear explanation of the program and very simple steps and also have a direct staff contact um so that there this isn't too burdensome on the homeowner. Um the goal is not just awareness but we want to make sure that we have a lot of participation as well. um how the program works. We've tried to design this to be a very straightforward process for property owners. Uh once they receive this letter, they can connect directly with staff and um that's going to be environmental planner Connor Twitty and um he can guide them through the process. Uh from there it will be a standard flow. The homeowner would complete the application, acquire their Dair County Health Department permit, and then select a contractor. Um, we've already done the work to identify pre-qualified contractors to simplify this step. So, staff will provide homeowners with that pre-qualified list of contractors so they know um that they're choosing someone familiar with the program. Um, staff is going to stay closely involved with all of the contractors. uh doing work under this program to ensure compliance with funding requirements. Um if you remember, there were some very specific requirements related to uh the Davis Bacon Act and ensuring anybody on the job um has prevailing wage being met as well as making sure that all the

requirements of the American Iron and Steel Act are being met. Um after that it's going to move to the finance department for loan processing. Um and then at that point the project can get underway. So while there are several steps uh we are really aiming to make this feel manageable and supported by the homeowners for implementation and next steps. Um even though we are waiting on the formal funding letter uh we aren't going to wait to prepare for that. We want to get moving. Uh we want to go ahead and connect with those contractors who had previously expressed interest, ensure they're still able and willing to work within the parameters of the funding. Work to finalize our internal workflows which is going to be between planning and finance department. We want to be ready to launch the opportunity as soon as funding is confirmed and available. Once underway, staff will actively track participation and build out a database of improvements. Uh we also coordinate with the property owners and contractors. So, um, as was mentioned earlier, Joe Costello has some great technology, um, with GPS and things of that nature. So, we can go out there, GPS the location of the, uh, septic tank and the drain field and, um, insert all the data that we received from the county health department to build out an ass database um, of this program. And hopefully that shows the successes of the program moving forward. um so that we can continue to gain participation. So that is all I have for you. Um we're excited about the opportunity. Like I said, we just want to make sure we have all our ducks in a row. So as soon as we have access to the money, we can start engagement.

Happy to answer any questions. Commissioner Harrison, no questions, but great job organizing the whole thing. Thank you. No questions. Thank you though. Very exciting. No questions. That's amazing though. Thank you. Thank you. How many targeted properties? Uh, so it's about 283. Okay, great. Thanks. Thank you. People are going to be watching this program. I mean, this is this is an issue all over the state and I know that I'm aware that other communities are are watching to see uh how this works. So, we're really breaking ground here and it's uh it is pretty exciting.

Yeah, it's it's wonderful and I appreciate everybody's involvement. um finance director, deputy town manager Amy Miller was wonderful, instrumental. Aseptic health advisory committee um has been amazing. Joe Costello, Conor Twitty. It's it's taken a lot of people um to make it come to fruition, but it's going to be wonderful once we get it rolling. It's great. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. And I'm going to ask for some guidance. Um, we have a time-specific item for 10:30, but I see that air consultants are here. Is there any reason we don't proceed with that? Unless there's folks coming at 10:30 to to see it.

Ah, okay. All right. Then we will continue then, I think, and come back to that item at uh at 10:30. So, u don't let me forget. Um, so we will go to um I think perhaps uh the town legislative agenda. All right. Thank you, mayor and commissioners. Um, as you remember, we had a discussion at your March regular meeting with a presentation from our lobbyist, Whitney Campbell Christensen. uh and uh we had met with uh the lobbyist as a staff back in I think January to kind of go over the agenda. As we mentioned previously, the agenda is largely consisting of items we had from the prior year and recognizing that the state really hadn't addressed a lot of the issues in last year's discussions um legislative sessions just weren't that productive. So, a lot of the things that we have on our agenda remain intact. Uh we did discuss one item that we had had in a prior agenda regarding um looking at ways to protect the shoreline recognizing that the coastal resources commission is looking at doing a report or a study on future legislative issue um efforts to to look at shoreline structures. We decided um that we would remove that item for now. But uh the agenda that you have in front of you is essentially the same as it was in March.

I hadn't received any comments from anyone asking for changes. So, if the board is okay with what's being presented, then this is what we would take to the lobbyist and present to the legislature. So, um looking for any other feedback and approval of the agenda. Okay. All right. Very good. I'll start I think on this. Commissioner B. No questions. That looks good to me. Okay. Commissioner Sam. Yes. No questions. I'm okay with that. I'm ready to approve this. Okay. All right. Very good. Then um then how about we do it by motion then if you're ready. Okay. I'll make a motion to approve this. All right. Legislative agenda. Do I have a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion?

Hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. All right. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Um that brings us to uh then new business and that would be committee reports and I will start at my left. Mr. Well, I've just joined the um the committee for current TV at taking Megan's place. I'm not really officially on there yet, but I did attend their first meeting or my first meeting with them. They all the public information officers from all the towns got together and just discussed what's coming up for the future years. So, I'm just getting my head around what they do and just doing that. So, things are happening. Thank Thank you for doing that. I think you'll be a great fit for that. I think that's gonna be really good. Thank you,

Commissioner Lambert. Um, no new reports. Uh, Miss Bot just gave an excellent report with the septic health committee, so I won't repeat that. Um, but yes, Molly is Commissioner Harrison is taking over on the government education access channel committee. I've really enjoyed serving on it, but I'm really excited for the committee to have you. Yeah, they're going to miss you. You'll have Can I say something? Um, town clerk Brittney Phillips just pointed out something that Yeah, I know that it was the intent of the board to appoint Molly to that committee, but I think you need to make a form take a formal action to do that. Okay. All right. Very good. Then um, somebody want to make that motion? I'll make that motion to appoint Commissioner Harrison to the government education access channel committee.

Very good. As and I have a second. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. Great. Thank you. All right. Thank you, uh, Britney, for keeping us official in line. Anything else, okay, Commissioner Sanders? Um, I also don't have anything to add to what Miss Wyatt said about the Estan Shoreline Committee. So, Okay. All right. Very good. Commissioner Bowen, the tourism board met late last week. It was a rescheduled meeting and I had a conflict, so I was unable to attend. I don't have any minutes yet from the meeting, so I don't have much to report. I think we're all aware of the um ribbon cutting on the new boardwalk that's coming up this month now in April. So, we look forward to seeing everybody there and I'll keep you posted.

Right. Very good. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Um then that will bring us to the presentation of the classification and compensation study report.

Good morning, mayor commissioners. thanks for uh giving us the opportunity to present the classification and uh compensation study report. I think we're going to pull up presentation.

While we're doing that, I did want to acknowledge the comprehensive and the professional work that our partner, the Archer and Company, has provided throughout this entire process. Um, I've had the privilege to work, you know, specifically with our dedicated consultant, Marian Ojas, and I think you'll see just her her knowledge and the high caliber of work product reflected in the study. Um, I believe the board has received a draft copy of the study. So, you'll have some time to review that. But, uh, I just wanted to go through some of the, um, high points that you'll you'll see in that in that study. So, there are many reasons why we want to conduct classification and compensation studies. Um we currently do this at the town and NXT about every five years and that seems to be pretty customary with our um with other municipalities and certainly our neighbors uh on the beach. But to simplify, you know, some of these objectives, what we're trying to do is look at what the town of Naget is currently doing as it uh as it pertains to our total rewards. So our pay and our benefits. We want to look what the market is doing. So, what are our neighbors doing? What are other communities doing in the realm of paying benefits? And then using that information, we'd like to create what our internal market position would be. Um, traditionally, NAGS has been a leader, a market leader in this space. Um, and then we look at our current pay structure and some of our benefit programming and then we would make updates based on all of these inputs. So the the process involved several different steps. Um one of the first things that the Archer company did was conduct an extremely thorough job evaluation. And this is where they incorporated multiple different inputs to make sure

we had a good understanding on what each position is doing. So they looked at things like our current position descriptions. They had each each uh virtually each employee certainly every position had a um it was like a 20page u document for a a comprehensive position questionnaire. Our consultant interviewed department heads and our consultant interviewed every position every individual that was assigned a position in the town. So it was virtually all employees in the town but every position was interviewed so that they felt they had a good understanding on on what our staff is doing. They then take all these inputs and they have a proprietary system. It's called the Archer I'm sorry the Archer matrix point system and they um assign points to each position and to come up with a value. So at the same time we were doing that job evaluation we also conducted a very thorough market survey and so we designed a survey to solicit pay ranges for 53 benchmark positions. And then we also added on to that um to solicit information about pay policy and also a benefit program to get a better understanding of what other communities are doing. We received pay ranges from peer organizations and we don't necessarily focus on what the actual amounts people are paying. What we want to look at are those ranges, right? So the minimum, the midpoint and the maximum. So these are the uh these are the communities that we selected as our market peers. You'll see that they'll include like local beach towns um you know specific to Dair County but also outside of Dair County. Uh communities

that are commuting distance um other towns that are tourist or seasonal in nature. and then also communities that have a similar total rewards philosophy. Um, and then we have a lot of positions within the town that also have a private sector component. And so we also pulled information from ERRI, so the e economic research institute to understand what the private sector is uh what how the pirate private sector is paying for similar positions that we have in the town. All right. All right. So, I'm going to go through what some of these findings are. Um, what we found um for either where we're at or we are above market uh is for example our pay structure. We move up more more than average among peers in the last two fiscal years. It's a modest amount. You could see we moved up about 7% our peer 6.7. um our structure moves up with that cost of living adjustment and that seems to be pretty customary with other municipalities as well. We offer two benefit plans. We offer a PO and a high deductible plan and this is consistent with other peers. In addition to that, we offer a buyup PO plan. So technically the town offers three different medical plans. Um and that additional cost with the with the buyup plan is allocated to the staff. And we also found that our town contributions to the benefit premiums are significantly higher than our pure average. So, we're we're very competitive in that area. We found that our contributions to the 401k at 5% is very competitive. Um, we offer a paid parental leave. You may recall we introduced this about three years ago. Um, and this is competitive. Most peers do not offer this. However, we are finding that more and more uh municipalities, it's very popular in the private sector. We're seeing that uh

municipalities are getting um kind of coming up to speed with that with this type of benefit. We found that longevity was offered at about twothirds of the peer organizations that we surveyed and we have two different longevity plans based on your start date. So um the dollar amount plan is uh considered above market uh except for that that first stage the year five is just a small lag. And then our bonus percentage is also um slightly above market um for those of the more tenured uh staff members. The other benefit that is very unique to the town is we offer 100% coverage for unlimited counseling and therapy. It's not necessarily something the town pays for. It's embedded in our medical plan, but it is highly unusual. I've never seen this before in a medical plan. Our consultant um thinks it's incredible. So it it kind of speaks to the dedication that the town um is is putting towards mental health. Looking at some outside of market offerings, um gap time is out of all the peer organizations we looked at, we saw um a couple towns on the beach that are offering that which is with Duck and Mano. Our night shift differential. So we introduced night shift differential for police and about half of the peer organizations are offering that um of those that are offering the town night shift differential is not as competitive. Um our designated holidays are below market by approximately one day. Um we do not currently offer tuition reimbursement. Um and that's that's offered by the majority of the peers that we looked at. And then our promotion um pay policy is not uh not currently competitive. But I want to highlight overall in in receiving feedback from our consultant and also

reviewing the responses from the survey, the town is quite competitive, particularly when you look at the most significant benefit investments. So really what people are looking at are those um health um health related premiums um like the plan design. We're our offerings are very strong and they'll continue to help with recruitment and retention. All right. So, we've we've at this point of the study um we've completed the salary survey and the and the job evaluation and so now it's time to complete the pay structure. So the Archer group uses exponential regression analysis to like draw a payline and that integrates both of those data points we talked about the internal value so the job from the job evaluation and the market value and that becomes the basis of the new pay structure. So when when they were developing our um our pay structure, you know, similar to any other pay plan, each pay grade is assigned a range that has a minimum, a market reference point, and a maximum. Now, the market reference point is not a traditional midpoint that we have seen in our previous plans. Um I like to think of this as a little bit more innovative. It's also more relevant because the market reference point is based on the average market midpoints for every job in the grade. So, we're actually using market data to determine that market reference point. It's not just right smack in the middle of a pay grade range. Um, each pay range is 58% wide. our current pay ranges when we look at from our hiring rate to uh the maximum is 55%. So this offers um just a

little more growth um for especially our most tenure staff members. So looking at um just a couple more comments about the structure. Um the structure itself is set to be a modest amount above the average pay and that's because of our position of a market leader and we also incorporated the cost of living adjustment which is what we've been doing every year. And the other big change for this for this uh updated structure is we reduce the distance from the range minimum to the market reference point. So that way staff can reach a market-based pay within six years. I think currently it's about double that. So we reduced that distance to get to the market rate and then we expanded the distance on the other side so that um we're recognizing those uh those individuals that are here for the long run and uh they have more earning potential on the on the maximum side. Um however that said the range minimum is still considered to be a very competitive rate and that that will remain our most common hiring rate. Um, all right. So, let's look at the structure. Um, I'm This is hard to read. I'm sorry. I tried to put a lot on here. Um, so, as we mentioned, the market reference point is the market midpoints plus the the increase to account for the cola and the market leader. Our current pay scale has 26 grades. The updated pay scale would have 22. So that does result with some updated grades for individuals based on based on just the nature. We've cut out four grades, but we've also done a more thorough job evaluation. So we'll see a little bit of movement there.

And then the updated pay plan would also eliminate a hiring rate and a 5% probationary increase. Instead, what we would do is just hire at the competitive rate and not below the competitive rate. So moving to implementation which is the stage we're at now. Um so we have the pay structure and the positions are assigned grades and employees are placed at a target salary based on the length of time in their role and their placement in the new range. So by doing it this way, by considering the time in their role, um we're able to reduce compression because more dollars are allocated to employees with more tenure. And then by applying this consistent methodology, we ensure it's equitable across all employees. We're not just arbitrarily picking and choosing um you know where uh like a a different method for for each department or each staff member. This aligns, this approach aligns with our budget of 250,000. One thing I do want to note is that anyone that is above the target market reference point. So that's the competitive rate, they wouldn't receive an increase related to this pay study. And that's because they are paid at a competitive rate already. So what happens on July 1st is we'll apply an estimated 3% cola that still has to be approved by the board. Um so that amount will adjust based on what the board decides. And then this salary adjustment would be applied um that aligns with the pay study recommendation and that impacts approximately 87 employees. And then we talked about looking at how we're going to uh reduce compression.

And that is uh where we're looking at four different tenure categories. And you can see um the four different categories. It goes up to seven plus years. And then um levels below that. And again, those that are furthest away from that market reference point holding the job tenure constant will receive the largest adjustments. Okay, I'm gonna regret putting this one up here because it's hard to read, but I just wanted to play out an example. So, if we look at those middle columns, uh you'll see that there's a number of years tenure between three and seven years. So, let's say someone has a comp ratio of 79 there. Um you can see on the chart that somebody that has that 79 comper ratio they should really be at with our recommendation at 0.84. And so in this case that would result in a 5% increase. And again these this chart is based on those that are not at that market rate. Anyone that's at the 100% that you see at the bottom of the chart wouldn't necessarily receive an increase. All right. So, there's other components of the study aside um from just the the benefits and the um and the pay. We're also uh looking at updated position descriptions because we've had a lot of uh a lot of different input into that. So, we'll have fresh uh fresh position description. We're also looking at our salary administration policies and so we will be um presenting that for the board's consideration to adopt uh in on July 1 to align with the pay study. And then we're also looking at developing a formal compensation philosophy for the board's consideration just so we can um like advertise and also make sure we have uh something to constantly refer to so we're remaining consistent and

constant with with how we're approaching our total rewards. So for next steps um we ask that the board review the draft study and then provide any questions or feedback to the town manager by April 15th. and then we would ask the board to consider adopting the uh formal study at the May 6 meeting. Any questions at all?

Before we open it up to questions from the board, um for the benefit of the public, will you speak briefly to the level of interaction that the consultant has had with staff um and staff's um sort of characterize staff's response to to that? Yeah, it's one of the reasons why we chose the Archer company is uh because of the high level of employee engagement. That was something when we went into the RFP process was important to the town. And so uh our consultant has been out, she um has been out and conducted preliminary kickoff meetings in person. So we had three or four of those with and all staff were invited to attend. Um, as I mentioned, she conducted interviews for every position in the town. And I want to say it's probably 85 to 90% of staff were interviewed and had a chance to meet with her either in a small group setting or in a one-on-one um setting. And then uh our consultant also came out uh for the board retreat um to talk about just where we were in the process. and we've invited her out again uh on April 26 to conduct additional staff meetings to show um you know what the findings were with the benefit and the pay study and also next steps for implementation so they understand what to expect. So it's been refreshing to see this level engagement. I believe staff has really appreciated some feedback I had just from the interviews, you know, was they appreciated um no matter what the outcome, they appreciated the ability just to be heard and so they could um Marian could understand their their position more thoroughly.

It's been tremendously back. Thank you. All right. Questions or comments? Commissioner, no questions today. Thank you very much, Jan, though. This is fabulous. Just for just for clarification, I guess a market reference point came from an average of the salaries from the towns that you listed at the very beginning. The average of the midpoints. The average of the midpoints. Okay. The midpoints. All right. Thank you. Thank you. No questions, but thank you so much. This is awesome, Mr. No questions at this point. Okay. Thank you. Great job.

Thank you very much. Uh we are at 10:23 and we have a 10:30 specific item. So I'm going to and to give them time to sort of prepare and get set up to for that presentation. U I'm going to call for a 7m minute recess. So the board will be in recess until 10:30.

All right. Thank you everyone. The board is seated and we will um return uh up the agenda to item uh G1 and that's a presentation on the 2026 beach nourishment project. David.

Uh good morning mayor and commissioners. We're going to go ahead and do this in two parts. Um the first part is going to be the beach nourishment project update. The second part is going to be a request for an annual beach condition survey. Um with the uh beach nourishment project update um there are things that we wanted to go ahead and cover such as project schedule sequencing as well as some of those logistics that go into a project of this scale and magnitude. So at this time I'd like to go ahead and introduce uh Dr. Beth Shidone. Nickel to go ahead and provide the project.

Thank you, David. Thank you, mayor and commissioners. It's a privilege to be here today. Um, we always appreciate the opportunity to present to the town and to work with you on this project. Um, this is an outline of the presentation. I'm just going to briefly review uh some of the things that are going into the pre-construction preparation, talk through the updated schedule, means and methods, how is the contractor going to be accomplishing the project and and what can the town expect. Uh go over our plan for project progress meetings, highlight some of those very important environmental commitments um to ensure that the project has the least environmental impact possible. talk briefly about the town's plan for public information updates and coordination with the contractor and then open it up for questions. So, some of the preconstruction preparation for the project is already underway. Um, sometime I believe either later this week or early next week um the contractor survey company which is called NV5 will be performing a number of different surveys. They are doing a cultural resources survey where they intend to lay their subline which is the pipe that goes from the dredge to the beach to make sure that those areas will not have any negative impacts on potential cultural resources like shipwrecks or anything else or any biological resources. Um they will also be performing a um beach condition survey for preconstruction so that the town can determine the location of the additive alternate material. As you'll recall, the town awarded 200,000 cubic yards of additional material. That is yet to be determined exactly where that'll be placed. So that will be targeted to those areas that are in most need as determined by the um preconstruction survey. Uh Mafet and

Nicl will then make the necessary adjustments in the template and issue the con construction drawings for use by the contractor. This is the updated schedule as it stands right now. Um there is some flexibility or potential changes that may occur. Um but right now this is the plan that the contractor has presented to the town. They will be beginning um mobilization April 19th, so a little bit later this month. That'll be starting with the shore side work. They'll receive their yellow equipment. Um they'll start mobilizing the shore pipe, potentially installing some of that shore pipe before the dredges arrive. Um starting April 23rd and continuing into May 4th, they'll be doing inwater work where they're installing those pipelines that will be going from the dredge to the beach. Um, and then they'll be mobilizing the dredges. This project at this time is going to be conducted, and I'll get to this a little bit later, but it is going to be conducted by two dredges at the same time. So, they'll be utilizing a hydraulic or cutter dredge in the southern part of town and a hopper dredge in the northern part of town and operating two work areas at the same time in order to complete the project more quickly. Uh right now it's anticipated that judging in Beachville operations will start May 4th. Um and that will go through July 6th at this time. There's a potential uh given that they'll be both of these dredges operating together. There is a potential that that could potentially end earlier. Uh the contractors giving us July 6 right now to account for any potential weather delays um or any of that. And then there'll be um dune planting

and sand fencing installation in targeted areas and that will be taking place from June 20th through July 20th. And then the as I said dredging operations will be completed July 6. And then the contractor will be conducting demobilization removing all of the pipelines um removing the dredges to other operations and finishing up the project. So that's the current plan. Just wanted to give you an idea. Um, and I know many of you are very familiar with these um, types of projects, but I wanted to go ahead and show the two dredges that will be operating as part of the project. The hopper drudge will be the Magdalene. The contractor on this project, as you'll remember, is Weeks Marine. Um, so the Magdalene is one of two um, relatively large capacity hopper dredges that'll be operating on the project. And then the hydraulic or cutter dredge that will be used is the RS weeks. So the hopper is the one that goes to the borrow area, loads the sand, drives over to a pipeline, lets it out, and puts it on the beach. The cutter dredge stays offshore and is in the borrow area operating continuously and continuously pumping the sand straight to the beach through the pipeline. This is a very busy slide. um has a lot of information on it. Um we've gone ahead and giving you an idea. The yellow um my the yellow area is the borrow area right here. Um and the hopper dredge will basically be coming over here, loading up and then going to the sublines that are shown here towards the north northern part of town and reach one. And that is where um the sand will be unloaded for the hopper dredge. So

the hopper dredge will mainly be constructing in reach one. The cutter dredge will be working that'll be in the borrow area operating and then there'll be two two sublines that are shown here in red. Um that'll pump first to the south and then north and then they'll switch to the different subline and work south and then north. Oops, not done with this slide. It has a lot of information there. Um, so right now, um, the order of work, the way that they've planned it, the the cutter dredge will start on that southern red corridor, um, which is approximately at Camelot Street, station 948, and then it will be pumping south down towards, um, the park service property. And there is um as we've discussed before a small taper into the park service property of about 500 ft. Um then they'll flip their line and head north from Camelot Street. Um and then once they get to a certain point they will switch to the other subline at hard approximately at Harrove Street, work south from there and then work north. In the meantime, the Hopper dredge right now is planning on starting at um Subline C5, which is right here, which is just north of the Village Beach Club at station 693. Um and they'll be working south first and then gradually north and then moving up to C6 and C7. So C6 is approximately at the location of St. Andrews by the Sea and C7 is just south of the Nags Head Pier. Now, recognizing that the project would be ending up here at the south of the Nag Head Pier at approximately July 4th, um we have reached out to the contractor to potentially look into whether there's an

opportunity to work south from C7 down to C5 in order to avoid that situation where um the town is is trying to have the Fourth of July celebration at the Nag Pier and also the projects ending right at the same time. So, we have reached out and started those discussions with the contractor. Um, we'll try to make an effort to to avoid impacts to that celebration. Um, the access and staging areas that will be used for the project um are listed here. the cutter in the south side uh south part of town will be using Gulfream way Junko Street and also we have um been working to modify the town's special use permit with the park service for the contractor to be able to utilize ramp one. We have received information from the park service um that they will be able to accommodate that. Um we do really appreciate their collaboration on and efforts on the project that will assist the contractor with some additional flexibility on the access points. Um the hopper dredge will be utilizing forest street, enterprise street and conch street. Um the contractor is going to be providing traffic control plans and the contractor in Moffett Nickel and the town will be coordinating with NC DOT on those traffic plans. And what you may expect here is that there may be intermittent closures or partial closures of some of these access points depending upon the operations and how that is going to be um be be conducted. Um, probably the longest closure will be during mobilization when they're loading all the pipe onto the beach or demobilization when they're trying to make those removals. Um, working with the contractor to be able

to maintain as much public access as possible. Also wanted to talk briefly about the beach experience, what can be expected. I know Nagad has done multiple projects in the past and many people are familiar um but highlighting that this is a 247 operation. Um work does continue into the night. There will be active work area closures. Um daytime closures are anticipated to be about 1,500 to 2,000 ft of beach. Um the nighttime closures will be about 1,000 feet of beach. Um, beach access will be provided via sand ramp and you can see that picture down at the bottom what what the sand ramp kind of looks like. Um, those are required every 500 ft and at any public access point. So any beach access point, they'll be required to install sand ramp for access. There should not be operations in one specific area more than two to the very at the very most four days. Um, so I know there are um, you know, impacts to visitors um, due to this, but hopefully um, it won't be prolonged um, prolonged impacts in in certain areas. And I do also want to highlight that the contractor is very cognizant of the operations being in the summer and the number of people that'll be around and be on the beach and are very safety conscious. Um, so while some of these closures may be inconvenient, it is definitely for the safety and importance of the of maintaining public safety is just really paramount um to everyone involved, the contractor, the town, um, and the engineer. Uh, as many of you, I'm sure, are well aware, um, there are some exposed structures, particularly in the southern

part of town. um some homes that will be in the placement area. Um potentially sandbags, some dune walkovers which may have had um the dune eroded in recent storms. And then there also the ocean outfalls. Um the contractor Mafet Nickel and the town are coordinating with NC DOT on the outfalls to ensure that those there's no impacts there um to the storm water outfalls. And um the town has been working with the contractor as well to make plans for how to handle um some of these uh situations where their structures and um and dune walkover. So just aware of that. Just pointing that out that the contractor um will be faced with this situation. Uh we're also aware um of some dune escarments that are still in place after the winter storms. Um the pre-construction survey will identify exactly where uh the beach template will tie into these escarments. The beach template is about approximately elevation plus six. Um depending on how that intersects with the escarment, it may tie directly into the escarment or maybe um seawward. We have been also speaking with the agencies and the contractor to determine if there is opportunity to add some additional work to potentially um add some more milder slope and situations where there's a street in access and there's an escarment that is impeding public access. Um, so we're working we're working on that um to determine if it would be something that a permit modification would allow for the contractor to undertake as part of this effort. There will be um pro weekly progress meetings with the town, the contractor,

the engineer, and the environmental um agencies. Those will be held at town hall Thursdays at 10:00 a.m. Um, Mafic as the engineer will be making at least weekly site visits. Because of the two work areas, we anticipate bringing down two teams so those can be those can be deployed um after the weekly meeting to go inspect both of the work areas um at the same time. some of the key environmental commitments I wanted to highlight understanding the town's um commitment to maintaining the environment. There will be um turtle monitoring con uh the whole time at night given that it is sea turtle nesting season. Um there'll be a nighttime monitor at both work areas on the lookout for any potential nesting turtles, any potential impacts. And then every morning um the nest organization will be performing a clearance survey before they block off the certain areas that they'll be working. Um so the turtle monitoring given that this project is is being constructed during nesting season are of paramount importance. Um the the contractor in the town will also be performing relocation trollling. So that they're any where the when the hopper dredge is dredging or when and when they're sailing, they will be um conducting trollling efforts to kind of block any turtles from potentially getting close to the to the hopper dredge and then relocating them elsewhere away so they cannot accidentally get dredged up. Um so that's another environmental commitment to avoid impacts. Um there will be escarment monitoring during the project and after the project any escarments that are more than 18 in high for a distance of more than 100 ft will be leveled um so that they will not impede nesting. There'll be um sediment quality

monitoring. They'll be um visual monitoring every day and then every um every week they'll be sending a sediment sample to the lab to ensure that the material is compatible. And then subsequent to the project, there'll be some compaction monitoring to ensure um that there's still the ability for the turtles to dig in and do and do their nesting. And if not, there'll be um tilling, beach tilling that would be performed in order to loosen that material back up so that they would be able to nest. Um the public information updates, I can't take too much credit for this as a town uh does a lot of it. Um but the contractor will be providing a weekly progress plan. Um they'll also be providing us with daily work area updates that will be communicated to the town. Um the town will be updating the website daily uh and has developed the progress tracking map. Both of the work areas will be shown on this map. Um and that will again be updated daily with the progress. Um so hopefully that will be a you know a great way for um the community to keep up to date on exactly where operations are being conducted and those potential impacts and also understanding where they're moving next. So now I can open it up for questions.

Questions? Commissioner Harris? I have a question since we have the scientific team here. Um, one thing that a lot of people in town don't like about beach nourishment is the moving of the sand bars and the slooh. So, the fishing and the surfing is not as good. Um, have you ever studied how long it takes for that to recover for the slooh to come back and the sand bars to reform? I personally I personally have not. Um, I would guess, you know, probably depends on the weather and the waves. If you have a rough winter, probably by the next year you're back to kind of the same uh situation. Um, great question. I don't have a good answer for you. I just wondered if you'd ever studied it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

But understanding that, yeah, there there are those short-term impacts. Yes. There I mean, and there's drastically different um cross-sections of the project and I'm I'm sure that has a huge impact on that. Like in South Nags Head, we're seeing what how wide is the burm compared to like Bonnet Street. I can give you the the cubic yards. It Yeah. I mean down down down in South Nags Head, we're we're placing, you know, hundreds of cubic yards per foot and up at Bonnet, it's more like 30 cubic yards a foot. So the there's a down in the southern part of the town, there's a dune being constructed, there's a very wide burm.

Um and and so yeah, that'll be much more impact. Um although there also has been a lot more erosion down there, so it'll be restoring the the template. I appreciate that question so um no questions but I really appreciate all the care that you guys are taking and coordinating with Nest. That was one of the first things I was thinking of and I didn't realize all the steps that you guys are doing and I was really glad to hear that. Good. So I know I'll get asked this question but if you have a oceanfront house and the work's going on right in front of your house, you can still get to the beach, right? or is it

it it kind of depends on the situation. I think that if it works right like if the active pumping is right in front of your house, you may have to drive to another access um during the time that they are operating right at that location. Um we talked with the contractor about it. As I said, safety is is their paramount concern um of the you know to make sure that there's there's no chance of someone getting injured or or anything like that. So, I don't want to I don't want to promise that they would still be able to walk to the beach. Um they should be able to drive to a different access point in the situation where there is enough space. Um and if the active work area isn't right there, we have spoken to the contractor and we'll continue to bring this up. um about the opportunity to have a walkway that leads, you know, at the dune out and around to a a different access point. Um we'll make every effort to coordinate with them where it's safe to do so um to provide that access.

All right. Thank you, Commissioner B. No questions today. Thank you for your presentation. Great. Thank you very much. Okay, we do have um a couple of action items related to this. See if I can get back to my David. I'll bring this up.

All right. Um so the second part is a request for an annual beach condition survey. Now, this is something that we undertake each and every year and this spans from the northern corporate limits up by a street all the way through to the Cape Padis National Seashore. Um, this survey typically takes place in June, but this year it'll be interrupted by our beach nourishment project. Um, and typically the reason why we go ahead and conduct this survey is because it's part of our maintenance and monitoring program which maintains FEMA eligibility and that encompasses not only that length of beach but also goes out to an elevation of minus1 19 for depth and even though we do have some survey information associated with the project construction it doesn't fill out that full coverage area. So, um, we have reached out to McKim and Creed, um, the survey firm who has, uh, conducted these surveys in the past and asked them for a proposal, and they've submitted a proposal to the town in the amount of $71,980 to go ahead and perform a postnourishment survey. So the um request today is to authorize the town manager to execute the postnourishment uh beach monitoring survey with McKim and Creed in the amount of $71,980.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Are there questions for David before uh we place a motion on the floor? Hearing none, then a motion would be in order. Uh, I'll make a motion that we allow the town manager to end their contract for that amount for the beach monitoring. Okay. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. All right. Great. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. And um there is also the adoption of the resolution for the um

for the filing. Oh, you were headed toward the podium. I thought you might be getting ready to speak to that, Amy. Um, so the other piece of business that we have to do is the resolution uh directing the application to the local government commission for approval of special obligation bond declaring the intent of the town to reimburse itself for capital expenditures from the proceeds thereof and request that the LGC approve the town special obligation bond and related matters. Andy, anything to just request approval of the resolution. Thank you. So a motion to that effect would be in order. So move. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion?

Hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I. I.

I. Opposed. All right. Great. Thank you. Thank you folks for uh your presentation. Thanks for your work. We're very excited about u getting this done. All right. I think that brings us to the resolution supporting local citizen. Oh, thank you. Britney's nodding her head. Yes, I'm in the right place. Um, so Andy, did do you want to speak to this at all or um Well, I could say a few words about it. You know, okay. Um, some of the local communities uh some of our neighbors were circulating uh resolutions just recently as last week. U there's a lot of discussion going on with the legislature about property taxes and I think the board's been fairly well informed on those efforts. Um discussions amongst both uh houses of the legislature to affect our authority to levy property taxes and we don't know what direction this is going to go. There's a bunch of proposals out there. One of the things that they've talked about is putting something on the ballot this fall to let the voters weigh in on our authority to levy property taxes, you know, and that that that's something that we we find to be problematic. I mean, you know, in terms of the um voting public weighing in on that fairly, I mean, this this is our primary mechanism to raise revenue to support government services. And so, you know, um we feel like it's it's a way to undermine the the authority and so resolution states we're opposed to placing it on the ballot and we wanted to get this to our lobbyist and to the legislature by the middle of the month. So, we put this on your agenda for today. It essentially describes what we're trying to do.

Okay. I am not going to read this resolution today. I've read enough resolutions today, but but I will speak to it. Um, you know, no, nobody likes taxes. Nobody likes paying taxes, but local government is where citizens have the reach to address their representatives. And if they don't like the way their money is being spent, then they can say so. and they can vote and they can and they can make change at the local level. Um, uh, frankly, I think Nagshead and probably like a lot of other communities does a very good job of spending its tax dollars wisely and in ways that the public can see the benefit. I think beach nourishment is is one of those. you know, when we put this out up for, you know, public hearing, we put the budget up for public hearing and talk about beach nourishment, um it it's what we usually get at the podium are citizens who are in favor of the work that the town is doing. um and encouraging uh us to sort of continue that kind of work and and you know it's there's a lot of political posturing at the state level and and they have put themselves in a box where they are going to have to cut taxes. Uh they're if they don't compromise they're going to have to cut taxes and they're going to put the state in a precarious financial position. Um, I wish the state rather than talking about uh how local governments conduct themselves would look at local government and figure out how to conduct themselves in such a way um that they move the state forward. And that's all I will say about that.

Um, so can we have a motion to approve the resolution? Mayor, I move that we um adopt the resolution as presented. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Opposed. All right. Thank you. Um, that brings us to items from the town attorney and we have a close session for a couple of items. Do we have anything else today? Nothing in addition. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much. Uh, that brings us to uh items from the town manager and we have uh several. So, uh maybe we'll start with Amy um giving us a financial update.

Good morning, mayor and commissioners. I lost my voice last week. I apologize. Um I'm gonna really give you a very high level. I know I it's in the packet. Um and it's kind of helpful as we go into this budget workshop and talk about the budget. It's really um very high level about some of our economic data as we are looking into the budget season. Um and of course I know the biggest one is always the question is about you know our shared revenues or occupancy sales tax and land transfer tax. Those are about the same as they were last year. um occupancy tax is actually about 2% less than it was last year and sales tax is pretty much exactly the same. So our budget is about 1.5 million and we're pretty much exactly on target with the budget. And given the trends for the past two fiscal years, I can't imagine we'll budget much more than 1.5 for next uh fiscal year, which our plan budget was about 1.54 million. So that doesn't really um you know thankfully we were pretty conservative with that. So that won't take much of a hit when we are working on the budget for next fiscal year. So I don't anticipate much of a change for that. Um we're close to our um goal of 90 well 100% tax collection rate but we're about 99.7%. Um we anticip I don't anticipate a problem getting closer to 100%. Um, we budget 99.75% tax collection rate in our budget and um, per state statute, you can't budget a higher tax collection rate than what your actual tax collection rate was for the year before. So, fun fact on that. So, I don't anticipate having um not meeting that goal. So, um, thank you for our tax collector. With the water sales, we're about where we were last year um

collection wise, about 80% of the budget. We did do a 5% um water rate increase. However, we are at a good point because we're actually buying less water. So, um we're even though we're I guess technically selling less water, we're actually buying less water. So, we're in a really good position as far as the the water fund as far as, you know, what the smart meters are doing. Um, the cost of our wholesale water was reduced, which is also helpful. So, again, these trends I anticipate seeing into the next um fiscal year when we're doing the budget. The tipping fees were um at about $520,000 this year, which we were last year also. And that actually means that we have less tonnage because our tipping fees went up. So, fees went up. We're still kind of holding ground um with our um with our um trash collection. And I think that's about it as far as like the really high points. Um again, we we had a budget workshop in March and we're going to have one today, too. So, happy to go into more um details or answer any burning questions that you have. I have a question just about the the water sales and and what we're what we're buying. So, it is that attributable to the smart meters and our our uh response to leaks?

I mean, I c I mean I I would like to think so just because we can now instead of going two months without catching a leak, we can catch it right away. And I do know we have dedicated staff. Um, not only can the homeowner monitor it themselves and call us, but we have dedicated staff that review the the list of leaks and we have kind of like, you know, the the hot button of leaks versus kind of just like the lower. So, we do triage that and we do um make sure we go out and and um contact the homeowners when we see something that needs to be addressed. So, um I do think that it has a lot to do with the conservation aspect of the the smart meters. If we trending different ways then perhaps not. But that we're buying less water and the water sales are less that kind of makes complete sense. But I do know that we're very responsive to and proactive about um dealing with leak alerts and monitoring that.

Okay, great. I've said this once before, but at my business, we had a major leak under the parking lot and we had no idea. Right. and it was caught by the smart meters and I don't know how long it would have gone before it was ever caught. So, I mean, yeah, it was an incredible amount of water that was and nobody saw it. There was just couldn't tell. So, yeah, it's good. Yeah, it's working. I've also had two leaks where and one was a big one, one was a little one. No, would have had no idea otherwise. Yeah, within hours. It's working. It is working. It's great. All right. Very a good investment on on the town's part. All right. Thank you, Amy.

All right. Um I guess also Amy, you actually have the next item. Sorry. Oh, the public works. Yes. How could I forget about that, Nancy? Um okay.

It's Christmas. That's what I told Andy yesterday. Um, so anyway, we have been it's it's been um gosh, did we close in 2023 on the public works complex for the financing and um we were subject to review for to make sure that um we met our spending target. So we cannot make money um we can't make interest off of money that we borrow essentially. And if we do, then we have to pay taxes on it. So obviously what we hired a firm to help us monitor our spending and the IRS has spending limits and you have to spend so much money within a certain amount of time and there's six months benchmarks. Long story short, last year was our benchmark. Um and we spent 95% we met all our benchmarks so we did not have to pay the taxes which was several hundred,000. So um thankful for that. So the last five we had um the this past year to spend the last 5% of what we borrowed plus any interest that we made. And so we did have a little bit of money left. Um I think I about 150 or 160 in the general fund portion and about 40 in the water fund portion. So we do have to spend that. Um and so we wanted to go over with the board some ideas as we're working with the budget and and ways we can do that. So um we already bought a knuckle boom and that was part of the general fund budget in November um the capital investment fund. So we bought a knuckle boom. So we thought well rather than peacemealing a lot of small things maybe we could just save money in the general fund and help pay for part of that knuckle boom from the leftover money because it is due to the brushard. You can't just buy anything. It has to be for the purpose of what you borrowed money for. So that made sense to us um that we needed that knuckle boom to help with a brushard. So what we're proposing

is for the board to allow us to um shift the knuckle boom money to whatever is left in the public works general fund. Let's use that on the knuckle boom and the rest can be that you know from the general fund and that will save us money in the CIF and the general fund also. So any money that we budgeted for that this fiscal year, it will just go back into it. It won't get spent on anything else. We do have to have board permission for any capital um improvement item. the board does have to approve that if we kind of wanted to redirect how we use that money. So, just wanted to point that out. Also, that's in our ordinance. Um, so that's the first thing. So, along with that, um, again, we're working on the budget. All these ideas are coming together. Um, one of the things in the budget was an excavator and, um, we actually had an offer to trade in the excavator that we were going to trade in for $75,000, which is a lot of money. Um, So, we would like to purchase the excavator with whatever extra money we do have left from the knuckle boom. Um, we would like to purchase the excavator net of the $75,000. So, I think the excavator before taxes is like $155,000. So, um, we will be getting $75,000 for the trade in, which is great. And, um, public services also identified a need with the cart rollbacks on the beach road. Um, they wanted a side by side. And actually, we'll be getting a check back because they want to trade in a skid steer um for $47,000 and the side by side is only 30. So, we'll be getting a check back for that. So, and that could be used now. A lot of these things too are helpful rather than waiting into July. Like, we're getting busy now and we need these things now. Um it's not that it's, you know, not well thought out, but it would be very helpful to have these things now rather than wait a couple more months as we get into the

season. Um, and then the last thing was the water fun portion. Um, Ry had identified. Um, I think like inserting valve, it's called an insert a valve. Um, but every time we do this, it costs us $50,000 $15,000 and they've already identified locations that they need to do these. So, they thought, well, maybe rather than spending that money now, we could, you know, use that money for this. So, um, the other part would be to use the leftover water fun for insert a valve and um you know we have a little bit money left we need from the the water fund to buy that. So um all the numbers are hashed out in the the packet but that's kind of just a high level conceptual of what we'd like to do and how we'd like to kind of shift around money and um as we're you know working on the budget and thinking of ways we need to spend some money and you know use some things that we we need getting ahead of the summer season right now. So happy There any questions about this?

All right, that's a lot. It was a lot of There's a lot of information. It's good. It's good information. Yeah, we we have we have amazing value on tradeins on some equipment um that we can um uh get get rid of something we found that we've don't have as much utilization for and get things that we do have a lot of utilization for, which is really great. Um, and um, it's just it's a good position for us to be in on on several items. So, board, any questions for Amy? No, I read it about three times and then you saying it out loud made it sink in. So, I agree with that.

I hope that makes sense. I a lot. And we do need the um, ordinance. Along with that is the administrative paperwork of the ordinance and the budget amendments. So, we have three things here that we need to approve. And I'm going to take them um I'm going to take them one by one um if I if I may. And so I'm sorry. Please do. Okay. All right. So the first um would be capital project ordinance number 12 which you have before you um there which moves this money around for the for the public services project um and allows us to to use that in the other purposes that Amy described. So motion would be in order.

I'll make the motion for the approval of the capital project ordinance amendment number 12. Okay. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. I have a motion, a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. Thank you. Um and then we have a water capital project ordinance. um uh which it would be amendment number six which you have before you. I'll recommend approval of water capital project ordinance amendment number six. Okay. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I.

I opposed. Thank you. Um and then approval of budget amendments number 9.3 and 9.4. four, uh, which you have before you, and that's the that's the, uh, excavator, uh, skid steer, uh, swap that Amy described. I'll make a motion for the approval of budget amendments number 9.3 and number 9.4. Okay. Do I have a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. Great. Thank you, Amy. Great work. done spending money on the public services. Very good. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Um and that brings us to discussion of the upcoming budget preparation meeting schedule. Andy,

um I'll be real brief on this. You know, we're going to have a workshop after this meeting and we can also talk about this then. You know, our budget workshop scheduled today. We have a lot to cover. Um, we're going to be talking about our CIP and some other requests from individual departments. Um, we're supposed to present the budget to the board at the May regular meeting, which I believe is May 6th. Um, we don't have a budget workshop scheduled for the midmon April meeting. Obviously, if we feel like we need additional time, we can do that. We also have a storm water workshop scheduled for the midmon meeting after the meeting. So, Dave is going to present some updates on the master plan at that time. uh we have a midmon uh meeting in May scheduled to have a workshop which would allow you to provide input on the recommended budget at that time and then the regular meeting in June would be when you could provide more input. We're going to have a public hearing at that meeting and then sometimes um if there's not a lot of additional comments the board may adopt the budget at that meeting or um do that at the mid the midmon June meeting. And so that just depends on the individual circumstances of what the board wants to talk about. Um like I said, uh there's no midmon April meeting. So if um we feel like there's a lot of burning questions that remain from today's meeting, we can take some extra time at the April meeting and follow up with the board at that time. So okay,

that's our our schedule. Thank you. Any questions for Andy? No question. All right. Very good. Thank you. Uh that brings us to our board of commissioners agenda and I've lost track of which side I'll start on. I'll start with commission today. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Sanders. I just want to say happy Easter. Um thank you to our police. I always I feel like I always say this on holidays, but I think it's necessary. Um special happy Easter to our police, fire, and public works for everyone that's working when we are off. So, thank you so much.

Pretty much. Um, I just want to say one thing. I wanted to compliment Britney and Katie on the minutes from the last meeting that was the quasi judicial hearing. It was so long and so detailed and they did a great job.

Very good. Thank you. Um, that brings us to the mayor's agenda and there's I only have one item and that's the consideration of a voting delegate and and I was thinking before I had really looked at this that this was about the legislative priorities but it's actually um that uh the voting process is opening for the board of directors elections and in the past the board has appointed the mayor as the voting delegate um for for this. And so I would ask if there's no objection that there be a motion to appoint me as the voting delegate for the um for the elections.

I move that we uh appoint the mayor as the voting delegate for the upcoming election. Thank you. Is there a second?

I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Um is everybody getting those league municipalities emails? The nominations are open. Okay. All right. Very good. All right. Um All right. I have a motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying I. I opposed. All right. Great. Thank you very much. Um before we go to our close session, is there any other business to come before the board this morning? Okay. All right. Thank you. Um, and uh, before we make the motion to go into close session, um, I'll ask the attorney the motion that we have before us on our agenda. Um, should we discuss the item that came up during public comment uh, about the crossover, should we choose to discuss that in close session, is this motion adequate?

Um, yes. So there are it says regarding matters protected by attorney client privilege and to preserve that privilege to include the specific litigation. So anytime we go in for attorney client privilege um we can discuss those privilege matters and then um if it there's anything related to litigation then we have to specifically cite the litigation. So that motion would be appropriate to cover um anything that qualifies as attorney client in addition to that litigation.

Okay. Very good. Then I will make a motion to request close session to consult with the town attorney regarding matters protected by the attorney client privilege and to preserve that privilege to include the Cherry Incorporated litigation pursuant to general statute 143-318.11A3. So moved. Is there a second? Second. I have a second. Is there uh any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I. I opposed. All right. Thank you. The board will be in close session.

Okay. All right. The board has returned to open session. There's, you know, all kinds of ghost in the machine and it's it's April 1st. Um, and I forgot something. Um, so I will add to the close session a request for a close session to consider a personnel matter pursuant to 143-318.11A6. So moved. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Opposed. All right. Thank you. Now the board will be in

All right. The board has returned to uh open session and for part of the closed session, I will report that uh the board heard um a report on uh manager compensation but took no action. Miss Wamble, if you'll report on the other items.

Yes. Uh I reviewed um some legal matters with the board and regarding um an update as to the cherry litigation and also um legal matters in relation to the um public comment um the board received this morning regarding the walkway. Um the board took no action. All right. Very good. Thank you. All right. Since we covered uh additional business at before we went into close session, then a motion to recess to our fiscal year 2627 workshop would be in order. So move. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Have a motion and a second. All in favor say I.

I opposed. Right. Thank you. Board is recessed to the budget workshop. Andy. All right. Well, let's get right to it. So, um obviously we have a and And thank you, Lauren. Lauren, thank you, Lauren. Take care. Drive carefully.

So, um, as we stated, today's uh, budget workshop and the primary purpose for today was to go over our capital improvement program and also to look at some additional uh, requests uh, mainly positional and organization uh, changes. Uh we're going to talk a little bit about benefits and then I think there's one programmatic change we're looking at at doing in planning. And so um we sent the board a series of memos. We sent the board the digital version of the CIP and I believe you all have hard copies of the CIP now. And thank you to Amy and her staff for putting this together. there was a lot of work, especially dealing with illnesses and things like that. It it was really appreciated that they got this done um the way that they did. So, um you have that now. Um it shouldn't be that much different than what you received in your email. Um and then we have um some memos that talk about these position changes. U a lot of the CIP items are are somewhat uh simple and self-explanatory. some of the things I think we need to give you some more information about just so it's clear what it is we're doing. And so we've kind of organized this workshop to to look at um the CIP first and then the other items later, but we'll just get right into the CIP. Um so we we include rankings for anything in the CIP that's proposed for FY 2627. We don't rank items beyond the next fiscal year. And so in in the CIP document on on the introductory sheet that you can fold out, the large 11 by17 sheet on the left hand side you will see a column that says rank and you'll note that that only applies to items that are

for next year. And so in this in this presentation we just kind of included only the ranked items and we can just kind of go through them in order. Now, this is staff's ranking. Uh, obviously, this doesn't have to be the board's ranking. Part of this exercise is to get feedback from the board on, you know, whether or not you have questions about any of these items or whether or not you see the priorities to be a little bit different than this. Uh but in terms of the way we've been ranking things the last few years, we really focused on like the maintenance and replacement of equipment, the things that we really need to do our core functions as being the highest ranked items. And then you sort of move down the list into like new new requests for um like new facilities, uh parks, um pathways, design work. those things tend to fall down the list because they represent new things and and while we would love to do all those things, we don't have to do those things, the equipment, the things we need to do, our core functions are things we have to have. And so, as you'll see, the number one ranked item is usually a sanitation truck. A and so, as I said, some of these things are self-explanatory, you know, and so I I don't imagine the board's going to want to spend a whole lot of time talking about sanitation trucks, although we we have been talking a lot about our maintenance and replacement schedule for vehicles. And obviously, these items are very expensive. Um, we've been looking at sort of a six to eight year life cycle for a sanitation truck. And now that we have our new building and a lot of the trucks are are sort of current in a replacement schedule based on the work we've been doing that we're we're trying to look at doing essentially one a year. Um we have about eight frontline sanitation trucks. I believe five for the residential routes and three for the commercial routes. And so if we look at an eight-year replacement schedule then we can replace a frontline truck every

year, one a year and not have to double up. And that really helps us. And then we always keep some for spares and then cycle out the older ones once we get newer spares. So, um, that's essentially how that's working now. Now, if we we find that the vehicles aren't lasting quite as long, we can look at additional maintenance funds or moving some up in the future. But now that we have the new building, everything's kept indoors, we're maintaining everything, we're washing everything, we think that we're going to be able to keep them a little bit longer and get more life out of them. So that's pretty critical for our budget to to try and not overuse them but not underuse them either. So trying to strike a happy medium with these sanitation trucks. So um I don't know if the board has any question about the first item, but if if not I'll go ahead and go into the second item. I have a question. It's really kind of tangential, but um have we completed switching all of our dumpster locations from side load to front load or to the um to the cans?

No, we have not. We still have some side load fouryard dumpsters and Okay. You know, while we've been working on that, it's it's problematic in a few areas, but we have been pretty successful changing a lot of them to the 300gallon carts. So, we're still maintaining at least one side load truck. We currently are. Yes. Okay, that's all. Thank you.

Um, so I I think number two item talking about our streets and storm water uh paving plan, that is something that I think we should have a presentation on. And so maybe if I could ask David to come up and at least just go over what we're planning for next year. And another thing that we probably need to talk about, you know, years ago, and I'll send the board a memo about this, but years ago, we came up with a paving plan with a prior board to try and address all the town streets within like a 20-year horizon. And we tried to come up with a budget to do that. And we went hired a consultant to sort of rate all of our streets in terms of the pavement condition. And then as we go through the town, you know, we try to do any storm water or water work in conjunction with the paving work so that we don't have to come back through and cut up the streets after we do the paving. Um, and we were trying to do this sort of on a neighborhood scale so that we're not coming in and doing segments of streets in a neighborhood. We're doing the whole neighborhood. Well, with everything else we've experienced, the costs of doing this work have gone up significantly since we did that original plan.

And so, um, we may need to look at that plan. U, but I don't think we're going to be prepared to do that this year, but it is something that became evident this year when David put together this for next year. The costs were just more than they originally were. And so if if we're going to stay on that 20-year schedule, we need to look at either adding more revenue to this or we could also look at adjusting that schedule depending on the life cycle and we could do another evaluation of the pavement condition. So that'll take a little bit of time to put that together. So I'm not suggesting we do that this year, but maybe for next year's budget, we take another look at that and maybe strike a balance between the 20-year timeline and the condition and the cost. So maybe David could just kind of go over um what we're planning for next year and and this map. Oh, he's got it on the screen. So sorry. Yes. Uh thank you Andy. So what we're looking at for next year is year seven of our paving plan. And as Andy had mentioned that we've kind of tweaked the the paving plan in some instances to go ahead and coincide with other project work. Um but this year um this is primarily comprised of a one-inch surface overlay and it covers a large portion of town. Um this is a little bit different than what previous years have been because it's been more of a concentrated within the neighborhood, but we've got street segments um all throughout town um where the pavement condition is is in good to fair uh condition and we're doing a 1- in um asphalt overlay with it. So just to cover some of these areas that we're looking at, we've got James Street, uh June Street, Indigo Street, and those are all beach accesses. Um, Ida Street, uh, Tides Drive. Uh, we also have Hard Grove Street, which is going to be the

west side, uh, because we are planning to go ahead and redevelop the Hardrove Street beach access. So, we're going to go ahead and put that off for a future year once that project gets done. uh Holden Street. Um going up the map, we've got uh Lone Cedar Drive, uh West and East Grey Eagle Street, Glidden Street, G Street, Finch Street, Forb Street, uh Sand Bel Pebble Court, Maul Drive, Passageway, Dun Street, Dowitcher, and I believe Kuru Street is the last segment that we've got in the paving plan. Um that represents an estimated cost of about $53,000. Um we'll also take opportunities to make drainage improvements uh where we can. Um we've got I believe it's about uh $53,000 allocated for that. And then we also have some uh fees allocated for uh engineering design uh to coincide with this work. and I'll be glad to answer any questions that you may have pertaining to that year seven plan. Um, one other thing I wanted to mention, um, next year we also have project area number four, uh, as part of our storm water project listing and that is a storm drain clean collection system along South Wrightsville Avenue. um basically from Banebridge Bridge Street out to Bonnet Street. And so we've also fit in some paving to coincide with that work. So once that work is completed, we can come behind and pave um a similar approach that we have taken in previous years. And we anticipate that that project is

going to move forward uh this coming fall. So, if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer those for you. Real quickly, u for putting together a plan for next year, which I agree, I think I'm the only person on the board who was here when we had the the prior plan done. um and the the payment study. Um is there enough deterioration that we would need to hire a consultant or or is it really just sort of a rep prioritization or shuffling of projects?

It's just a rep prioritization of projects. Um when the plan was originally done, we had about $300,000 uh for each year for paving, which covered just under two miles of streets. What we've found actual costs are more like 300,000 per mile. And to keep pace with that plan, we're looking at about 1.9 miles annually that we average uh when we pave these streets. And so um that just gives you a little comparison as to where we started and where we currently are with costs. And you know, with in today's environment, especially with the fuel costs, we can even see larger increases. So something that we'll definitely be paying attention to. Okay, thank you. Any questions?

There there and there's going to be a need to re-evaluate it. The um storm water master plan that you're going to have a workshop on that could potentially affect the order of things. And then the water system in terms of the improvements and whether or not we get any state funding to help replace some of the old water lines, that could also change the paving plan because we're going to have to pivot to be able to spend those funds. And so that moves things around. So there's just a lot of things in play right now that could affect this. So maybe by next year we have enough information to go back and take a look at what we want to do and where. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you.

Number um let's see, let me get back on here. Number three item is a culvic cleaner. I'm not sure I need to say a whole lot about this. This has become a really valuable piece of equipment. We're using it a lot. We want to keep using it. So, yep. Um, so Amy can help me with this, but we've been um planning the the Hollow Well to or Careralista to Southside Road multi-use path. We did get gr Visitors Bureau grant funding to construct a portion of that about $750,000. And we're going to need to finance the rest of that construction. And in order to do that, we have to to coincide that with some work on a piece of property that the town owns in order to collateralize things. And so one of the two projects we're looking at are the um town hall elevator and and then there's also a transfer switch um that needs to be replaced behind the building. It's basically a large portion of our electrical system for town hall needs to be replaced. And so um number four on the screen there is the town hall elevator replacement. And then what's not on here is the transfer switch. Basically, what we're proposing to do is combine the multi-use path with the town hall elevator and the transfer switch all into one financing in order to do all three things at once.

So, is the transfer switch and the elevator in the 1439? No, the transfer switch is not in the CIP. Okay.

Because I believe that's considered a maintenance item and so we it's a nonCIP item, but it's about $93,000. It's a fairly expensive piece of work. Um, the other piece to that is we're also looking at eventually replacing the generator for town hall. We got a price to do that and that was about another $100,000. That was replaced back in 2018 or so. So, I feel like it's a little premature to do that. And so, we we we are looking at just doing these things and waiting on that one. Um, But the elevator uh we have at town hall obviously that's the original elevator. It was built you know in the late 90s and we we're told that we can't really get parts or service on that anymore. So if it goes down you know we could be without an elevator for quite quite a while and we we don't want to be in that situation. Most of our business is conducted upstairs at town hall and so this would be a way to proactively replace it before it breaks and we can't fix it. So then items five and six, we do two beach accesses a year. That's what we started um five or six years ago. And so we we try to do that. We identify grant funds where we can. In some cases, we don't um use grants if if there's no um ADA compliance we're trying to address or no additional facilities. um you know, public works goes out and they try to identify the the accesses that that are in the worst condition. And so I believe Albatross and Glidden are the two we're looking at for next year. And we're showing grant funding for Glidden. And so I assume for Glidden we'll be upgrading that um to Is that one where

we don't have a walkway now or is that one where we're we're upgrading for ADA compliance? We have a walkway but we're going to make it ADA comp. Okay. All right. So that's that's what allows us to apply for grant funding for that one. I think it's just past us.

Now, the CIP has other walkways in there for future years. And you can look in the CIP and see what's planned for future years. And if you have any questions about that schedule or if you observe any walkways that you think we should take a look at, you know, feel free to let us know. But like I said, we try to do two a year. Um we also um do some additional ones whenever we're doing a bath house. Uh the next bath house we're looking is hardrove in a few years from now and Harrove would be a grandfunded project to do the bath house. We would use camel grant and visitors bureau funds for that. So, and then when we do that, we'll also do the walkway for that.

All right. So number seven here, a pretty pretty highly ranked project was uh implementing our pedestrian plan to connect Southside Road with Carolist to drive. You know, we um had planning work in our budget this year. Actually, Amy had gotten a grant to help with the planning work for that and that that work is underway. I believe there they've um I'm not sure if they've completed it, but they've done a topographic survey out there and then our goal would be to get that information and meet with the park the park service about what they would let us do to put that pathway in there. Um so this is a conservative estimate we have here. Um we don't know the actual cost until we kind of have a sense of the design. You know, if we had to do a lot of bulkheading, we would be pushing closer to this amount. If we find that we can do less bulkheading, this amount will come down. So, that just remains to be seen at this point. This would be a finance project. Um, any questions about that? Okay. So, then you got Beach Road multi-use path. Um, I think maybe this this this is what was budgeted for the coming year. Maybe David can talk a little bit about how this is going to play out from from now until the point where we finished the entire beach multi-use path.

Sure. So, we've been working multiuse that all the way down to We have filled in that section from Pier all the way to just north of street and there's still another segment to be done this spring. The contractor is estimated to go up to about street with that work. And so then we'll have two segments left and so that balance over two years but first we'll need to design assistance to go ahead and plan that forward. So that 50,000 represent 2728 and 2829 we would finish out the balance of the two remaining segments. All right. And then the Harrove bath house, we included funds to do the design work for the bath house. um during the next fiscal year. And I mentioned grant funding for this. And Amy, remind me when we would actually start construction on that.

Okay. So the following year then, so design in 2020, fiscal year 27, construction in 28 to do hard. Not sure how much different that would be than the other two we've done. I assume it will be a little bit different just given the space constraints, but it's going to be a little bit smaller but very similar to

All right. So, um item number 10. So, our holiday display at Dowy Park has been very popular the last few years. And Bruce has worked tirelessly to get that in place. And a very a minor thing I think we could do for him is get him an enclosed utility trailer so he can put all that in one place and then it's makes it a lot easier for him to put out. And so that's number 10. and uh it's a fairly lowcost item, but something that would be really appreciated.

So, um item number 11 would be the master plan we did for our campus at town hall. You know, we we're working on the ocean rescue and fitness facility now. And then step two in this would be looking at a fire station. and the board purchased property for that fire station. And so what we're asking for is to go ahead and start doing some preliminary design work for the station. Obviously, this wouldn't be final design. This would be more schematic level design and programming, trying to figure out how big the station needs to be, what spaces it needs to include, what facilities. We got a proposal from our UNC call architect, Oakley Collier, to do that work. And I believe we put that scope in the packet that we sent to you, and it's in your CIP document. So, if you want to take a look at that, if you have any questions about that, but um that would be the I believe the first step in in moving this forward. We're not quite sure yet when we would be looking to do this project, but I think getting some planning work done now would help us even if it's several years away.

Do we have any topographic information on that site? Sweet. Okay, good job. So, you want to be ready, especially, you know, we're being somewhat opportunistic with grant funding. So, if we if we have some plans together, it's going to make it a lot easier for us to put something on the ground. Well, well, and this is something we've been talking to the legislature and and others about helping us with funding. So the further along we can get on it, the better position. As you say, position we're in.

Item number 12 is a knuckle boom. You know, we just purchased a knuckle boom, but ideally we'd like to have four. You know, you you see them working every day collecting brush in bulk curbside. We have a very robust service in the town. You know, we we put a lot of resources into it. I think it's appreciated. I hope you you think it's appreciated or you appreciate yourselves.

Um, but you know, it's a robust service. I mean, they they do this five months out of the year and they they hit the ground and they go hard and so they need to have these things up and running and they usually have three out there and then one in the brush yard. With the new brush yard, you know, folks drive up and they push stuff off into the containers. everything piles up on the sort of the south side of the container and then they have to have a piece of equipment to move it to pull it back and so they do keep a knuckle boom out there to to manage the containers and so um I assume we track tonnage on curbside pickup

we do on the on these collection could we maybe for the midmon meeting could we see maybe like a three-year trend on the collections because my perception is that I'm seeing more stuff put out than ever. Um, more white goods. I mean, what the white goods this year are insane. I don't know what happened, but yeah. So, yeah. Could So, if we could just get a trend. Okay. I have heard quite a few people though that appreciate that service so much um for decluttering and I think it helps with fire safety a lot for older people decluttering.

Okay. Any other feedback on that?

Perry, do you want to talk a little bit about the drone?

I can. We're looking to replace The one that we have now is parts are getting hard to replace them. The price on them has gone up just a little bit from the mandate that we buy drones from the United States versus Chinese. The one we have now did come from overseas. Um this is being put on CI even though we already have one. Our first drone that we had back in 2015, I believe a resident here owned a company that owned drones. Um, so he donated the first one to us that was rather large. Um, he was insured. Uh, we were doing some pictures doing beach nourishment or something after a storm one time. Winds got a little high. Um, it come down a little hard. So, it was replaced on the insurance with the one that we have now. Um, so technically we have never purchased um a drone. Um, so that's why it's here. Um, with the drone, we used it for um, crash reconstruction um, for vehicle crashes. We use it to help planning out on the beach before after a storm to try to get pictures um, to see if any deterioration is done. Um, we also use it to help locate missing persons. Um, we have applied for a drone uh for a grant under one under um project lifesaver. It might be a stretch on how we word it to get it. Um, but we do use it to help locate missing persons um even though they have a beacon when they are a member of Project Lifesaver. So, we're trying to get one under a grant for that, but we just don't know if it's going to come through. Um, but with the age of the drone that we have, we're trying to get this replaced. Um, our licensed drone operators retiring at the end of the year. So, we're trying to get a new one in also before he hits retirement so we can get others trained

on um and keep moving forward with crash reconstructions and anything else that planning might need. So, it sounds like a drone is multi- department not just for the police.

Yeah, I mean we house keep it in there when somebody from upstairs calls to pictures or anything. Fire's called, Nancy has called pictures of We've done pictures for Dave for the new uh facilities maintenance and and all that stuff and all that project work is under contract or under constructions, but we do um assist other departments and other agencies within um the county as well. Okay. A lot of other departments throughout the county now starting to get drones. Um but um we've had our program in effect and Greg has hit the ground running with it and he is all about it and FAA license and everything. So if anybody calls with drone questions, I defer them to him since he is our drone expert.

Great. So the first one was donated in 2015, you said? I believe it was about And when was it replaced by insurance? How old is it? It was getting I'm just curious. Roughly. Roughly. I mean the technology has changed a lot. Maybe 18, 17 something. Yeah. Yeah. I mean donated it was

this big and it had it own case. It was hard to car. I mean, the one we operate now is I mean, it can land in your hand, but it does everything. It's got fleer on it. It's got um laser range finding, so you can do anything with it. Um I know some other departments are starting to get ones that can carry items. We're not that it works for what we have, just the size of it with our reconstruction. That's probably the most um that it gets used for is is vehicle crashes, right? If we have anybody that's seriously injured that could

come up later and we want to go ahead and do a reconstruction just in case that fatality happens, we go ahead and mark it and plot it and do reconstruction. Right. Interesting.

Are are we still the department with the crash reconstruction goto person? I mean, I thought we were okay. Yes, sir. And we're trying and that's the my sergeant that's retiring. So, we're actively recruiting right now within to get people excited about reconstruction. Again, it's a lot easier than what it used to be. You don't have to do hand formulas anymore with all the technology out there, but um math is a big component of it. So, we do have several that are very interested in it that we're starting to to get classes lined up so they can continue rolling with it. Okay, great. Okay, thank you.

I'm not sure does everybody familiar with our Knox box system? Maybe Chief Wells can talk about that a little bit. Stay right here. Is it picking up?

All right. If if you don't mind, I'm just going to go ahead and hit 14 and 15 at the same time.

Um, when we're looking at one of the critical indicators for fires, one of the first things we look at is gaining access. There's 14 things that say if you do these 14 things, you have a really good chance of putting this fire out or saving a life. And one of the 14 things that we're looking at here is access. Um, so the Knox system allows us what we call non-destructive access to a building. Um, it's a key that's inside of our fire truck. It's housed in there. uh business owners, large business owners, small business owners, whoever doesn't want their doors broken and things of that nature buy into the system and allows us to come in and get a key and open the doors without having to do any damage. Um especially here in Nags, we have all the strip mall, the areas, the shopping centers, even some some restaurants, and even in the offseason when owners aren't even around. Um the Knox system is very very um important to us. um what we're currently at and what we're currently using is completely 100% at the end of its lifestyle cycle. It is housed on a single computer. Uh finding parts for the for the for the for the trucks themselves is almost unheard of. We can't find them even on eBay. Um so we have used every bit of what we could out of that system. Uh the current system we're looking at is cloud-based. It's more secure. that has a transparency system that where where if it's opened, you have to put in your own code. So, we know the person who put the co the person who put the uh code in, how long the how long the key was out, when the key was returned. Um, it's a very transparent open system. It's cloud-based. Um, there is a subscription fee to it that we'll have to currently have, which is about $1,300 a year. Um, but the power sources are actually inside the key, not inside the locks.

Um, which which helps with installation. So, again, a a very useful tool. It's one of those tools that's at 3:00 in the morning, you're not going to see it, but it is public facing. So, um, but we've just taken every bit we can with this thing and it it's done. So about how many NOX boxes are in Nag's Head? We've got 60 businesses uh currently that are enrolled in the system. I would love to see more and I would push the program even more. Um I think that it's it's actually a great thing for us to have. Um is there a cost to the business?

There is. Uh and it depends on the style of of Knox box you're going to install. It could be from 300 to one of their very secure ball 1300 and that's based on what they are comfortable with. Um, but most of the time it's it's the 300 to 500 to 700. It just depends. There's there's a variety of different ones you can choose. Um, but they all use the same locking system which is our key with our our um internal power source there. So

interesting. Um but again that's the that's the non-destructive side. And then um when you come down to 15 which is a forceable entry puff. If all else fails and there's there's not that we move into the destructive phase which is we're trying to breach and break doors. Um if you haven't noticed everybody in the world has decided that we really need to reinforce reinforce their doors and stuff. So training and practicing is is incredibly important. Speed is important you know um we use the the topic hose on the ground training um which is also piece of this is it's a prop and it is designed to simulate commercial doors residential doors um you can do it for any other type of of door systems you can put you know you can train them for regular locks you can do scroll locks you can do um any of these any type of if you can think of it you can to make it happen. Um, and that allows the firefighters to come up. There's not a destru there's a non not non-destructive way to get through. You have to find a way through this door. You need to get it. You've got 90 seconds. You better get busy. Um, and that's that is just repetition and training and coming up with ways that we just don't have to to forcibly get it done. So, kind of our access program. They kind of go hand in hand. So, be happy to answer any questions.

I don't think I have any more questions. Okay. No questions. Thank you.

All right. Kelly, could you come up and talk a little bit about the parks and recck plan update? Yeah. So, um just I'll be brief, but um our current parks and recreation plan is 14 years old. Um when it was created, um Dowy Park was just a conversation. Um so, anyway, It's it's long overdue for an update and um I know previously I think last year we had talked about allocating a small amount of money and trying to do something in house um with essentially Joe and I working on that. But um it it feels like it's a good opportunity

to um do a larger uh parks and recreation master plan update. Um that would take into account all of your existing park facilities um where we want to go re-engage people on Flailbone Park. I don't know if you remember, but um the last time we did that, there was a conversation about a splash pad. Um there were some concerns with that. Won't go in to all of that, but we do need to re-engage the community on that. Uh Wellbone Park has now been built out with a wonderful pavilion and restrooms. So, what do we want to see happening there? Um so also beach accesses on the northern end um of town. It's parking is tight there. We have Dowy Park where parking is also tight during farmers markets. So do we need an assessment of available parking in some areas of our town? Possibly. Um something to think about. But at any rate, this is larger than what Joe and I could probably do in-house, and we would like to um if possible, seek a consultant to help us pursue a more comprehensive parks and wreck update.

Do you foresee getting that committee back together like to work with this consultant? Um I think it's an option. Um, we could certainly do that. Yeah. Community involvement, talent involvement. We've got a very engaged staff, a very engaged board and community. So, I would think anything along those lines would be helpful. Yes. Kind of a hot topic too with the um referendum on park and wreck money in in the fall, right? With the counties. Yeah. Hot topic with the county. So people be paying attention.

All right. Thank you, Kelly.

And then let's see the last item for the general fund. Maybe between Karen and and Amy, you could talk a little bit about the fiber buildout, what what that would be. probably knows about this better than I do, but essentially um this is basically an item that not only would provide more reliable service, but it's I don't want to say it's a no-brainer, but it does have a return on investment because we're spending several thousand dollars a year in internet bills now at the two locations, and and it just kind of seems like an intuitive first step as far as building out our fiber infra infra infrastructure in town because it's just a straight shot from um Bonnet Street to Dowy Park. So um yeah, I was just going to add a couple details um couple details about this potential project. Um, as Amy mentioned, we're we're paying a commercial internet service provider for both of those locations. And what we want to do is tie it into um MCNC fiber connection which we get through the state um that provides internet currently at town hall um public services and fire station across the street. So, we would tie these two locations in with Dark Fiber and it would be a much more robust um internet connection secure and they provide redundancy. So if anything goes down um it they have backup. And with all the um increase of use at Dowy Park, I think that's really important because we have currently eight security cameras

at Dowy Park um that rely on that internet connection. We also have Wi-Fi usage for guests for a separate Wi-Fi for the vendors at the markets. um they use that for all their point of sale devices and um and possibly future we might put in security locks some of the doors u down there at Daddy Park. So it would definitely be served well by this more robust internet. And then um as far as Bonnet, we have three security cameras there and um the facility has two computers for ocean rescue staff and Wi-Fi as well. So, um, we use both of those locations a lot. So, it'd be nice to have a more secure and reliable internet service. water fund and just a couple of items here. Um, so I don't know if Nancy you want to talk about this a little bit. Just these two items. These two water lines will uh Finch to Forbes. It's like 255 ft and from Dune Street to Soundside Road say 1500. It'll uh loop our system in so that we have a water break on one line. We could isolate it and hopefully keep less people without service. Um we try to do that. We've tried to do it since the dawn of man, but we're we've

got a checklist and a dream list, and we'd like to check these off our list. Um the vacuum trailer, that's a piece of equipment that would also um it'd be used for distribution. It would assist in water breaks, dewatering the whole thing. also keep the valve cans clean for the main valves and the hydrates. It would also be um able to be used by storm water for their use. Also, this is something the mayor remember you saw them cleaning out along the multi-use path. This this came up after that as a piece of equipment that could do that work. But then once water found out that we were looking at it, they're like, "Well, this would expedite any water repairs, you know, that this was something they really wanted to have."

Okay. Well, good. Um, so if you check these two sort of deadend loops off, how many would you have left? How many are on that wish list? I'm going to say about eight, maybe. Oh, wow. Okay. It's a lot on the east side of 158. There's a gaps in the system on the east side. Okay. And so we've been trying to fill those in. You know, you see the one going in right now in front of front of the sports club, right? Yep. I remember that from from last year. Okay. Good. Thanks. All right. Do we have something else?

Uh I don't know. I don't think so. Um Amy put together this this slide and these are just items that um aren't CIP items, but they're items that we're going to have in our budget that are that are capital outlay. And just for awareness, um we don't necessarily need to talk about these, but you know, obviously we replace police vehicles every year. We've committed to the lakeside um and event side traffic signals. So budgeting for the remainder of those funds whenever those projects are done. You know, mentioned the transfer switch that's at the bottom of the page there. And then um just just some work at the water water pump stations. You the mixer for the tower, some replacement pumps, and the excavator. These aren't really CIP items. They're more like replacement of equipment. Right. Okay. So, um, one thing I added on here, and I don't know if we want to do this now or would do it another time, is the discussion about the boardwalk, but we did include this the boardwalk in our CIP, not for next year, but for future years, just to sort of lay this out and maybe it helps with the discussion. But um just want to go over this real quick for now. Um I think Joe and Amy got some pricing from the visitors bureau for the re recent work they did out there on the boardwalk. And so they use those numbers to put together what they think it would cost to do these extensions. And so this is something that we had shown in years past where you would essentially have a leg that comes to the south that connects the event site to the outwards.

And then you would have another leg that comes off the north um that would go almost all the way to um well to the north end of the full throttle speedwave site. And so uh staff's estimated that th those projects would be about a half million dollars a piece. And so this shows starting design work in FY28. So not next year, but the year after, you know. So then the construction will be in 29. So if that were the case, you'd have about a three-year gap between the work that's currently being completed being done and and when we would do ours. So obviously the board could move this up or back. I mean, these would these would be designed to be grant funded projects. Um but again, we put this in there just as a placeholder for now knowing that word likely wants to discuss this at some point in the future and obviously we want to talk about pedestrian connectivity in this area as well.

I I think we that's a bigger discussion than today but I I think having some numbers that we can sort of start hearing in our heads probably a good idea. Okay. Well, we we'll figure out a time to have that discussion, but we just wanted to show this to you. Does it that does the town own that piece of land um that's behind the that's west of the substation that's sort of behind um yes, Commissioner Harrison's house basically part part of it. I think there's a there's a right of way here, right? Yes, I know. this piece of land. We I think we might own that.

I believe the town. I've looked at that before for whatever reason, but I thought the town owned that. Okay. Anyway, and thanks for staff for putting it together. Um let's see. All right. So, that was really the whole CIP at least for what's proposed for next year.

And so, obviously, we've ranked them. We'll try to include as much of that in the budget as we can afford. And then um if you if the board has any comments even after the meeting, if you want to email me any of your comments, if there are certain things that you feel like absolutely needs to be in the budget or that if you feel like some things should be ranked higher than we than we ranked them, that information would be useful as we're putting together our recommended budget. And then you know obviously we're going to meet again mid April even though we don't have a budget workshop scheduled mid midappril you can also provide some feedback but once we present the manager's recommended budget you can always change things at the midmon May workshop too if there are things that you want to add or subtract. So there's still plenty of opportunities to weigh in on these things. Um, but with that said, we do have some things that we'd like the board to consider for the organization. And some of these things don't necessarily involve funding full new full-time positions. In some cases is just sort of reallocating what we have now. And so, if I could just get staff to go over each of these just real briefly and and then you can ask any questions. But Jan, maybe you could talk about this first one. So um like in HR I'm really fortunate because we're able to like create and build things and similar to what we're talking a lot about today is we keep building and creating infrastructure you know external um there's a maintenance requirement and uh you know we want to keep enhancing the HR function which you know better enables the town to perform at a at a higher ability. Um, but there's a maintenance component that we need to

continue to upkeep. And so, one of the ideas that we had is to introduce an HR assistant position. As Andy mentioned, this request isn't necessarily adding a new headcount to the town. What we're trying to do is is be resourceful and use some of the talent that we have and and redeploy um some of that work. And so we would request a new position to the pay plan, but not necessarily an additional headcount. Uh but really what we're looking for is uh the HR assistant to handle some of the day-to-day the operational responsibilities, a lot of those maintenance uh items and then that would allow um my position to focus more on some of the organizational development initiatives. And we talked about this. that ended up being one of the priority uh strategic planning items of the board retreat. Um so I think by doing it this way, we're still continue to build and and elevate um HR function and support of of staff and and town performance. Um but we're, you know, looking at it from a cost perspective and I think we can do this pretty reasonably as well.

Any questions at all? Thank you. I think the payoff from this would be gonna be huge. All right. And Kelly, um, you're up.

Thank you. Um, I know we've kind of touched on it previously in conversations, but I, um, am requesting a year round support position to help with our events coordinator. Um 20 hours a week with a budget of 21,000 to assist with coordination, logistics, communications, on-site, social media, the works. Um I guess the thing that really resonated with me, um event planning is in the planning department. Paige Griffin, um your event coordinator is housed within planning and she is really um a department of one.

There's no one um to to step in and really help her. Yes. Um Connor and some other planning staff can do that when needed. Um but there's really no dedicated person um to help her. So, as events are growing, um, as we're becoming less seasonal and holding things more year round, even in our off season, that's where all the planning occurs. Um, there's just there's really a lot to it that I, you know, I sometimes think that maybe not everyone understands all the effort that goes into event planning, the pre-work, and then actually being there to pull it off day. It's a lot. Um, and being a department of one, if that position is sick, family emergency, anything comes up, um, we're struggling.

Um, as was witnessed when I tried to show Fox and the Hound Dy, could not get it off of Spanish for two hours. Um, anyway, uh, but having this part-time position would be, uh, incredibly helpful. We do have a seasonal position now, but it's really hard to train that person, get that institutional knowledge um that you could have if you had a more consistent year round. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, we'll include in the job description skills required use of old technology. Um, and so in my mind, this was probably the most obvious request. It's just something that we can never have enough of is facilities maintenance. So, Nancy, I don't know if you could just go over this real quick. Maybe this one in the water position. So,

we're requesting a heavy equipment operator for facilities maintenance. Right now we got um 13 employees in facilities and three of them are the heavy equipment that can run heavy equipment. One of them is Bobby with storm water, Steven the superintendent and then Josh Gibbons. Um I focus on the increase of rightaways that we have had since 2008. But it also includes cleaning off the beach accesses after storms. Uh burying dead turtles and whales on the beach. Uh Perry's called us times to uh grade the beach when there's beach driving. So it's more than just rideaways. And this this oper position would be um highly skilled in operating equipment but they would also take the duties the regular duties of of facilities maintenance as in plumbing, painting, carpentry and cleaning whenever they just don't ride a piece of equipment. So I think that would um benefit us

and the town because the facilities maintenance and all the public services do take pride in the way the town looks and wants to make sure that everything looks good and is operational and safe for the residents and the visitors. Thank you. You have any questions? water.

And then we have a um in water distribution. There used to be four technicians and over the years it got reduced down to three. Uh Raymond with the um the AMI meters, everybody assumed that they're automatic. Well, actually, they're more work because they put out those alarms every day

and we check them to make sure and um you still have to do the maintenance at the meters and all that. They're they're fine because they hustle. But I would like to change the position of the water plant operator that's getting ready to retire at the 1 of May to like a floater position to be able to be at the plant but also be in distribution to help them out too. We will I think the we can do it. We just got to fine tune it. But I think it'll be a a good uh benefit for the water department as a whole.

Any questions?

All right. And then let's see. Thank you, Nancy. Chief Wells,

actually was going to try to have Chad but he's busy doing run swim test for all the lifeguards. So, he's just he's a busy guy. Um fire rescue is actually um asking for headcount one increase and part of that is this organizational shift. Um you know the we understand that the the most forward facing people during our summer season are our lifeguards. They they are the heart and soul and smiles that that get people on the beach. And that is in no uncertain terms run by one person, Captain Chad Moth. He he's incredible. Um, currently he splits time between fire and ocean rescue. And he is incredibly busy during both seasons. Um, and you would think that he wouldn't be busy during the winter season when he's on the fire trucks, but he is constantly doing things. He is recruiting. He is finding new training stuff. He is going to job fairs. He is he is networking. He he is very busy. Um so our proposal was to move him full-time as ocean rescue and allow him to keep those duties and concentrate on those duties full-time. Um, and then within that piece, promote from within our department someone to that split time position and have that person as a lieutenant level so that when they come back instead of being a firefighter, they can do multiple different roles. They can drive the truck, they can command, um, they can do anything. Um, and that allows us to then have that career progression we were talking about during the um, the retreat. Um, which we think is very important. Um, it also allows us to bring some new blood into the department and and bring them up. Um,

I think overall it's a very necessary position and at one point I believe it was a full-time position and then it was removed during some financial hard times. So again, we're trying to just get back to that. Let's concentrate on our our customers and and move from there. But we truly believe that the position is necessary. It's warranted. Um and I think we've come up with a pretty nice plan of of making it work and increasing our efficiencies. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. Thank you.

Thank you. And we the last bullet mentions a phased option. As we get into the budget and really see where we are, we may end up looking at that, but you know, we'll we'll report back to the board on that. Okay. And then Jan, maybe talk a little bit about the benefits and some of this stuff I think you're already aware of, but um just to re recap.

Yes, we we talked a little bit about this at the board retreat. So, one of the um opportunities we have this year using back that we received from our engagement surve our staff engagement survey and then the uh paying class study survey. Uh we've come up with a list of benefits that would um you know staff seem to be interested in and also would make us more competitive. One of those items is the lifestyle reimbursement account. And what this would do is replace uh the complimentary alternative medicine benefits we used to have with an a prior medical carrier. Um and so that would allow employees to receive um you know like massage therapy, acupressure, there's there's a a number of different things um that we could include in this. And so uh staff is requesting um that we introduce this benefit um for the next plan year. The other item that we were uh uh wanted to bring to your attention is uh introducing a mental health day off. um our benefit survey, the external market survey had indicated we were one day off from a holiday perspective uh compared to our peers and so uh instead of you know adding an additional holiday um we would create a policy around this for the for the board to consider as well but u incorporate that into a mental health day off because that seems to be really on the top of minds of staff um as we learned through the engagement survey and then also um I'm actually meeting with a a group on Monday about introducing using workrelated trauma or crisis therapy. And the purpose of this uh would be to help primarily first responders but other staff um that may um have a need for for workrelated trauma or crisis therapy um to be able to respond uh to anyone that has a need or an interest um to a crisis related event within like 24 to 48 hours. There's a lot to explore with this program because it's new for the town. I believe uh one of our neighbors to the north um does this currently. Um, so,

uh, we're I'm talking to a group on Monday to see what what that might look like. So, there's probably more to come, um, in terms of structure and what that would look like. I think there's one more slide after this. The longevity benefit. Um, this came up in the in the market an assessment that we did, but also in our town engagement survey. Um, right now we have two different longevity uh, benefits that are provided. one was uh introduced prior to 71 of 2008 and that is a percentage based longevity. Um anyone that's hired after July 1st of 2008 we have a dollar amount longevity. This hasn't been updated since 2008. So it's been quite a while. Um so we're proposing um effectively doubling those benefit amounts for longevity um for those that are hired after July 1st of 2008. Um, and the cost u it would run right around4 $43,000 for that.

Thank you. I appreciate the board's consideration. Thanks. And then last thing, Kelly, if you could talk about this, the SMP. One of the things that we've been talking about is with the estra shoreline management plan, how we really help the private property owner who wants to do something without getting the town too involved in actively working on their property. So, this is sort of a new program that Kelly and Joe have been working on.

Yeah, thank you. Um, and Joe Costello has been instrumental. He should probably be the one up here talking, so if I'll leave anything out, just jump in. Um but yeah, the idea would be allocating um up to $10,000 in the budget um to work kind of have George Wood as an on call consultant. Put the program out there similarly to how we do the Doom management cost share. Put it out there first come first serve. If you're a Soundfront property owner um and you want to explore how to lessen erosion on your property through uh nature-based um solutions, living shorelines, you know, possibly even if you've already got a bulkhead, but you want to want to greenify it. I heard that word the other day from Joe. Um then, you know, you could work with George Wood to see what your options are. Um, and uh we would give you uh we would give the property owner up to um $1,000 for payment for Georgia with services um to help them navigate what that looks like for them. And if they do get to a place where they can get um pursue permits, then maybe um George can can use that money to help them with that as well. So right now it would be 10,000 1,000 per Right.

But not to help them with conventional bulkheads or hard shorelines. No, it would it would be living shoreline, nature-based, something like that. This would um Joe has spoken with uh George Wood frequently about this and has said that he's George Wood is very much open to it, thinks it's a wonderful program and something to offer the citizens. Do you guys get a lot of requests now from soundite owners wanting to learn learn how to do this stuff?

Um, I would say recently we've had more questions generally about what are the options for southside properties that don't currently have bulkheads. Um, not a lot but but it is out there. Okay. I think since we started at Esuin Shoreline Committee, it kind of ramp that up. I think that really shined a light on it and people see that as an opportunity to to gain more information and help. For sure. Thank you. Thank you.

There was another discussion that we we want to have, but this could be a little bit more involved and so I don't know if this is something we really want to get into today, but we talked about this when we're discussing beach nourishment and p funding the next project. you know, we're using quite a bit of cash to pay for this project and in the future based on what we're trying to do, how much cash might be available for the next project? And if there's not a lot available, then we're going to have to raise taxes when we get to the next project to pay for it. And so the idea is, do we want to consider changing our tax rates at some point, maybe not this year, but at some point to try to build up the fund balance in in the beach nourishment fund. And so that, like I said, this could be a little bit more involved because there's a whole bunch of rabbit holes we could go down with this. But, you know, another thing that's come up and and you obviously the board was sent an article yesterday about FEMA, but you know, the idea of keeping some more cash on hand as a reserve, but to deal with situations might be something that we really need to think about doing. So, that's another element to this discussion. And as we said to you um when we were talking about the project in in the year two of next year's budget, so the plan year, we we might put as a placeholder a tax rate proposal for the beach nourishment fund. And so we could have that discussion at a later workshop. We could prepare something for you. I don't think the idea is to to generate enough money to to basically put the same amount of cash in there that we had this time, but but maybe to keep a reasonable reserve um and to pay for some of our soft costs and and really just just do some more future planning for this.

Absolutely. Absolutely. We're going to be more and more self-reliant. We're going to have to do it. It's either going to be do it yourselves or don't do it at some point. And if the alternative is if we don't do this and say we get down the road to our next project and now we have to come up with a lot $20 million instead of 13 million that needs a tax rate increase and it's going to hit them really hard at that time. Yep. So we need we need to be more proactive than that. Or if we have a storm in between the two have no coverage and and FEMA won't Yeah. And I talked to the county manager and I think they are keeping some money on hand. It's probably really not enough, but it's something that they're trying to keep on hand to pay for like the mobilization cost for a project.

Sure. So, anyway, I'll I'll just leave it at that. You know, we can figure out a way to come back to you on this one. Okay. But, um, I think that's essentially everything we wanted to go over today. You know, we'll be working on preparing the recommended budget. you know, if we want to talk about some of these items again at the midmon meeting, we can do that. If you want to send me your comments, do that as well and all that will be taken into consideration. And we sort of look at the ranking, you know, as what makes the cut, right?

You know, and so if if if there's something that's sort of lower ranked that you say has to be in there, then let us know. But I I'm optimistic that we'll be able to fund most of the items at least this year. But we'll see where we get to. Okay. I I will make a real effort between now and the midmon to take a look at this and try to get my questions to you earlier rather than later. Can Very good. Okay. Okay. And thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Very helpful. Thanks to