Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Start this again. I'd like to call the meeting of July 9th for the North Topsail Beach Planning Board to order. Thank you all for showing up. And can we get an adoption of the agenda? Anybody want to make a motion?

Mr. Chairman, so moved. Adopt the agenda.

Get a second?

I'll second.

Any discussion? Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Next is the approval of the minutes. We've got two sessions to approve. First is the May 14th, 2026 minutes. Can we get a motion to approve that?

I'll make a motion to approve the May 14th minutes.

We get a second?

I'll second.

Do we have any discussion of the minutes? Any corrections or amendments? Not hearing any, we have a vote. All those in favor of approving the May 14, 2026 minutes, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, now we do the same thing with the June 11, 2026 minutes. Again, a motion to approve those minutes.

Make a motion to approve the June 2026 planning board minutes.

Second?

I'll second.

Again, any discussion on the June 11, 2026 minutes? All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Okay, moving right along to item four. I don't see we have anybody here to make any public comments, so we'll move on, bringing us to old business, and I'll turn that floodplain management and flood damage prevention ordinance over to Deb.

Okay. So Ms. Brown said that she did watch the video and Terry watched it. Did everybody get a chance to see the presentation during the Board of Aldermen?

Yes.

Part of it? Okay. I think one of the former planning board members said that it was boring. So now I understand why she thought it was boring because she's one of those people that had gone through it again and again and again. It's hard to make all things exciting, but the points that I hope that we got across is just how important to the town that floodplain management program is. And also, you know, we're both Brady and I are certified floodplain managers. Um, and if, if you have a neighbor or a few yourself, or, you know, somebody that is complaining about their flood insurance being, you know, thousands of dollars in there, if they're in Cobra, unfortunately there is very little that we can do because private insurance, I don't know if you remember me telling you before or not, but prior to 2021, I think it was, 75% of the town was in a VE flood zone. So the, we talked about policies in effect. Was that what the policies enforced? The policies enforced, it was quite a bit of money because it was in V zone and that's a higher risk category. And then, um, with, when the new maps came out in 2021, it reversed to where that 75% of the town was in AE and only 25% was in VE. And not only that, we had a few pockets that were in shaded decks that they weren't, that they were not even in a special flood hazard area. So even for the properties and I, and I spoke with somebody that was in charge of one of the private insurance companies. And I was told that they weren't gonna adjust the rates from what they had been. And I think that that's really unfortunate. And that's kind of the benefit of having NFIP, doing that pool doing that federal pool and where that whenever you go from a ve or an ae or you meet you meet all the requirements for that flood zone or in the case of many of the houses in north tops beach where they were built to a higher standard and you get the benefit of two feet above base flood right so all those little things that you do whenever you you know build your house or your neighbors build their house and they they comply with these higher standards that have been adopted by the board that is like cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching forget about crs that is like cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching whenever they go whenever the underwriter insurance underwriter goes to uh write their policy their flood insurance policy deb i would just say um

Because I was in the VE flood zone, and I switched to AE, and I'm COBRA, but my insurance dropped just from that switch.

So you should talk to your insurance people just from personal experience. Good. That is good news, and I'm glad that that is the case. So one of the things that we look at is that – uh if you were in a ve zone and depending on when your house was built you did not have to have flood vents make sure i got this right you did not have to have flood vents now it gets a little confusing because the town has adopted v-zone construction standards and say your house was in an ae flood zone even though ve is the higher standard having those flood vents was a requirement by fema because you were in the ae flood zone so we can't do less than what fema requires so here we were doing these own construction standards and you had to have flood vents Well today, in both VE and AE, you have to have floodments. Right, so the rules caught up with what we were doing to begin with, but we were getting credit for doing it that way. So it could be, say somebody has, say their house was built in, I'm going to say 2010, I think that's a safe enough date. So 2010 and. They were in a visa zone, so they didn't have to have flood vents. So the new bets come along in 2021 and now they're in the zone, but they're still paying like 3000, 4000, 5000, $6000 for flood insurance. So why are they not? You know, where's the discount for that? And it may be that they were compliant when the house was built. in a V zone without flood vents, but now that they're rated as AE and they have to have flood vents, they're getting rated like instead of plus two, they're getting rated minus 12. Does that make sense? And all it would take would be get your little bread knife or your Dremel or whatever else you got at home and cut your little hole in the wall, go slap a couple of flood vents in there and get your surveyor to update your elevation certificate. And I probably wrote somewhere between three and five letters and where i'd in the letter i would state that i went out and did an inspection verified that flood vents were there and that the house was you know the structure was compliant with ae flood zone and their insurance dropped i think one two that i'm thinking of there's one there's one two i want to say twelve hundred dollars or right around a thousand dollars i thought we could get it down lower than that but they were static to have be paying twelve hundred dollars So bottom line is, if you're paying thousands and thousands of dollars, contact one of us. Let us do a visit. And oh, by the way, we get credit on our CRS program for coming out there and visiting you and helping you out and giving you floodplain advice. So please take us up on it. You know, we come out there and take a look at we look at your elevation certificate. We look at what you got in the ground and it could be that, you know, maybe you're Maybe at the time, staff wasn't so strict on the elevation of your mechanical and electrical, and you've got your HVAC.

How many of you have seen these HVACs that are like two feet off the ground?

And they really should be up where you're, basically about where your first floor is, thereabouts, right? So that's aligned on the elevation certificate. Is your mechanical and electrical elevated out of the flood zone. If it is, then you're okay. If it's not, then you might get points deducted on it.

Deb, is flood vents the same as breakaway walls?

No. Flood vents, and it really seems counterintuitive. It seems counterintuitive, but I'll tell you what.

Breakaway walls are pretend like there's no sheetrock on this wall, right? And so all you see are the studs. So there's this frame. So when we get into our inspection, can you pull up a breakaway wall, a picture one, and pass it down to us? Some of these walls, they're like packed into the frame with like little nails. Like they're not part of the structure. They're not part of the structure that they tend to be, but they're not super reinforced in place. You want them in there, and there's so many pressures per square inch. But the idea is that if a storm surge came through, that those walls are going to break away, they're going to let go.

And it's just plywood and two-by-fours, right?

It's just crammed. So how much are two-by-fours and tubing?

That's a lot less than the dams that... Like, that was a solid wall. That was a solid wall. And you've got the high-end dams.

That was a solid wall up there.

and or that regular wall was attached it just depends on the construction yeah so the the flood beds you can have engineered flood beds because they're smaller and they're engineered to displace water at an accelerated rate so you get credit for 200 square inches. It's an inch per square foot. So one of the engineer projects, generally speaking, is ready for 200 square inches, 200 square feet of space. So you're not having to have all these big footbeds all through the bottom. They're aesthetically more pleasing. They're probably more efficient. They have a flat and a flood boat, flutter, float in it, where when the water comes, that float raises and it lifts that door up and water comes out. And that takes that hydrostatic pressure off of your walls and off your pylons. I've always thought it was counterintuitive to have flood boats and a breakaway wall. But they operate differently and at different pressures. And one of the things that I did see with the Eckert Florence one round, and check to see where it looks from where you've got this wall blown out. But it did exactly what it was supposed to do. It blew out in the Pyramid State. So, if that makes any sense. And that's where you have to have an engineer sign off and certify that it was built, you know, these are the plans to function specifically this way. Do you have any other questions? feel free to email us or come and see us if you have insurance, flood insurance problems, or if your friends have flood insurance problems, have them contact us and schedule an appointment and we can help them as best we can.

I'm gonna go ahead and skip on to the next two items, if that's okay. So, there was a report that came out in, was it June or May? I forget the dates next, I don't have my date.

May 7th.

The President's Council to assess federal emergency. I would, I encourage the board, I don't know how many of them will do this, but I certainly encourage you, and I'm hoping that I have a prolific reader somewhere. I'm not a prolific reader, but somebody that's a prolific reader. If you'll kind of like, even if you just like read through that, you know, glance at it, and let me know what is it saying to you. Because I looked at it, and I'll go ahead and tell you what I thought when I went through it, I'm not ready to work for Cover and Cover yet, but basically the federal government is looking to push down the response to the state and local governments for hazard mitigation. There may be some wisdom to that, particularly, and I think all of us can agree that Katrina was not a successful response. And it was devastating. Even today, I don't think that we would be capable of responding as well and as efficiently for a cat five hurricane that came through. There's just some things you can only control It seems like. And so what I hear the final report saying is that if the decision makers were on the ground and it was local, then perhaps people would be helped quicker, the recovery would be faster. And again, that depends on the money. So I kind of see this going, more for the state and local governments. And for the finances, one of the things that I caught was that the threshold for making a FEMA claim was going to be higher. Right? And I'm not sure to what degree yet is on that. But, you know, I've gone through this process before where we do the initial damage assessment and it's gonna be like 900, was it $970,000 for the county? It's like 970, I think.

So that's what it was.

What's it gonna be now if that goes into effect? Because we're going and we're doing damage assessment, we don't always have enough damage to claim FEMA assistance. So if you raise that threshold, if you raise that bar, it would have to, we're gonna have to be, one, we're gonna have to be really good at our jobs no matter what and claim everything that there is to claim. We can't claim more because if you do, you know what's gonna happen. They're gonna be stroking a check for money. But we've gotta be very diligent and very efficient in documenting the damage that we have and get this fed to the county and the county feeds it up through the state to where the town leadership can decide, okay, do we qualify for FEMA emergency funding? And it gets to be very expensive if you have damage and you're almost there. Here's the threshold. Here's your damage. You know, nobody can deny that you've had a lot of damage. The problem is you didn't meet that threshold. So then what happens then? So I think that there's – I don't want to be like Chicken Little. I kind of do. But I don't want to be like Chicken Little. But I want the town. I want the planning board. I want the board of Alderman. to be looking at this and saying, okay, how can we be prepared when it's go time? Do we have the staff trained in place? Do we have the reserves in money available to get us through to the next step? Like whatever, you know, whatever genius accounting policy, like all that stuff, are we prepared? What is it going to take? for us to get through and go to recover. We talked about, Ray and I had this conversation earlier this morning, and we're working on this resilience plan thing that we have to do for the state. And, you know, resilience is the new buzzword. Right? And to me, you know, I'm old and, you know, grumpy. So to me, resilience is like, that's a euphemism. Resilience would be great. That's what we aspire to. We all aspire to be good people. Some days are just better than others. But the fact of the matter is we're constantly in recovery mode. We're trying to recover from storm surges and flooded roads and all the things that we go through. So read through that. You don't have to read it word for word. But just put your eyeballs on it and see what you're getting out of it. See what it's selling you. Because my suspicion is that if we don't look at it and find some people that are more avid readers than I am, that if we're not prepared to be able to step up and make these claims for FEMA and have all of our ducks in a row that we are not going to be able to respond as quickly and as efficiently as what we otherwise could be. I could be wrong, but that's what I'm giving. And you being on the planning board, you guys come in here and go, I think we need to do a report and we need to make a recommendation to the board of Alderman that they need to work on these three things. Okay, all right, let's do it. So the next one, if you go to the next one, there were two things, there was a video. If you do even just a video on the president's committee for, Federal Emergency Management Act. There's some videos out there and I would ask that when you do, you know, we're working and we care about the town. I don't care if you got a red hat, blue hat, purple hat, no hat, bald head, like Fred. No hair like Fred. Sam, you know, it doesn't matter.

We're, you know, we care about the town, right?

So it's, easy whenever you're doing your research to get looped in and distracted by some of these uh by the noise that's on there right so try to if you do that if you get into doing research try to do it with an open mind right you don't need to be a chicken a little like i am sky is falling sky is falling um But try to have an objective, open mind as you're reading through what it's saying on the federal level and what the federal government is saying to the state. And try to anticipate – this is what planning is all about.

Try to anticipate what the state is going to be telling us come hurricane season.

Well, having lived through a couple of hurricanes, Sandy in New Jersey and Matthew when I was working in Goldsboro, the federal response is very slow. I mean, initially they are there. I think the response in distributing the money to the people needing to rebuild is where the delay was. And a lot of it is they're so afraid of fraudulent claims, which is a valid concern, that the fraudulent claim checking is held up to release to the 99% of the claims that were legitimate. And I know people two, three, four years after Matthew and Sandy were still waiting for their money. And same, you know, at Florence, I fortunately didn't have that much damage at Florence and didn't need any. But, you know, I think if the FEMA process could be streamlined to where they could do something like that, and in dealing with Matthew, because I had to deal with some damages and we were involved in evacuations and so forth. the state level was so much more responsive than the federal level in terms of actually doing stuff on the ground so I think that aspect is good now the funding level and all that good stuff and that's that's pretty much above our pay scale but I think it's worth looking at but I think something obviously needs to be done to change the way because it's not working right now

And one of the burdens is, my understanding with FEMA, is that you, the town, have got to spend that money first on the things that you need and then file for reimbursement. Okay, well, that's great for the wealthiest people on the planet that live in the town of North Thompson. I'm kidding. But not every town is like that. And it may be that the town of North Thompson Beach, God forbid, what if they didn't have the reserves to be able to self-finance to get through that initial hunt, knowing that they were going to get reimbursed? If you live here, you've got an investment. If you have a house here, you have an investment. And there's a good chance that that's the largest investment that you've maybe made in your life. You know, but even if it's not, it's I would think it was a significant investment. So these are the things I'm just wanting us to be more forward looking and be open minded as we're doing it. And to see what these documents, you know, what do you think that we can do to be you know, more prepared to be resilient. But, you know, if we can make it through recovery, if we're prepared for recovery, then, you know, I'm satisfied. If we can become more resilient, and it's in our higher standards more than anything, I think, that make us as resilient. That's where our resilience has been since 2020, the higher standards that the town has adopted. So yes, I would like for us to be more resilient in the weather of the storms, but there has to be some efficient, timely assistance in a process and place where that everybody knows what their job is and they go do it. and people aren't just standing around. People aren't standing around because they are lazy. People are standing around because where's the direction? Where's the vision? What's the job? What's the direction?

You know?

Mr. Chair, just a couple of more comments and questions. So I've lived here a year and come from Florida, probably went through over a dozen hurricanes, I went through five hurricanes, and I was the head of civil defense for our city, which was not a position I really wanted. But you learn a lot of things. And when I came here, there's a lot of things that I noticed that are similar. And there's other things. I never lived on a barrier island before. I lived in a flood zone by the intercoastal and had to evacuate. But it's a little different here. So I don't know. Who decides when people can come back? What are the conditions when people come back? Those are things that I think the public needs to know and this town needs to have a plan to communicate that in advance because sometimes cell towers go down, electricity's down, people don't have computers. So those were kind of some of the lessons I learned. I mean, some of the basic lessons were when the power was out and we had two hurricanes that were two and a half weeks apart. and the power came on for like a day in between, and it was out for weeks at a time. Not evacuation zones, so people were still there. So things like traffic lights, which we really don't have, so it's not a condition here, but when you don't have traffic lights, you gotta have people directing traffic. The biggest thing there that's really similar to here is, and we didn't control our utility, and we don't control our utility here, is the lift stations. Raw sewage was just backing up everywhere. And it's a health hazard. And it was because the utility didn't think in advance to have portable generators that could put on those pumps to pump it out. So our town had to end up doing kind of a fix in between where we actually got surplus generators for preparedness. And within three years, made it, the county utility made it a requirement that they budgeted and actually had enough rolling generators that they could go pump out the lift station. The lift station has a big tank, so you don't have to keep the generator running 24-7, but I mean, you pump it down, it might last a day. So you could move that generator around. But those are the things that I don't see here. I don't see how the communication would work. And the chairman is right. FEMA well, I don't know what the new FEMA's like, but the old FEMA, it was reimbursement and if you didn't have the money, and then the citizens that were gonna file a claim to FEMA once we met the threshold, a lot of those people either lost their cars because trees fell on them or some of the roads were washed away, so they couldn't even get to FEMA. And FEMA's response was, well, we've set up a regional facility where you can come and file your claim Or you can do it online, although there's no power or your house was damaged and you lost your computer and you don't have the wherewithal to go buy another one. So those are the things that I think for a plan that if the town doesn't have, should be working toward to be able to have people know, knowledge, who do you call the, to find out when you can come back on the island or does people just drive over here and see if they can come across? That's a traffic nightmare.

No, that's all we have. We just recently readopted a emergency operating operations plan. And, um, so a lot of the timeline, if it, I don't know if it's still on the, if it's on the website currently, but generally things like that would be on the website and would be, uh, connected with information like the hurricane passes, things like that. It's gonna be, it's gonna be the, the words coming from the mayor and it's going to be the board that's making those decisions but you know whether it's a mandatory evacuation or a voluntary evacuation and if you're not what's our what's the name of our latest not code red regroup are all of you signed up for regroup i don't think so okay so you need to go on the website and sign up for regroup and that's the texting and emergency messaging that comes through so that's different than the other things you sign up for that you get alerts or right it used to be years ago several years ago it used to be code red and i think i'm still stuck on code red because there was something between regroup

Oh, so that's through the county regroup. Like I've been here a year, I don't know, probably none of my neighbors know.

Yeah, I think you raise the right point, Sam, is that there's emergency management plans in place and procedures in place. It's just that the general public doesn't necessarily know it and what to do.

Well, that's why it's important to watch the Board of Aldermen meetings or at least look at the agenda and stuff, find out what's going on.

But typically...

Typically, though, I know with... florence that's the only hurricane that we personally left for all the others we've stayed um how it came everything came from the official town website through the facebook page right so it told you when the island was back um that you could get on and it was safe to get back on though there was no electricity um and that came on sporadically depending on where you lived but they will like on wasa will say they're turning off the water at such and such time they'll say they're closing the bridge at such and such time on such and such day and the same with electricity so if you're staying prepared if you're going be off the bridge by x amount of time so they do communicate that yeah and rick ricky and are is it both you and lexi that are responsible for pushing out the social media messages

Yes, so anything that gets posted on Facebook will go on the website, or if it's an emergency alert, it'll go out on the Regroup website, Facebook. So Facebook's a good place to follow.

Well, we're fortunate we don't have gas on the island. gas leaks during sandy was a major problem it kept yeah it was weeks before you can get back because of all the fires that were caused and that was a major major delay in allowing people back on the island yeah can you go can you go down to the next page after that just the next page

Yeah, keep going. Okay, keep going. That's the end. That's the end of it? Mm-hmm. I was just thinking that, and this was something older that I'd seen. Okay, take a look at those when you get a chance, and then, was there another attachment? I think the other one, yeah, there was one that was short. Okay, so if there are any other questions, I can go on to the flood damage prevention ordinance that the planning board said is okay. See if I can remember this. All right. There were some, like, little tweaks going back and forth with Aaron that used to remind me. And the ground floor enclosure, I think you had asked about. So no more climatizing, putting AC heat in ground floor enclosures. That's one. And then Rogers Bay, of course.

The model ordinance had said no RVs in a special flood hazard, which that would just be devastating to both of the parks that we have.

Going over there, we changed it from special flood hazard area to V zone after we confirmed that both of the parks were in an AE flood zone.

Can I ask you a question on that? Because the Surf City one also has on the ocean side.

They're still AE.

That's still AE?

Yeah. They just meet the cutoff.

I was questioned by some boy. I don't know how that map didn't make that a V zone.

Yeah, we make sure we check that before we went back and forth. So what was the other one? Non-conversion.

So did we talk about non-conversion?

Okay, so we added that part down. I think that was pretty much it.

Those are the three major changes that we had. Yeah. So those were the three major changes that we had for that ordinance. And now it should be squeaky clean and good for

There's a couple things in here about accessory buildings. Yes. And I guess, I think they all, I can't get it right in front of me, but I thought that was very good, but it references the different flood zones. So how do you know, because some of those maps are a little, you know, where the parcels are, are they in the map or? Or can you go to the County GIS and is there an overlay between them?

There is an overlay for the flood zone on that, but, but we use, um, uh, NC frills that comes from the state. Okay. Uh, North Carolina is one of the states that has an agreement with FEMA to, to produce the maps and federal government produces the rest of them or contracts that out.

And you can actually use that website to own your property or other properties in the jurisdiction. It'll give you all the necessary information that you need.

So I know in my neighborhood, there's some people that have an accessory shed in their backyard. And they've been there a long time. And so some other people said, oh, I'm going to put one of those in.

My yard because there's no there's they said there's no permitting required Yeah, I know I know it is but it's like yeah We've kind of gone we kind of go back and forth with that because building inspections. It's a well if it's less than 100 150 square feet they didn't want to issue a permit for it and so

But isn't there still should be tie-down permits for those?

So the building permit is not necessary if it doesn't cross that threshold for the building code. However, locally we still need a zoning and flood permit associated with any placement of any accessory structure because there still may be things that need to be reviewed and approved. or there will be things that will need to be reviewed and approved before placement.

Right. So, yeah, they should be anchored no matter what. That's kind of common sense. Regardless of, you know, if I paid $1,000 for a shed, you know, I would want it to last and be anchored down. Not float away. Yeah. And I think, is it...

It's 150 square feet. So what it says is if it's 150 square feet or less, or if it's $5,000 or less... So I think some of this is again misconceptions from people that have been here a long time that it probably Didn't need anything before

And now you need something. So there's a group of neighbors, and one of them has a shed in the backyard, and it's been there forever. And he's telling them, like, yeah, you can get a shed in your backyard. And I'm like, well, you've got to get a permit. Oh, no, we don't have to get a permit. You need to read the code. And I've pretty much looked at your code because that's kind of my background and I like to know this stuff. Right.

And, you know, I want to say every year, every two years, North Carolina general statutes, there will be code sections that the state passes that were obligated to change throughout our UDO. Same thing. We just went through the flood regs where, you know, there were changes in the flood regs based on the the state's model code. And so to say, you know, if you wanted to do something today and it had anything to do with, um, any type of construction or anything that falls in the definition of development, it's always good to check with the town and see, do I need a permit or not? You know, I, I can't, I don't have the list of all the changes cataloged in my brain over the last 20 years. So And I still have to go check. He's got most of them now. It takes me a while.

I always just say, why don't you just go check instead of, you know, asking. Because if you're going to spend $3,000 or $4,000 on a shed, you don't want to have to take it out after it's in.

No, because it's easier for them to do it and see if they get caught and they get what they want. Oh, okay. Can we go to the next one?

That's okay? Yes. I'm trying to get you out of here because I know we're talking about it. So the next one is, and this is one of those soft ones, like, just put it out there. I included a handout that's from the Water Crew of Carolina with assistance with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. And in that, there are several categories, freeze, wetlands, et cetera, some fun stuff. And then some potential recommendations for adopting higher standards. So some things are practical.

Some things are, you know, some things you may want to do, some things you may not want to do. There's also hypertext link. If you go to, like, if you go to that last page, I think it is.

What did you use? It'll be page 199 of the handout. 191, okay.

191 in the handout. 199.

I thought it was attached to this right here. The handout starts with 186. Because we have to do all that other stuff. Don't listen to me, Ricky. It's the very last page. Please tell me I have 14 pages on there. There we go.

There we go. So there's quite a few hypertext. So if you go online and get that hypertext, then hopefully it's gonna bring you to more information on these other sites.

So like I said, trees, green growth, biodiversity, I didn't see a, so storm water, sediment control,

So when you think about typically environmental higher standards and things that you want to protect or things that you can do, stormwater is probably at the top. Wetlands is at the top.

Trees are at the top. Water quality. I was doing water quality in there next to stormwater. Erosion sediment control. I think one of, like on the wet ones, and Brady and I kinda bandered this back and forth a little bit.

We should role play for them like we did this morning. We should have recorded ourselves and then be like, team Brady or team Dad. Right? I don't wanna scare people. So, on the wet ones, I think it was a recommendation for like a 75 foot buffer. So, How many, there'd be like several lots that you would just like wipe them out. Right. So is that practical? Is that something that we want to do? Do we have enough money after our FEMA recovery resilience bank account that we're stashing money over here to sign? to pay for people's property that they can't do anything about after they bought it and we said, there's a 75-foot buffer and we're not giving you a variance for it.

You're really not letting us put a pool in.

Yeah, so... Then it would create how many non-conforming situations?

Well, for the structures that were already there, they were within that 75 foot.

So then, if you could do an amortization schedule...

Is it worth the squeeze? Is doing a 75-foot buffer worth the squeeze?

If you, knowing more than we do, could pick a number, where do you Well, so... Feel that that lands, because 75's a lot. Right. But I mean, as I read through this, I'm like, yeah, wow, great, oh, wow. Oh, but that would really mean a lot of change.

Well, one parallel that I made is that two things that we have a lot of concern and protection with is wetlands being one and dunes being the other. Well, we already have a five-foot... buffer for the Dune. So I was like, Well, what about five foot buffer for the weapons too? But then again, still, like is what are we accomplishing with that?

Because 75 to five is, you know, well, I don't think the point I don't think the point that anyone's that we should I don't think the point that we should be making is that I don't want to do the match because I don't want you to develop your property at all. well then what would make you happy?

What would make me happy is for people to stay out of the wetlands and to stay off of the dunes. But we have problems with that because the wetlands are 404 and 401.

Okay, so 404 is Army Corps of Engineers, 401 is Division of Coastal Management. Somebody goes in the wetlands and they build a deck without a promo and Somebody tries to enforce that. Well, is that somebody Army Corps of Engineers?

Do they have the authority to enforce Army Corps of Engineers rights? No. For what? Do they have the authority to enforce Division of Coastal Management?

No. And in the ordinance that we adopted, doing it the best that we could at the time, where it says damage to the weapons, what is damage? Well, Army Corps of Engineers doesn't consider it damage whenever you put pilings in the weapons. Okay, so now why am I going to issue a $10,000 citation? I don't have the authority for it. And all they did was put pilings in the ground. The court doesn't consider that damage. Well, I do. Yeah, but where did you write that, Deb?

Where did you put that pilings are damaged?

Did I do something? getting an extra 50 or 100 feet in their property into the wetland that's taking the wetland away and destroying the adjacent wetlands because they don't flow.

If it's 404 wetlands, they can go to the Corps and pay their full permit.

Yeah, full mitigation permit. If it would be otherwise permissible, But that can be achieved sometimes, which, like I said, stress again, not the proper way to do it. But that technically, would it be disturbance if it could be permitted? They're not our weapons. So the authority who has jurisdiction over their weapons has to issue those things.

And if they're tied up, if they're staffed, So mr. Chair, do we know the magnitude of if we did something like the 75 feet how many properties would it affect? Is there a way to map that I Is there a way to find out how much it's going to cost the town, stroking out checks?

No, no. I don't think you have to stroke out checks. There's ways around that. I mean, I've done that in my career, where you can make something nonconforming and say that they've got.

But why do you want to make it nonconforming?

So in the future, when that house burns down or?

Let's play fair here.

OK. 50 years from now.

She's this little school teacher. So what is she going to do? Buy it?

saves up her money, and she finally has enough money to build her little one-bedroom dream house in North Thompson Beach. Nothing, you know, but she gets that house built. And she got the lot that she got for the price that she got because of the wetlands and the impacts on there. But she was okay because she just wanted to have a little house, right? And so she gets that little house in there, builds it two feet higher, does everything that she's supposed to do to those higher stands. But then we come in and we impose that 75 foot thing, and now her little dream house, after she's been a school teacher after 30 years, now we've intentionally made her house non-conforming. What do you think that that does to her property? And it can't be. She won't be able to sell it. It can't be just because she's a school teacher and she's been a little school teacher for 30 years and cute as a button that we treat her differently

But if you make it in a way where like the amortization is 50 years, the little school team is gonna be long gone. If it's mapped properly and it's recorded.

What's the benefit? What are we looking at?

I don't know if 75 is the number. I'm just saying, do we know what the magnitude of, like if you did 75 or if you did 25, how many lots does it affect? What about all the lots in the zoning map that are in the middle out there by the sound behind Keith and Rusty's house that somebody will figure out one day how to build on those things. That's all wetland, right?

So are you saying maybe you have a moratorium for building?

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying we don't know what the magnitude is. I'd like to know what the magnitude is. Is it 100 houses? So maybe 100 houses, there could be a fund built up over time to buy the 100 houses.

It's only a thousand total. We have in our jurisdiction and we have houses everywhere.

We're close to build out now and I would be willing.

Well, how can you say that when the zoning map shows all these lots that are available that just can't meet some of the requirements right now until somebody figures out a better mousetrap.

The properties that we're getting now have, I would say, a large number of them more than in the past because we're getting closer to build out. There's fewer and fewer lots that are available.

All the quick and easy rectangular lots, water and sewer, blah, blah, blah, no wetlands, food, right? So what's left, the pickings are getting very slow, and you're getting ones that have So people are coming in, they want to build their house here, and so it's probably worth it to them to pay that $80,000 impact fee to Army Corps of Engineers so they can come in and fill in that patch of wetlands to where they can get a house in. Okay, so, you know, I'm not saying that that happens a lot.

But it will happen more if there's no lots available.

It's going to happen more... and what do we have in place now that allows somebody to do things like that?

I mean, there's some construction, excuse me, some construction, one on New River Inlet Road, I guess a few months ago, looked like they're building it in a swamp.

I mean, I don't know how they...

It's like, how is that house even being allowed to be built?

Because they got it in there with a shoehorn and probably... like they're going right up to the line because we get the flats and we're saving the wetland for the radiation.

There's currently no setback from the wetland. Zero. There's zero. As long as you're not in it, you're good.

These are like right behind the bridge railing that the bridge was built because there was water under the bridge.

And that building is right behind it. And the forest. I mean, it was all big pond up there. I mean, you know, that's the forest. This is going to happen again.

I have just a question. and it's actually a little step backwards. I get this gold standard development and I'm not against that in any way, shape or form. However, I'm wondering, in Florida they have the hurricane fortified building codes. We chose to build our house hurricane fortified gold standard because I was hoping my house wouldn't blow down. But it is expensive to do that, but is there some things or some parts of that building code or whatever that's required that we could look at adopting that would protect us and give us a better rating?

It is my understanding that we cannot touch that building code. That building code comes down from DOI and to the building inspectors, and that is not a planning and zoning issue. So when we're looking, like when we look at higher standards, there are, like having the lowest horizontal member two feet higher than base flood elevation, there are specific higher standards that we can adopt. But we cannot get into that kind of structural that would be outside of our authority.

Okay, but would it make sense for us to look at higher standards so that if we were hit by a hurricane, it would save more of the houses than not?

To be honest, I think that the people that work for the National Building Institute and for International Code Council and for DOI and... these labs, in every significant weather event, they have scientists go out to these sites, and what they're doing is they're doing an analysis of what worked, what didn't work, what they could do better. So I'm not going to even pretend or think about that I'm smarter than what these guys that are out there. And that's why, that's exactly why the codes keep changing. And we haven't adopted yet, but they're out with the 2025 building code, set of building codes. I'm not sure what they're waiting on. I forgot if somebody told me, but it's constantly evolving. So, you know, and then there's this cost factor, too, where, you know, I talked about stormwater several years ago with the planning board and said, hey, instead of just doing stormwater for concrete driveways, I recommend that we do an engineered stormwater plan for, you know, the entire house.

Oh, no, you can't do that. That's going to add $5,000 more to the cost of the house.

Well, if we would have done that... 20 years ago, would we have as much water on the roads and the flooding that we have as what we do today? I would argue that we would not.

And I was just thinking that if we do something with this, whether it's 75 or whatever it is, and we strengthen our builds, then we can weather, hopefully, a storm. And the other thing is I do know insurance does drop when you have those protections on your house. I've gotten large discounts for it. So I didn't know then if that would help us with our flood mitigation or FEMA

Let's think about the economics on this, because the building code is the minimum code necessary to build a house, right? Okay, so... some of you may think that there's an affordable housing problem some of you may not think that there's a an affordable housing problem i think that there's some planners that pretty much are convinced that there's an affordable housing issue so what would we do what would we be doing to the cost of housing in general to be able to imp you know making somebody build a you know fort knox You've got to find that sweet spot. That's why I keep coming back and saying, I guess it's a terrible phrase, but I don't know what else to say. Is the juice worth the squeeze? I almost got it backwards. Is the juice worth the squeeze? Some things probably very much are. and maybe modifying some of the things, like instead of 75 feet, that you say five feet, and you make them put up a silt fence, and to where that, if they do go over, at least they're not into the wetlands, but they're into that five-foot buffer, and so at least they've not torn up anything yet, just like with the dunes, right? But the enforcement is really, honestly, and truly a struggle, because we say, You can record me if you want to. Tell whoever you want to I said this. We say we are the champion of the wetlands and the dunes that by and large we're going to protect them no matter what. But when it comes to an incident where somebody's gone into the dune or where someone has gone into the wetlands, where is everybody? Because we can sure you smell... But we don't have the authority that 404 has, or that the Army Corps has, or Division of Coastal Management has. Or Deb, what's your definition of damage? Because Army Corps of Engineers says, posts on the ground are not damaged. So this, the whole point of bringing this up is to have this conversation and to get you guys thinking about this to where that whenever you're traveling up and down the road and you go home and you look over at your neighbor's house and there's something that your neighbor, you know, did or didn't do, like not to the point of structural and getting into DOI and the building inspectors knickers. I do not want to do that. Can't do it anyway. don't even want to like make you let you think for a minute that that's something we could do we could not do that but within our realm of the flood regulations and zoning and camel land use plan what are some things that we can do what higher what not to play copycat on them but what higher standards do you think what little things they don't have to i keep saying higher standards like you know it's the ten commandments but but what things could we do that would address some of the environmental concerns that we have how do we compare with surf city and topsail beach in regards to that the floodplain are they also building right up to the floodplain on the Surf City, surprisingly enough, is a little higher. It's kind of like if a dinosaur was sleeping or if a dinosaur was just above the water. North Topsail Beach is a little lower, and then you get to Surf City, and they are quite a bit higher in elevation. And then you get back down to Topsail, and particularly towards the end, where they're always flooding down there. So with regards to the regulations, I will say, do you know what Topsail Beach is, what their ISO score is? I don't think they're a 5. They were a 5, and then I think they reverted to a 7. I'm not sure about that. I'm not sure about that. Surf City was going to get into CRS. I don't think they have officially, not sure. They're so far behind us. It's like I'm running. They're so far behind us. I don't look at what they're doing.

I'm not worried about how far behind because I just know they're behind us. So our higher standards,

And this is one of the things that I brought up at the board meeting. People complain about the town's higher standards and how hard it is to get a permit all the time. Contractors, property owners, all the time. But they do because we're enforcing these higher standards that we have. And yes, you have to get a permit. And yes, you have to provide the engineer documentation. And yes, we're going to go out there and inspect it. Do you expect less from us? Isn't that what you expect us to do? So I can't account for how other towns do it. It might not be. financially worth it to have the higher standards that North tops beach does in surf city. Like you have to be with your building code. ISO score affects your, your CRS flood score. You can only be as high as what your building code is, right? Well, in North tops will be, we have 150 mile per hour wind zone, no matter what surf city, they don't, they would have to enforce that 150 mile per hour over on the other side. the bridge they don't want to do that that costs money that costs a lot of money right so they would they would really struggle to meet some of the points you know to be able to enforce those regulations to be able to meet some of the points that we do and it's easier for us because we're all right here we're all on the side of the bridge they have to do it anyway does that make sense And then you get down to top. So, you know, I'm not sure they kind of go back and forth and I, I think it just depends on, uh, maybe their staffing or their development. They, I don't think that they're doing as much development as what they once were. So I'm not sure, you know, what has affected their points, but when it comes to, you know, our standards compared to theirs or to compared to the counties, I agree with people. It's difficult to get a permit. It's not if you follow the instructions and provide the documentation.

But it's obviously not stopping development. There's construction all over the place, so it's doing its purpose.

And you are having some people move houses so they can build a bigger house on a lot that's more valuable.

We've seen a couple of those already. Yeah, we've had several of those where they've torn down, you know, 1950s beach cottages and build a bigger house.

To add on to what you were saying earlier about being built out and then these lots are, the last lots are hard to develop because of the wetlands or other natural conditions. On the flip side of that, are to tear down older homes and build bigger ones, more expensive, more valuable homes. So that's kind of what further development will really, the two options will be.

Yeah, that's why I think we need to look at these standards to have some minimum setback because or the last place I lived in Florida, there were houses that were built in the 80s and 90s and they're tearing them down to build. We call them mega mansions that they go right to, they go get a variance and build it two feet off the property.

Well, that's what happened in Sandy, the town that my parents and grandparents owned the house in. You could have gone to sleep in 1950 and woke up in 2010 and not notice any change, but Sandy was in 2012, and then suddenly everything, a 1,000 square foot bungalow became a 3,000 square foot, three-story high bungalow. building because the lot was the only thing that had that had the value right and they were putting the biggest house on the that you could build what the beach near the seaside heights and lava lake and the bigger it is the more you can rent it out for yep so um so what do you want so what do we want to do well i just want to kind of leave that all there i'm just lobbing these out for food for thought

And then when we get together next month, let's see, the floodplain was just a presentation.

If you get an ordinance check, check. So if you came back and you said, okay, let's talk about, I've got some recommendations for

Yeah, I think that should be our homework assignment is to read the FEMA recommendations and maybe next month come back and discuss it. We may not be ready to have a recommendation for the Board of Aldermen at that point, but I think we need to put it on their radar screen so that they know that it's something that definitely, not probably, does need to be addressed.

Right. If you read through it and there's nothing to be done, If that's your feedback, then that's your feedback. If you read through it and go, hey, what if we did this one little thing? But I really think of everything that's up there and everything that's going on, I implore you to work, to read with an open mind, and to think about North Topsail Beach in the future. Is there any further discussion on any items If not, I'll ask for a motion for adjournment I'll make a motion to adjourn second

Okay, any discussion? All those in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Meeting is over at 9.