Town Council - Special Meeting

We're having a welcome to the meeting at 5:30. Whatever. Call it the order and all that. I had two kids today shoot a 39. So that was unexpectedly good. Go ahead. Sure. Um Oh yeah. Yeah.

So uh good good evening everyone. Good afternoon. Um so we're here tonight. Uh thank you Erin for uh coordinating all the food and everything like that. uh and our staff getting the town hall set up for us. Uh so we're here the impetus for all this was from conversations during the annual retreat. Um there was a desire expressed that wow I really like these strategic conversations. We get so busy being busy talking about just whatever development projects in front of us. the budget that we don't really have an opportunity to think big picture and if we're not intentional about it sometimes we can kind of get lost in the dayto-day or monthto month

and so really so we wanted to set this time aside quarterly to have kind of strategic discussion and we may get into this and say you know this makes sense but it's also maybe a team building type thing so I think there's a lot of different ways you can approach approach this uh all of which are usually not mutually exclusive. Um so that's the backstory about how we do there. We'll schedule this weekly uh or monthly, excuse me, quarterly. Quarterly quarterly. It was monthly. Um and uh so that's the kind of background. What are y'all thinking? What are you hoping to get out of these meetings? What's a good structure for them? Well, I mean, I would think like if we have something that we want to talk about that we kind of have that identified as an agenda item and it would be more it it would be more of a not necessarily an actionable item, but just kind of discussion type items. Like for example, I mean the building over here last we heard there were a couple of items uh couple folks that were still interested in it just kind of you know potentially even getting status that maybe is not I don't want to say not appropriate for council meeting but maybe um might by having a conversation about it might drive action items that might would go to council meeting.

Also, just kind of uh in general having the ability to kind of uh talk through if there's anything that might be reasonable topics that don't necessarily need to be on the council, but maybe somebody wants to ask questions about it, whatnot. So, anyway, these these often feel like I don't David and I may have suggested these. I'm not sure if that was the case, but um what are we allow I guess the question is what are we allowed to do not do? Like we shouldn't be talking about the development projects that's coming up for resoning tonight or on April 13th. Should we? This is not a

Yeah.

Is that allowed? Is that not that I would want to, by the way. I don't I don't But what are there some ground rules about these quote workshops? Yeah, I I would stay away from any active development projects. Um, you run into the risk of, you know, notice issues and I also think from a pragmatic standpoint, accusations from residents that we're discussing these things, it wasn't properly agended. So, from a transparency purposes purpose, I would stay away those kind of items. What if it was just like things in general that could influence a decision on that or other things just like strategies with the town center when you know versus commercial versus residential like you know that would have some bearing on coming up decisions but it would be more general than specific to a specific project.

Yeah, in that case I would think those is fine. And I think as a general rule, it would be uh if it's on an agenda item or going to be an agenda item in the near future, let's not talk about it. If it's not going to be an agenda item in the near future, uh it's probably fair game. I think it's I think it's really important though that these are just discussions and not necessarily um firm decisions on a lot of things, right? I have two things that come to mind under that umbrella. The first of which is um and I don't know if you were planning on bringing this back but uh the subcommittee process

and if we wanted to talk about um what we felt were the best avenues to approach that. Um and then we had um reserve for reconsideration our uh council policy or our uh whatever the the phrasing of of it was. Um, and if we wanted to revisit discussion on that without it um, dragging on past 9:30 on a on a given Monday night. Yeah, talk about the ethics. That's Thank you. That's the word I was looking for. Yes. I council policy doesn't help us at all with that as a description.

I think after visiting or listening to essentials of municipal government, my feeling is different on that. So, I was a little reluctant because it's what can you do? But I think it's good to have it in place. I didn't think it was good before, but is it is it appropriate to have that discussion now because what I was what I was curious about and I know um I shouldn't say I know but I I believe Stephen that you had more to say on it but didn't want to prolong the meeting. No, I'm good. I've said my piece.

Well, no, I say that also because I do want to hear more from you because you were you said, "Well, I feel like this could be used in a in a bad way." And I didn't quite fully understand what your thought process was on that. Well, just like Melanie said, the only time that it's been used So, so you have a policy out there. The only time that it's been brought up is when it's been used to attack somebody. And so the whole reason for having this policy I thought was to kind of create a kind of continue the I guess best practice of getting along with each other and not attacking each other and being you know regardless of what politics or ideologies mutual respect against the group. I mean, that's kind of the was the idea. And the the concern that I had was is that it actually was creating a mechanism for which to attack somebody with. And based off of what Melanie said, that's exactly what ultimately ends up happening. That's the only time it's brought up is that when it's brought up to go, Mike, you did something bad. And so that would be my concern is that the the purpose of it is to keep this good working behavior, but in the end it would actually be the thing that actually caused grief among us. That that's my feeling anyway. That's my thought. Um I mean I'm willing to to hear everybody else out. It's just that just based off of what I've heard and how it's been used, it's not been a positive outcome in the end. It's been a negative outcome.

Well, looking back at after you had said that at a previous meeting, I went back and looked at the materials, you know, that we had done when we did our boot camp and saw things that were like very similar already in place. I'm like, do we need to are we putting something on top of something that's already there that's sufficient? you know, do we need to just add anything to that or do we need a completely different layer? It just seemed kind a little like some of it was maybe redundant and so kind of made me question a little bit if it was, you know, a necessity or if we just wanted to have some statement of like general guiding principles that we, you know, agree to rather than, you know, delineating specific behaviors. I don't know. David, how did the Essentials of Municipal Government course change your outlook on that?

It made me look up our own. We already have it. We already have a code of ethics. Yeah. And I'm reading it right now

and it's a lot more I don't remember what we had, but it's very detailed and it's all the things we've already talked about. So Erin, is it possible to pull up our code of ethics relatively? I I pulled it up. I must download it on my drive, so I don't have it in the uh Oh, there you have it. You'll find it there. So, when I we had that, we talked about it at essentials and that made me think, don't we already have something? Something he had on the screen made me like remember, oh yeah. So, I went digging and I found our own. Um and um I was going to mention that here shortly. And then like why don't we why are we creating a new one when we have one? There you go. Thank you. Can you back it off just a smidge so we can uh what's the heading on this page?

Just that that's the top. It's the first policy after the index. Yeah. So if you scroll down to the um the purpose now therefore and then the purpose and then there's like two and a half three pages of of of um specifics. So you can slowly scroll through there. We're not going to read it all now but you get an idea. This is um essentially we already have this. So, is any of this what um Stephen's talking about that we can, you know, use it against each other that in the new one the new It's been a long time since I've read this one, but

we might might need to put it on our organizational meeting every year or other year or whatever. Oh, there. Okay. We might Can you go back? Well, last one. We're not going to go through the whole thing because there's quite a lot of um items in there, but um if we're going to put this on a Okay. I mean, we can discuss it now, but I think we're going to go through the details. We want to

each of us have this out, maybe in print, maybe on your phone. It's too small for my phone. But Alex, does what we have currently significantly differ from what was brought to us? Um not prepared to answer that question. I would say some John's right. Some of what we some of what is in that operating agreement I think is what we called him draft uh is duplicative uh with this and some other areas. Um some of it came from like council manager expectations. Um, forgive me. It's been a little bit while since I've looked at it,

but it is duplicative. I don't think everything in the oper operating agreement is in the code of ethics. Um, it probably picks and chooses from different areas. Erin, was that your recollection as well? I would concur with that. So, I guess my question is, do we need two different mechanisms or can we, you know, make some amendments to this that would handle it all with one document? I sure don't think we need two different no docs.

What we could do is um here and I could go look at it and see all right what's in both. We don't need to be duplicative duplicative. Is there anything that's in the operating agreement that's not in the code of ethics and uh kind of bring it back for the board's consideration to amend the one we already have? Jim. Okay. Yeah. I'd also like to ask the clerk to revise the photo of the gentleman who appears smiling in the blue shirt at the header page of the town website. Let's see that. It's Alex. Oh, very nervous about who that was. If you go I was like

if you go to the uh like the uh agenda page that links all of the um minutes and everything.

Oh, this one. Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. So, the pictures Oh, it changes. Oh, I just happened to keep getting the Alex one. Okay. The pictures will rotate. Was that recently revised? Like the look of the site? We did have for the 50th celebration, for our 50th anniversary, the entire website was black and gold since since 50th is the golden anniversary. Um, prior to that, we did use the our logo colors, but this has been it's a little bit revamped with the colors a little bit more bright. It looks nice still with the logo.

Yeah. So it was done in January because as soon as we ended our 50th year that's what happened. Got it.

So I think what would be helpful about these we're sort on the of what these are um since we do so much land use that discussions. Um to me this it might be helpful for us all to revisit things like the comprehensive land use plan. I know that's that's a big thing, but I think I started in 2019. You uh we all started in different parts and y'all just started on this board, which been in planning and you're in planning, but we get a lot of feedback about the 2017 18 process that guides our zoning across the town and at a thousand foot level looking down on the town. I think it's interesting to sort of understand what that was and does it need to be revised. Somebody's interested in using workshop time for education about those things. Another one would be sidewalk connections. We had a presentation a while back, weeks ago really about sidewalks and where you could connect them. Uh I'm interested in that. Um and then you things of that nature. So so so greenway plan is it is it outdated? What have we done? How close is it? Is it even real? and do we need to update plans? That's the kind of stuff I think I'd be better served at in these hour hour and a half long meetings to revisit those things or andor having a speaker come in like Ron from the county economic development group or um someone from the county to talk about sewer issues. Those are kind of helpful things. So, they kind of fall in the world of education, reminding us what policies that govern our land development and those kind of things. One of the things I me I talked about with Max and Alex today was do we need to revamp our code our um what is it the United thing called?

Um oh the development ordinance. Yeah. No UDO. UDO. Is that what you just said? Yeah. UDO development ordinance.

Never remember those words. Um, but we should I think we should look at that because I just think there's so many different things. There's these neighborhood policies and then there's the small area plan and then there's the big picture. Here's a you know this is zoned something and then but do we go by that or do we go by the small area plan or the you know whatever the other things are? It just seems like it's confusing to me and I've, you know, read a lot of these things, but it it just seems like it should be brought down to, you know, each zone has this is what is allowed in a zone and maybe a neighborhood plan, too. But, you know, not all these different, you know, this little area has this and this little area and sometimes things um don't they say something completely different than the other um policies. So, I think this, you know, would be a time and Max said he would bring it before the board at a later date. You wouldn't

that's not wholly inconsistent with what I said just sort of big policy plan reviews. Yeah. Education reviews. Yeah. I think if we if we pulled up the comp plan and looked at the document and

I don't want to do that by the way. It's hundreds of pages. But but small area plans, I think that would generate some questions about policy and are we are we where are we in the implementation of we're going to do one tonight and the Chestnut small area plan that pretty much conforms, but how are we in building these out? Do any of them need to change? Are they the Ottawa Wild area plan is a is a we're doing exactly what the plan called for, but we've got all kinds of resistance from from a neighborhood. Um, so just as it could be like a uh we did this in 2017, a 10-year update on our planning document,

not an update like hiring consultants do it, but some report back on how are we doing. I think those things are interesting to me. Well, I know enough and a good way to explain how it all ties together. Yeah,

they all do tie together and it may be confusing, but maybe it's less confusing after an explanation and a uh demonstration of how it ties because when it ties as and I was on those committees way back when um it makes a whole lot of sense. I know that several of our other municipalities in Union County, part of what they do is they have a set number of years when they have to review it. Do we not have a set number of years where we have to review? We do. When we review it, I I think we did it recently uh within the past couple years. Uh and the key word is review. You don't have to redo it,

but I believe legally, I believe it's every 10 years you have to review your comprehensive land use plan. and uh basically certify that you've you've done that. So and and I guess so the fact that I'm not remembering it uh doesn't mean anything but I guess is there a very specific process for that review or is that something that there is not there's no defined process.

Okay. uh redoing your comprehensive land use plan, your small area plans. Um ideally the the comprehensive land use plan is like the the granddaddy of all the plans in the sense that that's the big picture vision, right? And ideally when you redo your comprehensive land use plan, it involves uh public workshops. It involves uh really thoughtful conversations. uh it's it's a major major undertaking to do. Um and then from there there can be some intermediious intermediary steps like a small area plan which is almost micro comp plans for certain areas. Uh but really you've got your visionary land use plans like your comprehensive land use plan like your comp plan and then from there you've got the ordinance the stallings development ordinance often called the UDO and the UDO is the implementation enforcement of the big picture vision. So I think what happened our our ordinance just isn't written very well. I think anybody that's spent some time with it um would like a little bit more um specity. It's not organized well. Uh there are a number of issues and I think anytime you have uh a document that that that detailed and that important and that legal, you're going to find holes in it. I think ours just wasn't written very well. Mhm.

Um, you know, both of our planning directors have told me that, both of our attorneys have told me that. Um, and developers have told me that. There's just a lot of vagueness. I think what happened is just back in the day, the town just went with the lowest response of bidder effectively is what I was told. So, um, I think, uh, you know, revisiting the comp plan, it's a good thing. It's just a major commitment. Revisiting the UDO also a good thing. Needs needs work. Also a major commitment. So um you know what I'm hearing is and and I want to be careful with these conversations that each you know the important thing with strategic work right is to set the vision and then give time to work towards the vision. I want to make sure at these quarterly meetings we're not if we want to reset set the vision quarterly. I'm on board. I'll help you do that. But I want to be mindful in our conversations of resources available, what we're marching towards now after the annual retreat. And if things come up like the comp plan, that's great. Let's handle those. Let's tackle those. Um and there may be I heard Brad say some education on the front end, right? Um but just be mindful that some of these things are major undertakings.

Um another thing that I mentioned today to them is um um I know you guys probably have all just worked for the Stallings government, but we do a lot of resoning. A lot. I mean at least once a month, sometimes two a month. a month, they come on and and then the um the um the CZ is mindboggling because you know, somebody zoned this residential um 10 houses per two acres or whatever. Um and then we reszone it to something and you know it was done I assume in a a thoughtful way. Here's where the um commercial would be and here's the mixed use and here's um whatever else the residential and it seems like we just are I don't know if it is spot zoning but it seems like it certainly could be to me because it's so often I mean I'm saying you know we probably do 10 or 12 a And that's a lot. That's a lot of reszonings. And I'm not sure why we, you know, we always say yeah. Yes. To the developer and, you know, sometimes, yeah, it's um, you know, we have all these different Well, a lot of our a lot of our CZs, Lori, come from the fact that we have in certain districts MU2 primarily. I think maybe MU1 We've restricted the ability to do any meaningful housing. All right. That was

a decision made in 2020. I think Linda Paxton was still here. But we lowered the bar. Excuse me. We Yeah, we lowered the amount of homes you could build on any parcel for multifamily, the attach housing to standards that would be not feasible normally to drive those conversations right here. So we we didn't want them by right.

So that's exactly I think the outcome of that one policy decision. The one we're talking about uh tonight is here because of that. Um well no that's not an MU2. Um the CZ we're doing with um Steve Stevens Village that's because of the threshold we lowered. Anything with multif family housing now generally has to come through here in a CZ. Maybe we should reook at the policy. Why? Because we're doing too many

because you shouldn't you shouldn't have a you shouldn't have zoning and then Okay. Yeah, we want to change this one. We want to change this one. The map should show where everything should be. Um, and I don't know why we would change. Why do we have why did we committ the problem here

is that they did this 2016 and immediately everything that was coming to Stallings was apartments. That was it. And there was a lot of backlash and and and so there was effort put forward to kind of slow the apartment encroachment within within stallings and that's the reason why like Brad said we basically made it such that you could not do multi-ousing multif family housing without a CZ and that was a 2050 plan and then two and a half years, we had already did half the land within that 2050 plan had already been used up for within that just a couple of years. And so the idea was is that we were trying to slow it down so that we could get ahead of it because we were literally I I mean keep me honest here. It felt like we were underwater because there was so many people coming here and trying to build apartments that we we were getting blasted and we couldn't stay ahead of it.

Okay. Then everything should match though. this is um mu2 or this is residential you know per acre two houses per acre or whatever. So instead of keeping to do this, why don't we in our revised ordinance put, okay, apartments are only allowed in the, you know, whatever multif family zone. And it just seems like we're just peace meal mailing the the town. And it it's uncomfortable for me to to see everything, you know, like the mixed use thing today that we have. Um,

which one? The Chestnut Lane and then that there's the Pleasant Plains thing which is supposed to be Oh, we're not going to talk about that one. Sorry. But supposed to be commercial. We're not Yeah. I I think the reasons why is Brad did a good job articulating it and you're not disagreeing with that. You're articulating for a different policy. It sounds like

um you know, we just put conditional zonings on a lot of residential uses within those mixed use districts um because the board wanted the control and wanted to have their eye on it to get the best product uh in their judgment for the town. I think a lot of it it's a lot. It's probably more than average in my experience. Uh I I will say though it it feels like even more than that too, just because we added some more steps within our process that aren't part of the standard process and the subcommittee. Mike brought that up before. That's the big one. So it's a lot and it feels like more I think because of the additional steps that are in that too. I I hear what you're saying, Lori, and I think I understand the vision that you're articulating of when you drive through a single family neighborhood, you want it to look like a single family neighborhood and not have uh you know, the the great example is, and the name always escapes me, what's the bar that's surrounded by the apartment buildings? Uh

where MC Jagger was. Oh. Oh, the thirsty beaver. The thirsty beaver, right? Where it looks stupid where you have a little bar and then an apartment building that get built around it. You want to You're saying you'd like to avoid stuff like that.

Well, yeah. Yeah. But not just that. I want I want to I feel like I feel like developers are planning our town. Okay. We want to do this. All right. Well, here's the five things you have to do or the 20 things or whatever. Where are we just kind of the policies kind of seem to go out the window. Yeah. We're resoning this, we're reszoning that. And it it just isn't to me it's not the right way to um it's it's it goes against I think our policies. I mean I know the um it's a state thing, right? The CZs, you know, I had never heard of it before coming down here, but it just doesn't it just seems like we have way too many of these things. I mean, since I've been on the planning board and the and the town board, we just they're all over the place.

But isn't that's because we're we're exercising more control and and things like architectural and that you're in the camp respectfully and I agree with you that we want to see architectural ren uh renderings. We want things to look nice. Send before we approve it, come back to us for approval. I've heard that from some members of this board. Mhm.

That's a that's an example of us doing a lot more work exercising the control. So that's no different in my mind than having a lot of CZs. It's is the result of us having control over multifamily housing in certain districts, town center and MU1 and 2 that drive all the activity right to our chairs where I just don't know what the right mix would be if we say by right in MU2 or by right in in town center you can do you know 20 units per acre or whatever. That's that's what got us into the apartment business, right? And got a lot of feedback and stress on the infrastructure. That's why we have caused us to go

that's what we're doing here. We're looking at it right on a casebyase basis, but right a casebyase basis. And that is I don't think that's how the town should be. Okay. Okay. I see what you're saying. You disagree with the Yeah. I just have would have a hard time coming up with a what's the right density to allow in a town center. Maybe that's what we kept into

running into with the looser policy was that we would they would say MU2 we're going to build the residential and commercial and they would build and we would not get any commercial. We're like this isn't working for us. Let's figure out how to change that. So MU2 didn't allow for residential. If they want it, they got to come to us and we ask they ask and we decide is that appropriate here or not and what is it going to look like? Because we were getting requests for all kinds of stuff. And again, we don't have to say yes. But well, that's a

that's a great example of what these workshops could be used for. What's a big policy issue that we're struggling with? Should we address it? And that's an hour and a half discussion here that we could actually talk about. Yeah. What is the density that that's required to bring it to resoning or to a CZ and is that the right place to be? That feels like a lot of staff work too.

Well, I you're right. I I don't think that six pe seven people are going to um decide what okay what this density should be or what's I mean I think we have to have a committee whatever you you know the policy committee or whatever it would be called to look carefully at each area of town. It doesn't have to be each parcel, but you know there's the um what's that zone that starts with a u no the zone industrial zoning category.

Yeah. Begin with a U. Industrial. You'd be in through an eye.

It has a U in it. Something like that. Well, as I refer to residential, it's industrial. So I industrial. Yeah. Okay. That's a good way. Yeah.

But you know, I I I think that that's well zoned or well planned. I mean, I don't think anybody wants to be um trying to reszone something too industrial too much, but you know, we don't get that kind of thing. Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad. I think that it's just things like that that we need to look at. I mean, we have a gazillion zones. How many zones are in this town? You know, a town of not even 20,000 people. And it's like zones everywhere. There's a lot. Yeah. Yes.

But we tried to do that. I mean, I think I think initially that's what the MU2 thing that killed us, but I mean and they reszoned so much to MU2 because I think there is a lot of zones, but I think, keep me honest here, but I think that if you look at it, we only use a fraction of those zones in stallings. And they tried to use MU2 as kind of a magic eightball of zones. And what it what it ended up doing is basically opening up the floodgates for everything.

And so um and it also caused us some legal issues too. So we've seen that too. So, and my concern is that said is agreeing with me like, well, we have this and we have that, we got all these things and

I don't I don't agree with you. I if I said that, I didn't mean to. Me, too. Well, but I think the I think the the premise of the the small area plans and the MU2 zoning was to direct to direct zoning to certain nodes where there's infrastructure ID wild road an interstate exit in the eighth fastest growing region in the world. I mean well state I mean yeah it needs some planning. um chestnut on our end, a small area plan that was sort of different and I think it was a a we need to do something down here because it's at the end of our town. That was the reason there's one there. Uh with the hospital area, independence boulevard, the industrial area, the town center. I mean, these are where you're trying to direct these investments and but there's a whole lot of our town outside of an MU2 and and outside of a small area plan. There's hundreds and thousands of acres. I'm assuming more outside the small area plans and inside the small area plans. I don't want to overstate. We don't have that much MU2. It's an ID wild. It's at Independence. It's down at Chestnut

just available land. Yeah. Quickly going away though because that's sort of been an attractive use for developers to bring in the um oftentimes housing. We try and that's why we curb that through the CZ request. Yeah. Because I think we could find ourselves in a situation like you said the limited places where there is the MU2 if you were to buy right a lot of the residential we wake up one day and there's nowhere else for these commercial projects to go because they've all been taken up by you know buy right residential but we don't have to zone it MU2 I'm I'm saying zone it commercial zone some zone things commercial we can't change it right

I just think there's way too much reszoning there. Okay. Is it connectivity level that you're seeing come or is it philosophically we shouldn't be doing both? Okay. Both. Philosophically, I've never seen towns, you know, towns that I've worked for, you know, once a year, maybe twice a year, they get a resoning, but we get them. Am I Am I hearing you say right? It's not It's not the work that you're uh expressing concern over. It's your perception that the conditional zoning has come through and the end result is different from what the plan is showing. Exactly. Okay. Exactly. You know, yeah.

That concerns you because you're feeling like we're straying from the big picture vision by doing that little by little. Yeah. And you know, whoever made this the map and said, you know, here's where everything's going to go and we're just Oh, yeah. Okay. That's fine. Oh, yeah. That's okay. Yeah. Just put in some more trees or whatever. just I don't know, it just doesn't sit right with me.

I think part of the issue too is just historically uh you know the the original plan back in 2018, it called for a good bit of multifamily. Um if you look on those small area plans, there's there's a good bit of multifamily in those plans. I think the idea I I came in right as everything was getting approved. So I know a little bit as a bystander but kind of saw the the end result. I think what happened is the multif family was too much. I remember the at one of the workshops they had I was getting approved the designer his name was Dimmitri Batches said hey listen the first thing you're going to get is going to be a lot of multifamily. Mhm.

Just expect it. There's going to be a lot of multif family that you get at the front end and then the commercial will fall the rooftops. And then we had right as the first uh multifamily projects were were getting approved or getting by right or whatever. At the same time, I think and this is the major issue I have with the initial UDTO. It used development agreements in a way that I don't think was appropriate. It promised us basically complete control almost like a conditional zoning in this development agreement

which is very debatable if that's the case if we could use it. At the same time, there was an election right as the new multifamilies were hitting and a lot of the folks that were very anti multifamily came in and the idea of spending the money to turn to change out these comp plans was just a lot, right? I mean, you're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars at the time to redo everything that had just been done. Y

and so the solution, the cost effective solution that was proposed and council went with was to apply CZs to a lot of the concerning uses so that the board could control it. So I think that's what's happened where you've got this situation where you've got these plans that not in all areas but some areas the the amount of residential density that's shown there makes people uncomfortable. Right. And there was a there was a lot of fallout from those initial I mean there was

I mean one of the council members in Brad's district I mean she she got a lot of flack and eventually she ended up leaving. So and I'm not saying that that's that was a good thing was a bad thing. I think that's just the history of how Yeah. Yeah. It was just a history. It's just a history. It was there was there was a few projects that came through that were a a lot of vocalenness. I mean that even makes like this Steven's Village somewhat tame. I mean there was it was a lot of flack for what?

Well, first of all, the way that the resoning was done was done. There was like a mass reszoning.

Okay. And a lot of folks didn't even realize what was happening. And we kind of see that with some of the CZs that we get is that we have to reszone some of the stuff back. But I think also, you know, all of a sudden, like you said, there were several apartment complexes that were in play and that people felt like they had no right or wrong, had no visibility into to say yes, this was a good thing. this was a bad thing. And that was at the time where Indian Trail was like the fastest growing per capita in the United States. So it was like I mean CNN actually did an article on them as far because of their growth. And so we were you know people were like we don't want to be them and there was that kind of flack going on. We don't really grow that much because there has been I mean you've even heard it from Steven's Village. Stallings was intended to be this sleepy suburb the way home should feel, right? And then effectively with that UDO and with things were changing. It was the intent was to change it. we were too heavily weighted to residential and we really needed to go more commercial because of just the way the expenses were. So then when you like I said you just got a lot of flack coming out of that and so we had to do something because like you said a lot of those people got voted off and new people got voted in to take and say okay we need to put the brakes on this pump the brakes on this

along with what you're saying Alex part of the 2018 resoning was in the mixeduse too in an effort to create more commercial areas right

yeah more mixed use one of the things that if you read that comp plan you'll see is that uh if I recall correctly a lot of the residents a lot of the at the a lot of the workshops they did the open houses were asking for um basically more amenities in town more things to do um you know restaurants things like that uh among other things and I think the response the comp plan hand was well to get the things that people are asking for um there was a need for greater residential density. So I think that's how we got there. Would it be possible or even useful if in hearing what Lori is saying that when we're proposed with a new project that whether it's within a small area plan or just within the town at large if we saw okay if this project goes forward here's what your commercial versus residential town tax base looks like or within the idle wild small area plan the chestnut small area plan here's how this would impact that um does anyone think that would be helpful or I don't know if that's practical but just an idea that has come to mind.

Yeah, let me let me talk to Mac about it. I recall us having a conversation um Mac and I having and there might be some things we need to work through as far as legality, but I'm happy to look into that. Yeah, for the purposes of commercial apartment complexes I believe are classified as commercial. They are, but they're still residential. Yeah. So, we just have to be careful about the the way we phrase that and but it would even though they're commercial a retail commercial is going to have tax, you know, sales tax revenue that could come back to the town as well. So, that would not be the case with apartments.

I like to think Mike, I think that was a very nice observation. could we begin to see that more and more front and center of what's the ratio in the small area plans that we're trying to drive mixed use because that that's been helpful in considering a a variety of projects of of which way do I I want to vote on something um the ratio of I I heard you say maybe the tax implications I heard Brad say the ratio of so I want to make sure we're we're talking my intent was to say what Brad said but I like the option that you also said. I I think the challenge with the one that I just unwittedly offered was um

can't no takebacks, man. Yeah, that's right. Uh was that uh a lot of times we don't know what the values are. Yeah. And I think this is with the concern that Mac had when you start talking about with a developer about well how much is your project going to be worth you know and they start giving you ranges you're as Mac would say you're muddying the record a little bit for them to accuse you of well you're only approving this because of the single family home brings in this amount or something like that. So I'm sure there are a million different nuances but I remember there being an issue there. Somebody threw out um but we can absolutely do the ratio. Yes sir.

Ratio or whatever you end up with by small area plan. It really needs to be looked at by the whole town. Each small area plan is unique and and expected to be either a certain ratio or certain look. A hospital area that's going to be higherend stuff versus chestnut that's not going to be high-end stuff. It's going to be lower end. So the the total tax implication there is not going to be a very accurate. So keep it by town. Can can we impact? Can we do that? Look at the ratio and say well how much you're going to but it's still there on this.

It's all I think it's very speculative. I think Alex is being nice about it but it's all guesswork. It's not going to be go to the bank on it. Yeah. A lot of projects like the ones that are coming for you, you know, the developers in some cases don't have tenants lined up, right?

Yeah. some places they may have a good idea, but they don't have tenants. So, but no, we I love that idea. We'll u I'll talk to Max and we'll see if we can get a residential commercial ratio on projects. Um so, thank you for that. And I I don't mean to make these meetings into a uh continuing education seminar to try to um upend what the school of government does, but I I'd be curious to learn uh and maybe I should do this on my own time or maybe we could do it here, but have a hear from someone whether it's Max or somebody else about um not specific projects, but the value the tax base value of uh commercial project X versus uh you know like let's say it's a you're building an ice cream job.

Um uh or you're building a uh cluster of housing, whatever style of housing that may be. Um and long-term what those um tax values look like as far as because our our question in the next several months will be where do we how do we allocate funds and what are the decisions we're going to make to do those things. So I think that could be helpful it would certainly be helpful for me um to understand when we do make those decisions. Again, just looking at it from a hypothetical perspective, but what that looks like over five years, over 10 years, and how that helps a town grow um both through its people and and through its finances. Time that go ahead, please. I was just going to ask a quick question. I'm going in.

So, so there's no question with you, Stephen. Mine is quick question. Is it possible that Dimmitri's presentation from years ago is uh archived in YouTube or or wherever? because that presentation he did is very much what he's Lego involved in that I think it's like we did at that it would be definitely one of those consultants that we had back then he had a great representation of the dollars and cents of developing commercial and residential were you here do you remember it was that I was at the very end of uh I think that process right I'll take a look see

I don't know if it's online or where you' find it but if anyone one can you can. So, so how does the um residential slashcommercial aspect of that work as far as say for us for example the apartment complex is technically commercial but it's also residential I assume that that applies to let's say we have a town home that is rentals Are those considered to be commercial or it depends on how it's if they're aligned to a company or I guess that that would be my question there is just how do we how do we say that it's true commercial versus commercial

meaning uh multifamily. Yeah. Yeah. Good question. Um, what I might suggest, hearing your comment, Stephen, hearing your comment, Mike, and also hearing one of your initial comments, Brad, what I might suggest and offer as an idea, and y'all throw it back at me if it's a bad one. I've got Erin could tell you I've got plenty of bad ideas every day. um is have Ron Ma, the county's uh economic developer, come in and ask us to talk to us about some of the general tax values of residential versus commercial and really industrial. He's the person that pops to mind

uh because that's what he does, right? He's trying to bring in the commercial. Um and I I talk to Ron all the time about these kind of things, right? He's a big advocate of the value of industrial. So, um I might offer if the board is willing and open to it for staff to reach out to Mr. Maul and seeing perhaps at at our next quarterly strategic meeting to see if he'd be willing to come and talk to us about um different tax values based on different uses, use categories. How does that sound? Good idea, bad idea? Does that cost us anything?

Uh, I don't think so. No. Ron wants to be a partner with us and he's the he works for the county, right? But he wants to be the and they pay his, you know, his staff and his department, but um we're part of the county, too. So, my experience, Ron has been always willing to help. I'm in favor of that. Does he review any of our projects as part of the process? Only the big ones. Only the big ones. Well, I don't say only. Mostly the big ones. Doesn't do retail, right?

Uh I don't believe so. I I mean most economic development from that stone food is like going out and trying to cultivate whether it's existing or organically at least in Union County. you big kind bigger businesses, industrial businesses that have, you know, high equipment, high number of jobs, those kind of things, things that would qualify for grants. So, so for example, we've got McGee that's going to be vacating a very large facility. So I mean like does that automatically maybe not automatically trigger us saying hey we know that this is going to be vacated

he's aware well I mean I know in this particular case but I'm talking about general general general does that trigger an automatic review with him to say we know that a property is coming up or is it something that we have to reach out to him each time or

Yeah that's a good question, Stephen. I wouldn't say it it there's an automatic trigger in the sense that there's a policy written down somewhere by ordinance or anything like that where we would go to Ron and or send something automatically to Ron, but as a matter of practice, we would we would do that, right? It it just doesn't happen very often. Um, you know, we were intimately I was intimately involved working with Ron. um when we learned about McGee Corp um both in in meeting with Ron and also meeting with McGee Corp. Um so I think as a matter of practice we would reach out to Ron.

So he's already got somebody stacked up for us.

We've had conversations uh and it's probably a ultimately a potentially a policy decision for the board, right? Um but uh in talking with Ron, he's advised that he thinks that that site would be um attractive uh to another sort of um big kind of business development. I don't know if you have y'all been to McGee Corp. I'd be happy to uh arrange a tour if anybody's interested. It's a great operation. Uh the folks who run it are it's it's family business. Started small and now it's you know the next generation is is running it. Um just really impressive, really cool. People work there for a long time. Really loyal to their employees. They make a lot of the the canopies that go over gas stations, things like that. Um and just constantly expanding their business. So, uh, would offer that as well if anybody wants to wants to do that.

So, will there be somebody this Ron that you know work says um like trying to attract business like the um who was that man that's trying to get to us in the um the lawn mower? What was Oh, John Deere.

The broker. Yeah. Yeah, I mean not necessarily a broker but a economic development person. I mean I know we don't have anybody in the town but you know does he do things like that for you know trying to um get what we want at McGee or other places. Uh be very careful how I say this. Yes and no. And on the no side, I don't mean it because of anything Ron's not doing. I think as a a matter of just workload and resources, they're over the entire county, right?

Um and so they're looking for the entire county. Stallings is a piece, an important piece of the county, but just a part. So, uh, I think what we as staff try to do is almost think like many economic developers, but also be, uh, in regular contact with Ron about issues. I think another resource we have is is David with his experience and Brad with, uh, his background in economic development

um, on the economic development committee. So, we try to talk through a lot of issues with that committee. Um, and a lot of the things we've done, whether it's changing the zoning under in the Union, uh, Union West Business Park, that area is really a prime area. And I think if we had sewer capacity and potentially some zoning tweaks, um, and perhaps some other tweaks that are out of our control, uh, we'd see more activity in that business park. I think the sewer capacity is a big issue right now. So for so for McKe I mean does it have some a lot I mean it already has some allotted sewer capacity. So

yes. So does that make do they have to go back for sewer capacity? Is it bothered in? Yeah. like do they have to do a sewer capacity analysis and see if they fall a new v I mean a new occupant would fall within that that's a good question if I recall correctly and Aaron you can correct me where you're wrong we went through the same issue with the the tractor dealership

um and essentially if I move out of a house in Stallings and it's vacant for a couple months and Lori moves And there's not a a redoing of the sewer process because the the use is about the same as before, right? But if you're going and you're taking it from a retail establishment

and then you're turning it into I'm trying to think of just a super water some sort of textile mill, right? Something that has a lot of water usage. In that case, um they wouldn't be grandfathered in just because the use is so changes so much. it's so much greater, right? Just because the so the capacity on the system is strained and is it's questionable whether they can serve that use. So kind of common sense, right, in a way. So I would think a similar use would be grandfathered in.

Um but a much more intensive water use there likely have to be further analysis done. The way I understood is the capacity is the capacity like non deal the dealership the retail was was granted a certain capacity if your use is going to exceed that capacity well that's the problem that's when there's a problem why it's been sitting and do we know why I mean what the rough capacity of McGee is it high low medium I don't I'm sorry No, I'm just curious. And I would guess I I don't even want to guess.

I'm too rusty. I haven't run a water sewer system in eight years now at this point. No, I'm just cur curious how you're saying that the whatever um John Deere had, you know, x amount of sewer that whoever moves in there can just move in with that amount of if that's all they need for that use. But is that still grant? Do they still have that amount and then they have to get more or is it they have to kind of start over? It depends on the use. So if whatever use is going in there, if it only needs the capacity that it is at right now, right, then they're fine, right? If the use is different and requires more capacity, they will have they're not grandfathered in. They have to go back.

So they have to kind of start from scratch. Well, not really scratch. I mean I mean let's just say very simple terms. They needed 10 gallons and they're They're permitted for five. So they need five more, right? So it's not scratched. They're not going back for Okay. So they are the five is grandfathered in. That's what I meant. Yeah. Okay. So the other half of you are just going to have to hold it for the rest. No.

All right. So takeaways. We'll bring back um uh an ethics policy amendment after reviewing that compared to the operating agreement, identifying any gaps, meaning it's in the operating agreement but not in the code of ethics. We'll come back with some some language for the board to consider, mindful that there are concerns about we don't want to just to have the opposite effect what the board's attending. Um, did you tell us why we're even doing anything with it? Why what was wrong with that the one we saw?

Uh, I haven't heard anything anybody say there's anything wrong with that. Uh, I think the it came out of the annual retreat. Yeah. And the board said that Uh your your question is a good one. I think your point is what's wrong with the why do we why are we doing this and did we did we actually read it you know before we said we need no more ethics in this government. It's a good question. So let us let us compare the two and we'll come back and if there gaps we can bring some additional language and worst case scenario uh it's just an education right we can just walk through it together and read through the ethics policy.

Yeah. um and and make sure everybody is familiar with it and uh and kind of go from there. Can I make a suggestion? Oh yeah, go ahead. When we um make things like this uh personnel policy, including the code of ethics, can we date and date stamp it with in the footnotes so we know when it was written? Okay. I mean, right now there's nothing. I mean you you you might know but I don't know and we don't know it's volume two who knows when that was about it. So do you want on all volumes or

I think it would be helpful going forward especially because anytime we have to look at something and if you came from the paper era you really became dependent on those dates because you had to make sure whatever you were reading was the latest date. So, I don't know when this was done. I assume it's the latest one, but yeah, the latest ones, anytime there's amendments, still when did we look at it last and that's all. Anytime there's an amendment though, the updated is put on there. So, Karen Reed keeps all

Karen Reed as a human resources director with it being a human resources policy, she has like who would be especially with PL personnel like who is grandfathered under what policy.

Okay. Excuse me. Thank you. Okay. So, we'll we'll bring back that document. We will uh make a note try to show the residential commercial ratio for each project and we'll try to uh schedule Ron Mile to come out come back with uh help us think through big picture tax values uh based on differing types of land uses. Ron's emphasis within stallings I would say is the business park CM air whatever the thing is across the street from CM and Northeast Tool those are the caliber and size he really pays attention to or had been paying attention to but he doesn't do retail or or shopping centers or stuff like that. So, we'll get an idea what commercial is, but we shouldn't be thinking he's going to get specific for what we're going to get. We're not going to get another CM. We want to keep them, but I don't think we're going to get another one. I mean, that's the reason why the key came up is that if it's got sewer capacity and it's a relatively large I mean, it seems like that would be a a sweeter a more attractive piece of property than some of the other places.

Throw that in there. He would be interested in that because that is what four acres or something. I'm sorry. Four something. A little bigger than that, I believe. Five four to five acres of maybe five plus. I don't know decent acreage back there with a already running manufacturing plant. So that would be of interest to somebody. But beyond that coming down the line separate McGee separate than it's not going to help us with the they're like a little dance thing, right? They're separate and Okay. All right. You're done for today.

I'll just mention to there was a lot of talk about the comp plan. We've got it in I think the CIP for not 26 27 but 2728 just as a placeholder. I was hoping to do a lot more land use work in house and I still think we can. I think the challenge we're running in right now is we just keep on getting conditional zonings and with the subcommittees and everything break that subcommittee up.

It's super it's super resource intensive. So, I hope I don't come across as whining. I just want to educate and I guess share that the way our processes are set up, not weighing in on whether we're having too many or too few conditional zonings, that's a policy decision for the board and we support y'all and help you get wherever you want to need go. But just from a the way it's set up now, it's just super time inensive from a staff standpoint. I think we're struggling to really focus on a lot of the long-term work that we were hoping to do. All right. Do we need another staff? Another department.

Let's adjourn for tonight because there's folks coming in break time. All right. Motion to adjurnn. Second. Yeah, that's right. All in favor? I I Whoa. Good conversation, y'all. That was great. Yeah. Thank you. Absolutely. And you know what?