Town Council - Special Meeting

all right good morning everybody welcome to committee day it is monday august 3rd 2026 and we are going to start with the bids and purchases committee before we begin we'll pause for a second for a silent reflection thank you agenda item number two is approval of minutes from the july 6 2026 meeting is there a motion have a motion and a second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye and that carries unanimously item number three is public comment is there anybody here to address this board seeing none we will move on to agenda item number four which is a word of a contract for security guard services at town hall miss harness good morning good morning

So staff requested best value bids from qualified and interested bidders to provide SLED certified armed and unarmed security guards at town hall. For the solicitation, price was only one of six equally weighted evaluation factors to be reviewed to assist the town in selecting the most qualified firm for the work. The evaluation factors covered each bidder's experience, primary business status as a security guard firm, past performance, references, responses to timeliness and quality of services, management plan, and price. Staff received three best value bids. A three-member evaluation team was selected to independently review the three bids against the criteria in the solicitation. When the scores were tallied, Metropolitan Security Services doing business as Walden Security was determined to be the best value, most responsive and responsible bidder. Staff therefore recommend awarding the contract to Walden Security in the amount of $196,100 to perform the security guard services at Town Hall. This amount is within the town's budget for these services.

Thank you, Ms. Harness. Let's go ahead and take a motion to get this on the table for discussion.

So moved. Second.

All right. So we have a motion and a second. Any questions or comments from committee members?

Yes. How long is the contract?

The contract is for one year and the option to renew for four additional years, so it can be five total.

And this is not the security team we currently use? No, it is a different firm. Okay.

Is this standard practice every year to put this out for bid? Or is it every five years?

Every five years.

course always worry about the people that are here so how that affects the current personnel okay and anything else or no I guess that was my only question about the personnel so will they interview or do you think there'll be a change or We don't know.

We don't know. We don't know. They probably will be given the opportunity to interview, but I don't know if they'll accept or be offered.

All right. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Yeah. Well, they do, they have become familiar faces to all of us, so hopefully they will have that option. We've got this on the table with a motion and a second. We'll go ahead and take the vote. All those who signify, all those who approve signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. And that carries unanimously. All right. Item number five, award of a design contract for upgrades to signalized intersections. Ms. Harness.

The Bids and Purchases Committee previously approved the establishment of agreements with consultants to perform various types of transportation engineering and development services on an on-call basis. Engineering services are needed for the design of signal corridor upgrades upgrades include 24 intersections along us highway 17 Coleman boulevard hungry neck boulevard rifle range road and long point road corridors. and two isolated intersections at Whipple Road at Indigo Court and Mathis Ferry Road at Whipple Road. Services include traffic signal modification plans, NEPA concurrence and documentation, including environmental documentation, agency coordination, environmental analysis, and GIS mapping. For this project, the existing traffic signal plan will be used as a basis for the design and the existing traffic signal equipment will remain in place. The time required for design and permitting is approximately 150 days. Staff have determined that this project will require the services of Kimley Horn to design the upgrades to signalized intersections for this project. Therefore, staff recommend contracting with Kimley Horne in the amount of $119,076 to provide the design services.

Thank you, Ms. Harness. We'll go ahead and take a motion to get this on the table for discussion.

Move to approve. Second.

Motion and a second. I suppose we'll probably want to hear from Mr. Aton or one of his associates. Good morning. How are you doing?

Well, thank you.

Good. If you could just give us a it sounded like we're going to utilize the same traffic equipment or signal equipment that's out there. Just kind of give us an idea of what types of improvements we're looking at at some of these intersections.

yes sir so this is part of the scdot's climate reduction program grant the the town was awarded 2.3 million dollars in total and really there were two sub projects that came out of that and this is one of those to upgrade existing uh signal heads to be the four section flashing yellow signal heads instead of the old five section doghouse style as we call them and so these are again 24 intersections multiple approaches so it really is just a signal head swap The other component of the grant, not this project, is detection related.

And forgive my ignorance on this, what's the difference between the heads or however you described it?

Yeah, so when we segue to that flashing yellow signal head, it really just controls the left turn, whereas the existing five section one, it has a green arrow and a green ball, so it controls both the left and the through movements. So there's some flexibility with changing to this new signal head on phasing that we are able to do to increase operational efficiencies.

Okay, interesting. Mr. Atton, we've been a leader, I think, in this signalized approach. And as you go around the area, we're blessed to have it. And so two questions on what is the climate reduction from it? And two, Is that the primary purpose of the yellow flashing? Is the difference between the two? Because I'm excited about it happening because having lived here when we didn't have it, it's much better today. And if it's an improvement, well, that's wonderful.

Yes, sir. So the Climate Reduction Program is a U.S. DOT initiative where funds were funneled down through state DOTs. And so it is meant to improve the transportation network. There's a number of different things that can include, one of which is operational efficiency detection upgrades. And those are the two that we're pursuing. And so, yes, the switch to this new signal head does provide some increased operational capacity

In particular for left turns and so that would speed that would speed the cars up instead of sitting and idling as much And that would be the climate reduction.

Yes, there will be less delay ie less idle time Okay, thank you Anything else from the committee This might be a silly question, but how long does this type of technology last like when do you expect to upgrade again? I

Yeah, so the signal heads themselves are a pretty standard swap, so they'll last for quite a long time. In fact, I think we still have some of the same signal heads up from the 17 and Johnny Dawes widening projects. The bulbs themselves have to be replaced, but the technology, really, I don't foresee any changes in the future 10, 15-year outlook.

all right anything else or all right we'll go ahead and call the question all those who approve signify by saying aye aye and that carries unanimously which brings us to item number six and we are adjourned

Thank you. two of the things are like the same

I don't know what it is. I kind of, I feel like I got a little, like, a vibe from you on that one. I was like, yeah.

you

Good morning, everybody. My name is Howard Chapman. I'll be chairing the Finance Committee meeting this morning. And first item on the agenda is call to order. Next item is approval of the minutes from the July 6th meeting. Move to approve.

Second.

Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none, call for the question. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Ayes have it. Next item on the agenda is public comment. Anyone here for public comment, please come up to the podium. Give us your name and address. You have two and a half minutes. Anyone here for public comment? Seeing none, we'll move on to presentation of the CARTA proposed budget. And I will be recusing myself from this item. And Mr. Rambo, take over the meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Chapman. Who do we have here, Officer DeMora, to go over?

Hi, we have Robin Mitchum. This is the Deputy Director of Finance and Administration at Carta, so she's going to walk you through the budget.

Okay, perfect. Thank you so much.

So the overall proposed budget for FY27 is a net decrease in operating costs of a little over $1.2 million. And the capital expenditures is a net increase of $16,629,000, with the majority of that cost being related to rolling stock that is on order, expected to be received in spring of 27, and then our facility construction, which is the Shipwatch Square Transit Hub.

What is rolling stock? Rolling stock?

Rolling stock is buses.

Oh, buses. OK, thank you. Not familiar with the lingo.

Do you have any? No. Could you go back to the last, I think it was the first slide? Sure. Just curious, on the federal revenue side, it looks like a pretty significant drop from $14.5 million to $9.

We had CARES funds, and we've expended those grants. They lasted for about three years, so our CARES funds have been expended, so that's the decrease in those federal funds.

Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. And then, going back to Jake's question about the rolling stock, Are those traditional kind of gas diesel buses or are those electric buses? I believe these are the hybrid. Okay, okay.

Vehicles.

Gotcha, okay.

And we have grant funds for those.

Excellent.

Yeah, that's sort of all I have.

It's always kind of strange to me that we've got to approve the CARTA budget here at Town Council, but I know that's the way it was set up.

I do not have any other questions either, and also we do not have a quorum, so we cannot make a motion. So this will just go automatically, Mr. Pagliarini, with no recommendation to Council.

Correct. Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Mr. Chapman, would you like to come up, come back on up for item number five? Seems silly, but I'll let you officially.

Thank you very much, Mr. Rambo, for taking care of that part of the meeting. And next item is to adjourn. Yeah. You did great.

At least you had a board member here to help you. Yeah. Okay, good. Getting ready for football season. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Okay. I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, everybody's going for the cheap, right?

Yeah.

That was the only tour I was proud of. Was that upside down?

Yeah, yeah.

It's kind of surprising.

Yeah.

Well, I'm happy to do whatever. Like, if they need somebody to come out and talk to them, that's going to be me. So one thing I was wondering, I'm trying to think of like the way that everybody's, you know, traveling and considering everything.

It's interesting.

But I'm having kind of a really hard time seeing that. I just thought I should have put this thing in. I should have put this thing in. In phases. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know if there's any interest or whatever. I just thought that might be... Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah.

Necessity.

Necessity. Wow. I told you I was still on vacation mode, right? Like, that's too many syllables. Yeah. Yeah, that four syllable is crazy. You gotta get that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

yeah yeah yeah

up at the end of August. It's basically like September to March. Yeah, yeah, summertime, for sure. It's nice and refreshing. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

He loves it, man. Got a little bit of everything.

Got some reading involved and

uh 14 yeah yeah yeah um so actually it's like as soon as you get out of nine yeah one day oh yeah yeah so uh as soon as you get out of the 12 and under age group so like you're i guess like 13 that's when they start a lot of body check body check i mean there's a little bit of

Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. And then at 16, if that's when it gets really, there's like open ice and stuff, you know, open ice. Yeah. That's scary. Concussion.

Yeah.

No, it's not.

Yeah. No, it's not that it's just rush hour. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

His practices are later now, so they're like, a lot of times they start till 7, so it's like we kind of miss most of it.

But we had years where practice started at 5.30, and that was brutal. He had to leave here at like 4 o'clock to go there. But it hasn't changed. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, that smell is so bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm used to it now. It's so bad. Yeah, yeah. Because it's all, everything gets all wet, and then it gets, like, zipped up in a bag for the next week. So it's, like, all run will do. Yeah, it gets zipped up in a bag. That's right. Kind of a similar smell, like high school football players. Yeah, it's like... Oh, okay. Yeah. They should be good this year.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But they should be pretty good this year. And they've got the kid promotion side, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. What position is that now?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you. No, no way.

Thank you. um

Are we ready? Is it time? Okay, sorry, I'm just, I talk too much. That's shocking, right, Eric? All right, we will call the August 3rd HRE committee to order. Second thing on the agenda is approval of minutes from the June 1st, 2026 meeting.

Move to approve. Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second. Any discussion on those minutes? All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And the motion carries unanimously. Up next, number three on the agenda is public comment. If you are here from the public and would like to make a comment, you can come on up to the podium Going once, going twice. Okay. We will move on to item number four, update on the venue, Mount Pleasant. Mr. Rostam.

Thank you, Chairman. So our venue is going well, really well, actually. We've been full steam ahead for about seven months now here in the new year. Just a little data for you as you can see on the screen. We've had 33 total rehearsal days. And these numbers, by the way, are just from May to July, kind of a quarterly update for you. With those having 20 performance days, and I can tell you that our performances are nearly, if not selling out every single time. So that's great for the folks that are utilizing that. And then also, as you know, we have other areas and spaces in that building that we call studio areas. And those are being utilized as well with some rentals from some outside agencies doing programs, events, different things like that, with a total revenue of about $18,000 over the last quarter. So that's kind of, you can see that it's very popular. Folks are utilizing it. There will be a little bit of a lull over the next 30 to 60 days is kind of in the arts and performance world is kind of there take a little break, if you will, but we will still see some activity in the in the facility. With that being said, we're kind of tackling to items, if you will. Ms. Keeley has done a really good job of further updating the website to show kind of everything that's going on in there, even kind of the smaller programs in the ulterior studios there. And we're also going to be doing some research on how to make possibly our online rental system maybe a little easier for users. So as I mentioned in the last meeting, we have done something similar with our tennis program, with our app, but I'm also looking at, we're about to have a new software program for Alhambra Hall, how they use rentals, which I think might be a little more conducive to this space as well than than we do with tennis. So that's going to be coming online in a few weeks. And we're going to compare those and see which one might be a better avenue to kind of utilize. So probably in the next maybe 60 days, hopefully we'll see something. So if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer it. Also, Miss Keely is here as well. If any detailed questions that she can dive into. All right, well, I'll open it up to you guys first.

So what are we doing to get the word out to the public? I know they you know we've done some things on our website but A lot of people are excited about the space, but I'm just wondering if everybody really knows about it, that we've actually got it up and running. What are we doing?

We have constant advertising happening. The venue, MTP, has its own social media accounts. We've been on Low Country Live several times. There have been several articles. We had... a huge article in Charleston Magazine in May, Mount Pleasant Magazine, I think in June. It's continual. There's an email blast that goes out weekly to all of our constituents. The Village Repertory Company has its own social media. that it blasts, every group that comes into the space, they have their own social media accounts that they blast. Theater 99 is a major tenant and that's about to get even bigger. They have a tremendous base of people. So together, all of that is the synergy that we create. Again, the venue is just the hub and then the organizations that come in They are primarily responsible for their own advertising to their own groups, and then we create the calendar, and we become the hub. The more people that come in, the more people that then like the venue MTP social media, and then they start looking for what we're doing next.

Great.

I was just curious about, like, are there, like, what the operational costs were, and then staffing, is that, like, staffing, how it's staffed.

How it's staffed? um yeah so so we're completely since we're a contractor in the space that we handle all the staffing so the staffing needs change depending on what the use is um because the hours of the menu mtp are so um all over the place rehearsals go on until 10 o'clock at night many nights we are there all weekends we are there Sunday mornings we are there Sunday late afternoons so staff changes depending if you have a production like something rotten and you have 23 cast members and a full group of people running all of the technical aspects then you've got 10 people in the space if you're running dance class on wednesday afternoon you have two people in the space so again it is a i don't know how to it's a performing arts and an arts center so those needs change um depending on what the uses are

Do you, I can see how it's not a steady schedule, it just depends on how it's booked, but are there any opportunities like for college, your Charleston students, or internships, or a way for you to generate sort of some free help?

Of course, and we have volunteers. We have, so we're going to be working now as we move into the, so we've had no downtime, like there is no downtime. We ran shows all the way through the middle of July and then the time that we're in the space so the village repertory season 26 kicks off August 28 so they're in rehearsal and happen for the last two and a half weeks that'll run all the way through set building set design set paint teardown of the last set. building a new set, all of that is happening. For example, if you were to look at the Gilead website right now and looked to see what they were doing in August, you would see that they have one performance, August 15th. If you would like to go see the Princess Bride at the Gilead, that's what they're doing. But there is nothing else on the calendar for August, but we know that they're busy behind the scenes because their season starts September 5th. you know august in the summer of um and charleston is dark but we're not dark and so right now on any given day there's 15 to 18 people in the building working on what's going on to open the new season in august

exciting and I know we had the request for coming up with a way to be able to view online I mean if you can't book online you could just view openings no I do appreciate you guys looking into that right so just to explain a little bit again if you were to look at the Gilead or any other art center that we have in our community those forward-facing websites are there for the general public to go online and say what can I go see in

the Gilead so are the menu MTPs website is set up to for you as the general public to know what you can go do at the venue and so we're now being really clear with all of our renters we need all of your information even if it's sold out that's okay get it on our website and then maybe there would be something maybe if people could come to the door so we're getting everything built out on the website so that anything that's going on in the space For example, I met with the Arts Guild on Friday. Well, they're hoping to use the space in November. Well, right now it's not there because they haven't booked it. As soon as they book the space and they're in, we'll get that on the calendar and you'll be able to see what they're doing. As far as bookings, I'm going to explain the difference between a recreation department facility like the pickleball court or tennis is that our arts needs are so specifically individual that unless they come and they meet with us, It's very, unless you're a dance company, it's hard to do a plug and play, at least right now, because they need to come in and use the space. The Arts Guild thought they wanted one room. I had an hour-long meeting with them. We had a wonderful discussion. And they were like, oh, we want to do this. Can we do, all of that stuff needs to sort of happen on a one-on-one personal way so that we can help the artists know what they want. Does that make sense? And we're really good about getting back to you. If you send me an email, I'm immediately back to you and we'll meet with you to see what do you want us to do to help you create the best art that you can do.

Okay. Any other questions? All right. Thank you, Keely. Thanks. Appreciate the update. Where are we? Item number five, update on referendum projects.

Yeah, so exciting times for both of our projects. We've broken ground on both of those. I will start with our Gary Santos Park project. The photo you are seeing here is what you were seeing before as the proposed layout. Now you see what it looks like today with the clearing and the stuff that's going on. To give you kind of a little bit of point of reference, if you look in the kind of top right corner as you come off Vaughn Ed Key. That's kind of where the construction trailer is at the moment. And then immediately to its left, that's where the recreation building will be. Obviously, the soccer fields are pretty well determined right there in the middle of the land. The playground will be over on the left side of the photo here. And then the paddle sports tennis and pickleball will be down kind of on that point down there in the bottom right. So that's kind of what it looks like at the moment. As you can see, they're about to start underground drainage, all different types of things. One thing about this photo that's pretty cool, but not really probably noticed is it have quite a bit of rain and the retention ponds that are built there are doing its job so that's also very nice to see in the early stages of construction here just kind of another viewpoint from from above with you know meeting of rifle range and bonnet key there and just a few things site clearing grading is nearly complete underground piping storm drainage is going in now we hope in the next 30 days to see some verticality in the building they're kind of getting all the final details ready for that because obviously that's kind of a major portion of the facility with an expected completion date early June of 27 with all good as well with weather and everything else. So that would be great timing for us as a rec department because we could start our fall sports out there in 2027 and obviously basketball being a more winter sport would be up and running for that as well. So any questions about Gary Santos before I move on to Muggsy Kerr? All right, so obviously Muggsy Cure, a little smaller project. Clearing's been done, grading. We're putting some underground piping in, as you can see. Installation of the courts, hopefully be in about 45 days. Obviously the timeframe on this is a bit shorter. So hoping to have that completed in February of 26. Sorry, February 27. I put a misprint on the board here. But everything's going well with that contractor. Both these projects we meet bi-weekly. Some on-site, some via Zoom call. But both contractors have been wonderful to work with up to this point. And Steve's doing a great job from a construction contractor standpoint here with Mount Pleasant helping us with that too. Do you have any questions about either project?

So I do have one about Gary Santos. So we've heard a lot of feedback about the park and it being more sports specific. We've also gotten a lot of feedback about some of the playgrounds recently. And obviously everybody loves the playground that you did. in Park Circle. So my ask would be if we could take a look at where we stand budget-wise. I think we are ahead of where we need to be and maybe come back next month with a proposal to strengthen, so to speak, the playground at Gary Santos Park and expand it and Not necessarily expand the footprint, but make it bigger and better and make it like the premier playground for Mount Pleasant. Just heard a lot of feedback on that.

OK, yeah, I'd be happy to research. Obviously, I will get with Tammy and Mr. DeMora to see what the where we are budget wise. I will tell you that playgrounds are not cheap. So it could it could be I can get some ideas and some research on some options or ways to make it bigger, maybe add more equipment in. be able to show you what those numbers look like. I can certainly bring that back in September if needed.

With the goal of I know it's cheaper to do something once, right, than to try to go back and add. So, you know, with the goal of

of if if we were able to add to the playground it being part of this initial project would certainly be costly rather than doing it later on yeah as mr austin said we're on schedule on budget we are seeing some savings lately in some of the line items that could further your request sir the good thing is if we can somehow find the amount of money to expand the playground because you're right i was going to mention that it's a one-shot deal right um and it can come within this project budget then committee can decide to make that decision say next month if you wanted to okay so glad to work on it okay we'll bring it back thank you very much um with the playground

I'd love for it to have more of a natural theme. I know we have to have certain equipment that has certain safety standards, but when we talk about expanding, if there's some like natural aspects we could do, like have a back to nature sort of a theme. I don't know what people could work into it, but maybe those things aren't that expensive, but it might have more to do with landscaping or little paths where maybe butterfly garden or cut you know in the corner or you know things like that that aren't necessarily as expensive as

I can see what our vendor has to offer. I will say that the color scheme and the theme of it right now is very nature-based with some greens and browns and beiges to kind of fit in with the site. But I can check with the vendor and see what type of equipment they may have that's nature-themed. The only thing I will tell you up front is if that equipment would need to be customized, there's obviously extra costs with customization of playground equipment instead of quote-unquote stock materials. But sure, I'll definitely look into it.

Okay.

Any other questions about any of these projects? Okay. All right. We will move on to item number six, presentation of Recreation Advisory Commission final report.

Yes. So I sent this out last week, so hopefully you had a chance to review it. Just really kind of giving some highlights on the RAC Commission. As you know, back in January when we kind of quote unquote, restarted. We have a few new members. The RAC commission kind of changed a little bit. We went to quarterly meetings instead of monthly meetings. So we didn't meet quite as many times as the first rendition of this commission. But with that being said, the commission kind of did a deep dive into our coaches manual, which they gave us I would say upwards of 50 to 55 points and ideas that they had. Some of them are former and current coaches in our system. So it was good to have their feedback. So we're kind of looking through those, reviewing those, see what can be implemented across the board. Some were more sports specific than just generalized. So we're looking into those. A lot of the commission members engaged with the community. They attended a bunch of our events. So just kind of bringing us feedback from folks they speak to in the community about what they'd like to see recreation-wise. So we were able to get some good information about that. And like I said, they're supporting us in every way that they can. We have a very diverse group of folks in terms of what they're doing. specific interests are everywhere from basketball to cycling to arts infused so we've got a wide variety of knowledge and information from those folks all right you can see listed here I won't go through them all but an array of agenda topics that we've been through in the course of the seven meetings we eight meetings we've had over the last two years uh we just met in july so we do have one more meeting uh before uh any decisions need to be made about the rat commission so if you have any questions i'd be happy to answer them anybody have any questions on their final report uh do we need to accept the report or just okay well um what's it any motion

We accept the report from the Recreation Advisory Commission.

Any further comments or questions on that? hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye and the motion passes unanimously and we so very appreciate the work of our Recreation Advisory Commission members and I know they met several times and we're working offline particularly on our on our coaches handbooks which I think needed updating and we're we're glad for all of their advice and support on that okay with that item number seven is to adjourn thank you that's a pretty distracting

I wouldn't have told you. No way.

I'm like, are they?

They're so resilient, though. It's like, they're fine.

Mm-hmm. I dropped Cole one time.

But he swigged it out of my hands. But somehow I caught him by his shirt and he didn't actually hit the ground. But I mean, it just like, it happens like they're tiny and they're wiggly and you're like, I went to grab something else and he just...

I'm going to call to order the Education Committee on Monday, August 3rd, 2026. And the second item is approval of the minutes from the May 4th, 2026 meeting.

Move to approve.

Second.

All right. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All right. Number three, public comment. If you're here to make a public comment, please come forward. All right. Seeing none, moving on. Item four, the presentation of internship capstone projects.

Good morning. I will do the introductions here and then I'm going to turn it over to Ava. We are excited to actually share with you all a couple of projects that Ava has been working on all summer. She has been our intern in executive offices, particularly working with Eric LaFontaine and the communications team, but has had some specific projects that we wanted to share with you all today. She is an MPA student, so working on her graduate degree in public administration at the University of Georgia. And we were actually fortunate to have been able to get Ava to work with us this summer, in particular when it comes to the first item that we're going to talk about, which is the digital accessibility project. This is a federal requirement, it's an extension of ADA. Ava's going to get into more detail, but she's got a little bit of experience with that. So I'm going to let her kind of talk you all through that so that she can explain what we're required to do, what everybody is required to do per this federal law. And then she's going to share with you what she's developed for us as so that kind of keep us leading the way with this project.

there we go yeah so as she said my background is in accessibility so I've worked for the University of Georgia part-time for about four years doing accessibility and I'm a founding member of their digital accessibility department so that's my area of knowledge and so I'm very excited to get to share that with you guys today just for starters I wanted to share a little bit of background so the Americans with Disabilities Act Act just celebrated its 36 year anniversary. It passed in July of 1990. It's the most recent civil rights legislation to pass in America. And the focus of that law was more on physical accessibility. So this law was particularly advocated for by individuals who are, wheelchair users or might use mobility aids. You might have physical limitations getting into public spaces. And so this law mainly focused on things such as elevators, ramps, automatic door buttons. The focus was getting physical access to buildings. And as government has grown and developed, we've moved more and more online. And so in 2024, the Department of Justice recognized this and decided to expand on the ADA. So, the ADA can be broken down into five parts. Title II specifically covers state and local government as well as public transportation. So, in one second. In 2024, the DOJ expanded on ADA Title II to include a government's digital presence as part of their responsibility to ensure equal access to public life. so just to give you a little bit of an idea of who all this law impacts when i talk about disability and digital access a lot of people tend to think blind or low vision which absolutely this law is going to benefit but it's also going to impact individuals who are colorblind deaf there's some neurological conditions that are going to benefit from this as well as learning disabilities that are going to benefit from this law So just to give you a little bit of an idea of disability and technology today, most technology today comes with accessibility features built into it. You do have to turn them on, but you can pretty much use any device in accessible matter today. So most technology comes in with screen readers where the computer will actually read to you what's visually displayed on the screen. I'm sure we've all used the zoom in button on our computer to magnify images or text. And as well, you can pretty much navigate almost any computer today using just the keyboard and not using the mouse. So these are all accessibility features that are built into the device. However, if the content that we're creating is not built with those features in mind, then the device isn't really going to be able to help you. So that's kind of where my knowledge came in. I also wanted to give you just a quick picture of who's going to be impacted by this ruling, specifically in Charleston County. So big picture, the CDC reports that in the United States, more than one in four adults have a disability. In South Carolina alone, they're averaging about the national average of 29.7%. And then the American Community Survey, which is taken alongside the census, reported 12.5%. 5 percent of adults in Charleston County having a disability. This is a rather significant portion of the population. The goal of this law is to make sure that everybody can go online and check when their garbage is getting picked up. That's really the intention behind what we're doing. so um to start out my time here i kind of just did an overhaul looking at all of um the websites apps social media agendas minutes just kind of looking at them for any accessibility barriers that i was noticing and again these are not barriers that were intentionally put into place these are just things that people haven't been taught and so i kind of did that overhaul and from here looking at what needs to happen and what's already happening the best course of action i determined was to create a digital accessibility guide so you guys have this in front of you this is a comprehensive guide created with the intention of making sure Anybody who does not have any background in digital accessibility can use it. This guide goes over just a vague overview of accessibility and some of the legal side. It also breaks down six significant accessibility best practices and how to implement those. Then at the very back, there is an accessible document creation and accessible PowerPoint creation. Now this goes step-by-step on how to make accessible documents and accessible PowerPoints. So the intention of this was that it's super user-friendly and anyone can use it to adjust documents in their PowerPoints. So given this, I was able to collaborate with the communications team. So I've been on their team this summer. We've been having lots of conversations about their digital media and this stuff. And so we determined that the best idea was to get individuals who create public-facing content in all of the departments together. So we were able to get about over a dozen individuals in one room to host an accessibility training. Each individual got a copy of this guide. And then we also went through just some brief overview of what is disability and assistive technology in today's world look like. Talked about what makes a document or content accessible versus inaccessible. And then we went through just kind of applying accessibility best practices and what that's going to look like in their positions. In addition to training individuals and the digital accessibility guide that I've created, per the DOJ's guidance, we decided to implement what we're calling Report a Digital Accessibility Barrier. So this is simply a form on the website that if an individual were to run across an issue, maybe a link is broken or text is not large enough or maybe they can't zoom in, any issues like that, they can actually just go and fill this form out and let the communications department know of the issue. This creates just kind of a transparent conversation with individuals, whether that be people who live in Mount Pleasant or just using the website for whatever reasons. And this allows us to also kind of keep track of any public facing content that we're having issues with. OK. And then the last part. So this ruling does come into effect in April of next year. So we have about nine months to get ready for it. So looking to get ready, there's about three steps we're going to take. The first one is going to be content remediation. So there are going to be some departments that are going to have to go back and remediate public-facing content. One example from our training was that we worked with the planning department talking about maps. There's some things related to maps and the current accessibility standards that they're going to have to adjust. These aren't necessarily complex changes, but they are just changes that are going to have to be made. So departments are going to work over the course of the next nine months to remediate public facing content, as well as we're going to set up an archival section of the website. So the policy does allow for the archival of inaccessible documents for the purpose of record keeping. So think old agendas and minutes rather than having to go back and remediate all of these to make them accessible. These are all going to be put into an archival section. And then finally, we're going to improve the procurement process. So the town does contract with some individuals for some of our online content, and they're going to improve that process to include these accessibility requirements. Yeah, I'm very proud to say that the town has taken this head on. Many people have not recognized the breadth of this ruling and how many people it's going to impact. And so very proud to say that the town has taken this very seriously and is working to make all of their content accessible. So yeah, if you have any questions please feel free. Thank you.

um so one of my struggles is i don't know how to add captions to videos um and so that's that's something that i'll definitely be um looking to learn from from you all um and and one thing that i think was just eye-opening for me were the statistics that you had with the number of um people with disabilities it's a considerable population so just wanted to Thank you for going through all this and putting together such a user-friendly document for how we can comply with these new regulations. And I think it's just a really good job that you've done. So I just wanted to say thank you.

Yeah. Thanks for coming to Mount Pleasant for your internship because it sounds like something we really need. Yeah, absolutely. This is really helpful. Thank you. Done in time.

and move all of our documents on their own website will be accessible moving forward yeah yeah ava has really um set us up for success and i really do think um i haven't been hearing a lot about this from other communities so i think we probably are going to be leading the way in local governments and south carolina everything that she has helped to create and she's worked so closely with our communications team will be implementing over the next nine months. And as she mentioned, she referenced the planning department. They'll probably be the most impacted in terms of departments because you all know they do so many different presentations. But our clerk of counsel is going to have to make some changes too with the things that you all see through your minutes and agendas and things of that nature so there's definitely some work ahead of us but Ava has really put together I think a good guide obviously that you see before you to help us be moving in that direction.

It might be a good topic for the Municipal Association next year, too. So I don't know what Ava is going to be up to next summer, but maybe she'll want to come to Myrtle Beach and do a presentation.

I'll have a master's by then, so give me a call. Be good for the job search. Yeah, absolutely.

And so do you have any connection to Mount Pleasant or how did you end up here?

I loosely know Eric DeMora. I've known him for about four years now, and so I gave him a call. I have a good amount of experience in the state of Georgia. I've worked for the university, so for the state, for about four years now. Wanted to get some experience outside of Georgia. So, yeah, came up here. Really enjoyed it.

Nice. And when's your graduation date?

I'll graduate May 27. Okay. Yep. So, yeah, I know. I've got six classes left. I'm very close.

This is excellent work. I'm excited to have this.

Yeah. I was really honored to do it and I'm very excited that y'all are taking these steps because this is just a population that I care about deeply. I'm also an individual with disabilities and so these are very small changes that make a really big impact. Okay.

If y'all are ready, we had a little more time for Ava, you know, besides just doing the digital accessibility. So we had her work on a couple of other projects. And so the next one that we wanted to talk about is the internship program. Now, we've always had interns like Ava over the years, but it's never been necessarily a formalized program. The departments have kind of worked individually with this. So this is actually an item that's within our strategic plan to talk a little, try to improve our internship program. So what Ava spent the summer doing was helping us develop a program, worked with all the department managers, to come up with a different way, a cohort style that we can implement next summer. So that's what y'all are gonna see and we're gonna kind of flesh it out over the rest of this year so that we can post positions probably in December or January for students for next summer. But excited about what she's been able to put together. So we want to share with you all the direction that we're headed with that.

Yes, this was a very exciting project because I was able to kind of analyze it from both sides of what does a student want. So when you're kind of in the higher education world, everything seems to be very theory based and, you know, in theory. And so a lot of us are looking for opportunities to get into the real world and experience it before we finish our degrees. So I was very excited that the town wanted to do this. So some of the pillars of the program As she said, it's going to be based on a cohort style. So interns are going to come in as a group and they're going to have this cohort that they're able to kind of team up with and refer back to throughout the course of their internship. Also, we have determined that we would like to make this program track space. So interns are going to be able to be on a specific track, focusing on a specific area of municipal government. So they're going to get specific skill development. which is very beneficial. And then also just additional day-to-day exposure to municipal operations. So you can study it as much as you want, but it's not the same as when you're actually part of it. So that's also just going to be a huge benefit to interns. So this is going to be a summertime program just based off the academic year. Over the course of about eight to ten weeks, interns are going to be required to complete a capstone project. So we do want them to have some sort of research project that they pick that's going to be rooted in the idea of bettering the town. And then also we're going to focus on letting interns have shadowing opportunities. So to go out and follow individuals in their specific track on what does a day in their life working for the town look like. So we have identified four tracks for now after meeting with department heads. And I'll get a little bit into each of those. So to start off, we have our public safety track. This is going to be a combined track with the police department and the fire department focused on emergency. We're going to target some emergency management majors and criminal justice. This program interns are going to get to learn about emergency preparedness, public education, and interdepartmental coordination. And they're also going to get to learn a little bit about special event preparedness. The next track is going to be a combination of EDS and public services. So this is going to be a really wide overview of capital projects from planning to construction and then as well as capital asset maintenance after these projects are done and complete, which I think is a really unique opportunity. It's not often that you get to see something from all angles like that. And then we're going to have a recreation track. So this is going to be really a comprehensive approach to recreation. And we're going to focus on all aspects of what goes into recreation from leadership to customer service, programming, and administration, as well as we do hope that they'll get to shadow some of our grounds crews and go out and see what goes into actually maintaining our fields. And then finally, we're going to have an executive track. So interns are going to get experience in the executive department, learning about day-to-day municipal operations, public communication, and then what goes into town-wide organizational improvement. So we are going to target undergrads that are towards the end of their degree and then early graduate students like myself. It is going to be a part-time job with going to be a combination of project work, shadowing, and capstone development is going to be their focus while they're here. Then just to get a little bit more into this cohort idea, so interns are going to come in as part of a cohort that's going to meet regularly for mentorship and career training. Some of these sessions are going to be ran by HR and we're going to have opportunities for interns to get specified training on topics such as leadership development, decision-making, and managing people, also some professional development topics such as public speaking and interview preparedness. In addition, interns are going to have their day-to-day supervisor, as well as someone that's gonna be over their project oversight and gonna kind of help them with their capstone projects. So they're gonna be getting a lot of mentorship and a lot of one-on-one help, which is, I think, gonna be a really big pull for interns. And then, yeah, that's all I have for our internship program. Do you have any questions?

Not really questions, but I think it's a great idea to have a cohort system in place. We do sort of a similar thing in the legal community where we bring in law clerks as a class throughout the summer. And I think just having those opportunities to have, you know, somebody else there as an intern as well, I think is definitely a positive. I'm sure it's a little lonely being the sole intern this year. So it would have been nice to bounce things off of people and just to sort of connect and network with your fellow students, I'm sure.

Yeah, absolutely. I assume these internships will be posted, like as jobs that we're looking.

Yeah, I think we're going to handle it a little bit differently than we have in the past. Our plan is to post this probably in January, which is when most kids are starting to look for those opportunities for the summer, and we'll have an interview process and they will apply to one of the tracks. Now these tracks can be expanded as y'all saw they're just they're specific to specific to specific departments for now we'll see how the program works and maybe can grow and expand over the years but yes there'll be we'll be opening up for interviews in early winter.

How many interns was that or tracks were there?

There's four tracks, but we're thinking maybe between four to six interns. Some of the larger ones, like the public safety one, might have two interns because that is a pairing of both police and fire. And then same with the one where we've paired public works with EDS. That might be an opportunity for more than one there.

Was there a planning one?

Yeah.

Not right now. I think that eventually, like I said, we can grow into that. Planning does have interns often. But to start with, we're going to see how this particular new cohort program goes. And then potentially some opportunities. Planning has done this in the past with EDS where they've shared an intern, so there might be another opportunity for something like that.

Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, we got one last item.

Last one. Y'all know we've had a youth council for probably a half a dozen years, and a lot of good things have come out of it. We've had a number of students participate in it and learn more about our community and participate in a lot of community service projects. But we've seen some challenges from time to time, especially with student schedules, that it was difficult, especially if they played sports or were in band or theater some of those activities so we wanted to kind of revisit the program with a real emphasis on community service as they have had but also on civics and so Ava has helped pull together this program and we intend to start this like right away this fall we've already got applications for people for the Youth Council so this is same kids will have the opportunity to participate through this new leadership program. It's just they won't be required to come and meet as they were here at Town Hall once a month. We're going to change the format a little bit to not require minutes. anymore, something that hopefully is a lot more flexible for these students and but still accomplish some of the same things in terms of like a leadership program. So I'll let Ava explain the details.

Yeah, absolutely. So this youth leadership program is going to focus on getting young people engaged in local government and community service. It's going to go throughout the course of the school year, and it's going to be designed to build civic awareness, leadership and community connection. So we have kind of shrunk down the program commitment a little bit. So there's only going to be four meetings throughout the course of the school year. And then on the months that they don't meet, we're going to have an online Google Classroom discussion. The students will be required to attend one town council meeting, and they're also going to be required to volunteer at one community event. So the meeting structure, we did choose to change it a little bit. So we're going to have two in-person meetings to kind of bookend the year, one at the start, one at the very end. And then we're going to have two other meetings, one late fall, one early spring, that are going to be hybrid style. So the first one is going to be in person at Wando High School, but we're going to have a Zoom option available for students who don't attend. And then in the spring, Once again, hybrid, but it'll be at Lucy Beckham. So that way students who don't go to the high school that we're at or if they don't attend either of those schools can still be involved and participate. So one of the main focuses of this program is going to be a community service. So we are going to task the students with planning and completing a substantial community service project. So this project is going to be rooted in addressing a real community need. Students are going to have to do it from start to finish. They're going to have to develop the plan, coordinate the partners, promote participation, and then evaluate their results. So we are going to push them. They're going to have to, you know, really figure this out from start to finish. Obviously, we'll be there to help them along the way, but we want this to be their project. In addition to this, we're going to challenge students to talk about community issues. They're going to be challenged with recognizing that they are the next generation of this community and are going to be asked what concerns do they have for their community. Based off of this concern, the students are then going to have a discussion throughout the semester. On the months that they don't meet in person, there's going to be a facilitated online discussion through a Google Classroom for them to talk about whatever community issue topic they have picked for the year. And the hope is also that potentially we'll be able to kind of condense this into a report and bring this back to you guys. So you guys are actually getting live feedback from the young peoples of your community. And then finally, as a way to encourage volunteer service, this is not a requirement, but we do want students to have the opportunity to earn an award for volunteer service. So if they go above and beyond 20 hours, we're going to give them a bronze level of mayoral volunteer service award, and then 35 hours silver and 50 for gold. So not a requirement, but just an opportunity for students who do want to push themselves farther and get more involved in their community. So if you have any questions.

I'll just say I'm a big fan of this. I went through a youth commission when I was a teenager, so shout out to the Westerville Youth Commission. It was a good way to get involved in the community, to engage with other peers your age. And so I think it makes sense to make the program a little more fluid as you've done rather than always meeting here at town hall once a month, no matter what's going on. So I think it's a great work. And I hope that a lot of our high school age children here will get involved because it is something that, That I kind of see lacking around the community is sometimes some of that civic engagement or civic awareness And it would be I think frankly speaking nice to hear what teenagers have to say about what we could do differently maybe to you know in the recreation program to make sure that we're providing options for for teenagers and So it'd be kind of nice to have that pulse about what what they think we should be doing differently here. I

This is a great direction. How do we currently find, like, where is it advertised to apply to these councils?

It is on our website, and we do have 12 applicants right now for the Youth Council program. Six of those are returning from last year, and then we received six additional. So our plan was, after we shared this with you all today, is to contact all 12 of them, make sure that they were aware of this change. It shouldn't be that big of a change for them, and it actually hopefully will be a lot more flexible for them. Make sure that they're still interested in it, and then we're going to proceed starting in September. with those. We'll probably cut it off if all 12 of those and just proceed with about a dozen students for this year. That's, I guess, one of the changes here is with Youth Council we had a set number. This will give us a little more flexibility to potentially allow a few more students if they wanted to participate in it, but that's our plan.

Would it be advantageous to reach out to schools?

We've tried that in the past. It seems to be a little bit of a challenge with getting in touch that way. We can certainly do that again and put some things out, push some things out on social media. I know that Eric has already come up with a new website logo, and I think that we actually can push that out on Facebook. Instagram and some things like that to make sure that they're aware before we kind of close it out and start with this current group.

That'd be excellent. Reach out to many people because I don't know how many people know about it. To get involved and show there's a lot of people who do. I was involved with our high school government and I'm sure there's only certain places that people who don't get elected to their high school student body may want this particular opportunity to do.

One thing that I've kind of always noticed as maybe an area for improvement for this facet of what we do is I feel like we should bring them in like we do the sports teams and give them something at the end at a council meeting, a certificate, and thank them for their service.

I think with what Ava presented with the idea, too, of developing a report in the end, there'll be an opportunity to share that, in particular through this committee, but also recognize those who participated.

I think it would be kind of nice, too, to know when they do attend the meeting. Yes.

That they're there. Yes.

That they're there. Yes.

Yeah.

Thank you so much. Sounds great. Thank you. That works.

Yeah, we're going to miss you, but it seems like you accomplished a lot of things in a short period of time. So hopefully next summer we get five or six Ava's here.

All right. Well, that's it. The last item is to adjourn.

I guess it's, you know, the little things. Like, can they blow it up?

Yeah.

Can they, you know, to read it? It's just long to me.

Yeah.

Or you think that your advice is able to do all the things.

Yeah. Yeah. Right.

I mean, I just assumed that everything, it's like mind-blowing. Now it's going to be one of the questions for this, for reading this. You know, she said it, like, you've got to, you've got to be involved in trying to make it possible. I'm like, no, that's, and it's true. There's simply trash.

Freezing in here. It's freezing in here.

I love my sweater. I wear a jacket with holes in it.

Now I'll run to the restroom and come back. to my spot.

This will be my spot, I guess. I don't know.

Can I even have... Who's... I can't even...

Thank you.

Nice and cold in here.

Oh, I don't know.

I don't know.

Thank you.

when they would get it

Okay.

Thank you. Peace. yes

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. We'll call to order our Economic Development Committee meeting for Monday, August 3rd. Next item is approval of minutes from May 4th. Move to approve. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion passes. Next item is public comment. We have anybody here to address the committee? Okay. I see none. So, next item is executive session review and discussion of an economic development incentive package.

Move to go into executive session?

Okay. I'll second it. Council may take action on any item including any subsection of any section listed on an executive session agenda or discussed in an executive session during a properly noticed meeting. So, all in favor? Aye. Aye. We will go into executive session. from executive session um and if we have no motion coming out of executive session nope okay with that we will adjourn then thank you thank you

Eric is a staff member. All right. Let me call to order the Police, Judicial, and Legal Committee this Monday, August 3rd. It's good to see everybody here. Item two, we will do approval of the minutes. Do I have a motion, please?

Move for approval, Mr. Chairman.

Second. All right. Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Great.

give name and address two and a half minutes please morning mayor council i'm paul sperry i've been here in front of that whole council before on behalf of some uh folks that are involved in dog advocacy trying to help you guys make a change i just want to thank you for your consideration and doing that and i'm looking forward to working with that guy more in the back there daniel some and um And your police chief, he's setting up a meeting with me and some others with him on Wednesday. So we're just really encouraged with what you're doing. And we really hope now Pleasant becomes sort of the model that we can then go to some other municipalities and counties and that sort of thing. Because I got stuck on a crosstown coming here and. It just reminded me how many people now live here. It took about 20 minutes to get through it. So, like, there's so many things you guys got to do, and I don't envy you on this, that come with the growth of the area. And one of them, I really do think, are some improvements on our, you know, animal welfare-related laws. Unfortunately, more people here, the more animals that come here, and the more instances you have dealing with them, like the husky situation that happened recently. So... things just matter of growth and people want to come here and I appreciate you guys taking a look at everything and looking forward to, we are looking forward to working with you in that process. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Next please. Yes. Name and address, two and a half minutes, please. Yes.

Hey. Good morning. My name is Sandra Connell, and I'm a native Charlestonian, so I should get points or something, because I was born and raised here. And I live at 2106 Seawee Indian Court in Dunes West. So I'm just grateful for the town council to listen to us and maybe not be afraid of the hard questions of animal abuse. And I sent an email, I'm only up here for a short moment, but I sent an email last night. I want to make sure y'all received it. It's got some pictures of a dog named Howie. And I just want to make, I mean, seven years ago, I didn't even know animal abuse existed. And I know, Mayor, I saw your posts on your dog. I know everybody loves animals, and we all do. But I didn't know what was going on until I started following rescues and supporting them on social media. and local rescues and and the reality is um it's animal abuse has exploded there's several reasons why and i sent you a picture of howie it's his intake pictures and i don't know i think his owner was arrested but i know that charleston county sheriff's department was involved in it i know the rescue who took on howie's case and i showed you an after picture of howie So it's not just pit bulls. This was a beautiful doodle, like starved. And I send those pictures because I didn't know all this existed seven years ago and I've noticed it just getting worse and worse. And I'm hoping that municipalities can do things faster than state. And I'm hoping that you guys will help us solve this and just be able to be an example and duplicate it in other municipalities and wipe out animal cruelty, like prevent it, not manage it. This is just a number that blew my mind. 600,000 animals are euthanized in the U.S. yearly. Like that was 2025 in shelters. That's a number that's probably greater, but that's a number from last year. And I'm like, how did we get there? How do we stop it? So I'm just grateful that y'all hear us out and help us ordinances or help, but we got to be able to enforce them. Like, and I'm willing to work with y'all for y'all. Just, I didn't know what was going on, but social media literally awakened me and I've been supporting rescues for a long time. So thank you so much. And I'm here to help in any way. I'm just grateful for y'all. Thank you.

Next, please.

Good afternoon. My name is Lisa Schnipke. I live at 185 Mossy Oak Way. First, I'd like to congratulate our police department on their reaccreditation. We knew they were good, they knew, and now everyone else knows. I support the town's initiative to regulate escar use in Mount Pleasant. There are many more effective, less harmful ways to manage rodents. Let's continue to look for best practices being used in other municipalities like Kiowa and Seabrook. Allowing eschar use poses deadly risk to raptors and even our community pets like cats and dogs. Also, I want to reinforce what's already been shared here. I commend you all for looking at the animal abuse. If there's anything that we can do as a municipality to help pass that, that would be wonderful.

Anyone else for public comment? If not, all right. Thank you all very much. Public comment is closed. Item four, police matters. Announcement of Mount Pleasant Police Department's reaccreditation.

Good morning, Mayor and committee members. It's a pleasure to be before you to share some good news. So I'm proud to announce Mount Pleasant Police Department has once again earned reaccreditation from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, commonly known as CALEA. This perceived national recognition reflects the department's continued commitment to professional excellence, accountability, transparency, highest standard of law enforcement services. It's not achieved by one person's efforts. It's a department-wide effort. And it represents the daily dedication of every member of our department to adhere to the standards outlined in CALEA and our policy. I especially want to recognize the accreditation team and employees who hard work ensure that the policies and practices continue to meet CALEA's rigorous standards. It's an achievement that belongs to our entire department, to the community that we're honored to serve. I would like to just add one thing. Lieutenant Croy stepped in as an interim accreditation manager in between transition from sworn to a civilian accreditation manager and really was very instrumental in this last cycle and also our trip to Omaha, Nebraska for reaccreditation. So kudos to her.

Great. Thank you. I think that deserves an applause.

the Cadets Explorer Program? Yes. The other good news that we have is the Mount Pleasant Police Department's Cadet Program, formerly known as the Explorers Program. They went to Columbia and competed in the statewide annual competition for our young explorers, and they came in first in every category. Achievement reflects dedication, discipline of the teamwork of our cadets, as well as the officers that serve as mentors and roles. We have several officers that volunteer their time. The lead of this is Deputy Chief Carter. He has been in charge of our Explorer program for many, many years and has done a fantastic job. We have police officers now who are mentors that started out in the Explorer program. So this Explorer program is just a tremendous asset for the agency. It's a recruiting tool for us, community relation and outreach tool. And I'm very, very proud of them. They go up there, they participate in all kind of police and law enforcement scenarios. So these scenarios are sometimes very complex and these young 14 15 16 18 year olds are navigating these uh what i would call police scenarios and situations and doing an amazing job and we came in first in all categories so very proud of our folks fantastic thank

Any comments?

Mr. Chapman, why don't you say that?

Well, Chief, I'm just suggesting that this is wonderful training that our new police officers are receiving in advance, in advance of when they actually become officers, and certainly is something that I'm sure that

other agencies should be doing some of our some of our current police officers that are mentors started out at 14 15 years old then became community service officers with us in the transition police officer so thank you yes is it normal for most

fairly large municipalities that have a program like that, or are we unique?

We competed against numerous agencies. Charleston City, Sheriff's Office, all the law enforcement agencies, larger law enforcement agencies, many of them have these programs. Good.

And ours brought home the top.

But ours were the best.

Yes. Wonderful. Always love the good news. Yes, sir. All right. Item five, judicial matters, no agenda items. Laurie, bring in some trophies next month. That'd be great. We did have a judge swearing in in July, Judge Hesse, so that was great. All right. Number six, legal matters 6A, discussion to make rodenticide regulation a town legislative priority in the next legislative session. So I see everybody kind of moving in. Let's give a little context. We brought this up, was it last year? For all I know, it might have been two years ago. And the bottom line, as I recall, and stop me if I'm getting ahead of you here, but these second generation anticoagulant rodenticides, the main part of it legally is dictated by state law. At least a year ago, that's where we were. That's why we're bringing this back. And we wanted to see where state law supersedes local law or preempts us in making those more strict. And if you'll just kind of walk us through that, I think I know that this is going at the state level is where the big changes need to be and who can actually dispense these things. And if that's the case, I think, given especially the fact that the whole public has seen recently that we've had some birds of prey that were very, I think, didn't one die? I think one died and one, I think, was successfully rehabbed. But it's not a good thing when they ingest an animal that has these anticoagulants in it. So, Mr. Pagliarini, if you'll walk us through.

Sure. Thank you, Mayor, members of the committee last year this committee and council addressed this issue resolution 25072 related to the pending bill at the state house no action was taken last year and the bill is once again in committee at the state level so that is the status of current legislation uh mayor members of the committee we this is the presentation that we provided last year some background on the issue the escars and what they are mayor as you pointed out south carolina state code specifically provides that local ordinances pertaining to this matter are controlled by the state And last year, along with the resolution, there was commitment for review by the town for its best practices and procedures to review at least what we are doing within the town of Mount Pleasant. And so regulation at our level is is precluded as we sit here today. And again, there has been no action, at least moving forward at the state level. And so that is a brief summary. This is what the state did last year. As of January 1, 2025, they are required to have specific light to be a licensed dealer. So that was implemented in this is at least was the change that occurred last year.

Did you want to jump in? I'd love to. Last year, we had a presentation by the Birds of Prey, and they talked a lot about what was happening, and they heat mapped where the incidents were and where they died, and very few were saved. But since then, we found out that it's not only affecting the Birds of Prey, but it's affecting cats, dogs, and bobcats on Kiowa and other forms of life. that it's it's a natural chain of life that these animals feed off the rats and so they just and they go for them and so i think it's going to be interesting i know that in talking to the birds of prey they're looking forward to the opportunity to come and addressing the group and talking about what's happened since last year but also what's happened at kiowa where they've done a voluntary program In lieu of getting formally the ability to govern it ourselves, they're doing a voluntary program with pest control companies as well at Kiowa and Kia Resort. And they've had some good success with that. A lot of it's just education to be aware of it. I find when I talk to people, they're completely unaware. what these boxes do and what the impact is on the very things that they moved here for or live here for. And if you're seeing hawks and cats and everything hanging around restaurants, you're probably in a pretty good situation to know they might not last. And so I think it's really important to say what's some of the most important parts of our environment. And so whatever we can do with our local representatives and whatnot to get it out of committee and bring it down here would be good and they've even offered out on the lawn or some place here to have some of the birds of prey here to see and for people to recognize what's happened but the statistics are stark We're very blessed in this area that we have one of the two hospitals in the country that actually deal with issues for birds of prey. But this one is heartbreaking. So I commend you all for this and let's see if we can get something done.

Okay.

So, go ahead, Mr. Chapman. I noticed in one of the earlier slides specifically shows that Clemson University helps administer this program. Is that something we could do working with Clemson? Can we get a presentation from Clemson to show us what they are doing now and if there's some way we could work with them to improve on what is transpiring even before they change and hopefully change state law.

To answer your question, yes, our Clemson University is working on this issue and whether we can get them to appear or not, we can certainly make that attempt. But I think as a matter of following best practices, they would be the source. They would be the best source and resource that the town could have.

Right. Well, I remember that last year and I was wondering why we didn't try to get some earlier effort to work with Clemson on this because it might give us a leg up going to the legislature.

I do think our staff did a great job of posting a lot of the information last year, which is wonderful. And so it's a good time to have a refresher of what people can do that is not using these anticoagulants. So doing Clemson, having Clemson come and talking about what the alternatives are. And ideally, we might even be able to have a pest control company come that's been working at Kiowin, the success that they've had. But I noticed that they're really doing a lot with bobcats now with this as well.

All right. Let me hit three things. Can we get staff to revisit the public information campaign we did before? And let's kind of renew that, update it about the reason why we're doing that is there's been more attention brought to it by some very publicized events involving birds of prey. Could we also, for next month, bring our resolution back that we already passed, see where we might need to update that for a new one for this legislative year? And then we can go over that and recommend that to council. And then the other thing would be for next month to bring in the folks from Kiowa from Birds of Prey and get some information about things that are being done. We all know that that that unless it's something like congressional redistricting in Columbia, they act very slowly and it takes years for bills to get out unless it's something they really want to do. So I think it's a safe assumption. And I heard from a legislator last week. People are already pre filing bills for when they come back in in January. Let's get our resolution teed up and start talking to our delegation. This is, you mentioned this Senate Bill 246. I'd like to talk to Senator Campson about that. He's probably the biggest conservationist in the Senate. and enlist his support in getting that through if we can. And then let's get perhaps Clemson, Birds of Prey, and somebody from Kiowa to come talk to us next month. Does that sound like a plan?

Yes, sir. I think Clemson, working with them, is going to have as much or more support in the General Assembly as we do. So if we can... allow them to do their thing with us, I think it might help. And there are a lot of members of the General Assembly that went to Clemson's.

True. Okay. Sounds like we know where we're going from here. Any other suggestions on that?

I think informing the public to, you know, like you read a label on food, you should start reading labels on what you're using in your yard and how that affects. Just letting the public get it out there that, you know, there's a chain reaction. Right.

And that's why I would like the towns, because obviously a lot of work went into it, a lot of effort. And let's just get it out, start getting it out there again.

We don't need to wait for another committee meeting to be getting that info out there. Thank you.

All right, thank you all very much. That will conclude that item, 6A. 6B, assessment of the town's ordinance covering animal cruelty. So if you will give us the overview again, we're going to find out what the town can do and what state law does. And I think probably need to say this beforehand, and Chief, this applies to y'all. We would not be discussing any ongoing legal cases, I don't think. Correct, sir. But we can get information on what the current law allows, because I just want to reiterate something that several people have said, and it's been said out in the media. We're not just looking at... ways to beef up penalties for people after the cruelty has happened. We want to find out what we can do to intervene before a situation becomes worse or irrevocable. So if you'll just give us a briefing on that.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. We put on the screen some basic parts of our town ordinance, which is chapter 90 in our code. I want to preface by saying we're aware we've been asked by some members of the public and some council members to arrange a meeting. As my colleague stated, there is a meeting on Wednesday with the police department. and with this committee's approval uh for us to move forward with preparing amendments we will do so um for next month along with the input that we receive um of course from our police yes sir um what i will say is that there are a number of resources out there and model acts My initial review is that it is clearly insufficient to simply poll other municipalities and what is out there. There are model acts through organizations with what purports to be more scientific, more more precise definitions. And Mayor, that would directly address, I think, what we're talking about as far as prevention. And when you look at those models, talking about conditions, containment, all of those various elements, I think that are of concern. I will also say that many of these model acts go, there are, some of them are significant in their scope. and breadth, and I think it's going to be a decision first on the legal end and then what we present to you as to what we can enforce and what we can't. The state does have laws there. The last time that the state amended our state law was in 2008, so that was 18 years ago. I think there have been some significant improvements in legislation throughout the country. So if you look at our ordinance you will see the basic and fundamental care and mistreatment portion and it is fairly broad mistreat an animal in any way unlawful to inflict unnecessarily or needless cruelty there are definitions in our code and basic health and care requirements neglect And what we'd be looking for in Sections A and B are more clear definitions of what cruelty, what neglect are, what neglect is, so that they can be better enforced and managed. So these are fairly broad and entirely enforceable. We do have tethering the model rules and legislation that I've seen has some expanded definitions and more specific requirements of tethering as far as hours as far as type and I believe there can be some improvement specifically in that section and then extreme weather Again, there are better definitions, more precise definitions as to weather, confinement areas. I mentioned that already. And motor vehicles, as we're all aware, that issue has been out front over the last few years and there are some definitions that we can attach. there again adequate sheltering and we will in my opinion i think this would be completely rewritten in accordance with some of the model rules that we have reviewed to this point again i think ours is entirely sufficient it can be better so you'll see structure requirements some of the definitions that i've mentioned shelter extreme weather and unattended there are as i said more precise definitions that we can implement that would be helpful uh mayor members of the committee i do want to talk about penalty as you alluded to It is a recurring theme in everything that we've dealt with over the years. We understand about penalties, but it is very important to understand that the state restricts our maximum penalties, 30 days, $500. That is it. There is no increase permitted over that. So I know that there has been a good bit of discussion over enhanced penalties, but that is a virtual non-starter. at the municipal level. If we go to the state law, it is general, not specific. So we can improve upon, again, what state law requires except in the area of penalty. And if you look at the ill treatment, essentially neglect misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment, not exceeding 90 days or up to $1,000 fine. And then if you look at section B, which is the torture and more serious offense, that is a felony imprisonment of not less than 180 days, up to five years and up to a $5,000 penalty. So we will have discussions with our police department, as you all are aware, how someone is charged under the state law that can certainly enhance the penalties by utilizing state law as it is. And again, it's fairly broadly written. I think there's a lot that can fall under that state law provision. So that is a question that we'll be going over with our police chief, our police department. So that is the Very high overview again.

There is a significant amount of Information model rules that we will be looking to tailor to our needs and bring back to you Questions I look forward to meeting with the representatives that I've seen at County Council as well as the town council and I'm impressed about the level of research they've done as well as you have and coming up in some fairly straightforward solutions like having a permit for breeders, just simple things like that that seem to be a good practice.

Yes, sir. And you mentioned that. That is, again, that is an area that we don't really address in our ordinances that, again, many of the model ordinances do, and that's something that we could adopt.

Yes, I'm looking forward to Wednesday and working with the community about, you know, getting tightening up these definitions. But I guess my question and it was brought to light at the last town council meeting about enforcing and how they're single like if you get an animal cruelty call and you go the officer goes to the home and then documenting that and then each incident is look viewed as like singular incidences instead of like sounding like a looking at it as a whole um am i explaining this right no ma'am i understand what you're saying um i i am not law enforcement i can't specifically answer that question however that is one of the topics that will be addressed yeah taking pictures of the dog seeing where they're kept and all of that so it's documented so next time you show up you can see the condition of the dog and their place where they live um but i'm excited about this i very active in the foster world. I have two rescue dogs myself, so good stuff.

We're a rescue dog household ourselves and supporters of Palmetto Paws, where we've gotten both of ours, financially and otherwise. And I guess my question would be, and for everybody's knowledge, when you mentioned that these resources or these models, where specifically are we looking? Where will we get? Because this is a lot of things like, you know, looking back at this other one, it talked about confinement. It looks like you would have to be a you would have to have a lot of technical knowledge about what size dogs are, what size crate they can be in, what's reasonable, what's not. Same as the temperature. In any room, be it a garage or any room they're being stored in, there's a lot of latitude in that broad wording. So how do we get to something that is enforceable and will stand up in court?

Right, sir. Some of the best information, and again, I say the best, I don't have the technical knowledge, and the standards, but the Animal Defense Legal Defense Fund has provided a set of very specific model ordinances. Again, part of our review is determining whether there is whether these are best practices and whether the science is behind them again as i said earlier it's not sufficient simply to review ordinances from municipalities around the state or even the country we would like ours to be based on findings by professionals that understand the needs again we have no idea And we are looking from expertise outside and in our own community for these.

Do we have animal groups coming to the meeting Wednesday or who's who's going to be represented at the meeting?

I believe some of these folks are here.

Who are you officially with?

Yeah, thank you.

I am an attorney. That's why you refer to me as a colleague. But I'm usually here meeting with David, talking about construction stuff. I represent a lot of architects, engineers, contractors, even Widesize, my main client, for example. So that's how David and I know each other. But I'm sort of humble on the dog advocacy side at night and sometimes during the day. And so I've been fortunate enough to be with a group of people who are slowly putting together an organized effort to change things at both the state level and the local level. Problem is the state level, as David referred to, is just so slow. I mean, so last this year, earlier this year, I was involved in something called the Humane Dog Breeding Act. And it's sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats, but it was an interesting experience from the standpoint of just how slow that process is. It's probably going to take, my guess is, three to five years to get something through that both Democrats and Republicans support. Instead, I hope is we can start making cracks at this level. And David's right. Unfortunately, on the penalty side of things, that's really going to have to be improved by the state. So there's going to be another act that's going up next term to address that. But my gut tells me it's still going to be the same three, four, five-year process. So I think your hands are going to be tied with that end of it. But we're here to try to help work with trying to prevent having to get to where those penalties aren't enough until your hands are untied. And so that's really one of the goals. And education. I do agree that some of the A lot of the counties and municipalities have run a little short as far as what they have put out there in ordinances. You guys have great bones. Those bones just need to be filled in. And one thing, even though I do agree, David, some of the national standards should be looked at, analyzed, and then inserted. by running sort of a spreadsheet analysis to different counties and cities that have ordinances, we'll be able to put together at least the strengths and weaknesses across the board and can hopefully help you guys incorporate some of the strengths. Like, for example, Greenville County did one research great. Incorporate some of their strengths, enhance them, and then you're going to have the best ordinances. You know, to then take the others and encourage them while the state gets their things together. Right. That's just, I agree. I agree.

And it's going to be local law enforcement making the calls and our, our goal. And I think I speak for the whole committee is, is not to just have very strict penalties. Once I'll call it a tragedy has happened, but to give our law enforcement the tools they need to intervene and prevent the When they see a situation like you were referring to, Mr. Crosby, that is going downhill where there's systematic neglect or cruelty to the animals. And I understand our law enforcement, they have to abide by the law. And we want to make sure that law gives them the discretion to do something before it's too late.

Yeah, that's right. And as you grow, infrastructure issues happen, right? I mean, I don't know what the right number is, but I know you guys have two ACOs permitted. I think one job is being replaced at the moment. You know, is that enough? And that's something that I think, you know, Rich, you can help us assess, right? I mean, you might just need... more people to look at it. You need more eyes potentially, right? I don't know how two people can potentially, I think part of the whole Husky incident may just be, maybe you just need some more help in that, you know, that area. They're probably overwhelmed, right? So.

All right. Thank you. Okay. Appreciate it.

all right so for next month we will this will be back on the agenda and we will what what what do you expect we will have for next month i expect next month that we'll have a draft uh replacement for chapter i don't say replacement it'll be significantly tightened up with many of the national standards i believe that'll provide at least definitional improvement And we can start reviewing that at this same meeting next month. And then eventually when this committee is ready, you can go to council.

Okay. Does that sound good to everybody? Yes, sir. All right. And thank you all for coming out and speaking today. All right. So that concludes item 6B. If there's no further discussion, item 7 is we stand adjourned. Do your own. Oh, wow. We are done until 1230. No, not at all.

I'm glad you did. I didn't know he was going to be there.

We had the best talk and then we went out with the pizza afterwards. All right. Staff ready.

All right. Let's call to order the special town council meeting for this Monday, August 3rd. Before we get going with public comment, I would like to wish a happy birthday to Mayor Potem Howard Chapman. Happy birthday.

Thank you very much.

Welcome to the north side of 50 Well happy birthday I think we have a few other little birthday things in store for today, but just wanted to let everybody know Item to public comment if you're here to make public comment Please come forward give name and address in two and a half minutes, please anyone for public comment All right seeing none Item number three is presentation by friends of Faison and discussion regarding the town-owned property on Faison Road. So how are we going to proceed with that? All right. All right. If y'all would please come and introduce yourselves and tell us what's on your mind. Thank you.

All right. So you guys can hear me okay, right? So my name is Tom Biddy. I'm a resident of Riverside and Carolina Park. I've been a resident for about 11 years. And my partner in crime, Mike.

Mike Elder. We're neighbors. Riverside, Carolina Park. Been in Charleston for 25 years, but in Mount Pleasant for the last two years. Okay.

So, hey, a couple of things. One, thank you very much for giving us this opportunity. I do want to thank certainly John, Alex, Mike, I just want to make sure, Matt, Daniel for support. We've been working on this for about probably about eight or nine months. And the reason why we got engaged in this whole concept of friends that face on was really about the concerns that we have in Riverside Carolina Park. And that whole area is there's been a lot of commercial development over the last couple of years. And we were concerned that, wow, what an opportunity. We have 38 acres that the town of Mount Pleasant owns. And let's just make sure that we are more proactive And can we reach out to the community, to residents, and start getting some feedback as to what they want in their neighborhood? So that's really kind of the incubator. And certainly, Mike, you were instrumental. And quite frankly, I think, Mike, you were involved in, I think, the concept of Friends at Faison. And so Mike and I have sort of taken on this effort and just kind of excited that, you know, maybe we can have an impact in our community and do something that I think is good for the residents of Upper Mount Pleasant and, quite frankly, the residents of Mount Pleasant. So just a couple of top line things. In July, we actually did a presentation, maybe not quite as formal as this, but we did it with the Riverside HOA. And there's about 550 homeowners in Riverside. And we presented that to the board and we got unanimous support to continue to do the work. And so they have become very much advocates of what we're trying to do so that was pretty exciting that happened in july um so friends at basin formed by upper mount pleasant residents who recognize the unique opportunity this property presents as one of the last significant undeveloped parcels in our area the future use of this land will have a lasting impact in our community our quality of life and future generations The town has indicated the property may eventually be sold or leased for development. Friends of Faison believes the residents should play an active role in helping shape that vision. The group seeks to gather community input, explore possibilities, and to advocate for development that reflects the values and priorities of the people who live here. So it's a vision worth exploring. Residents have already shared a variety of ideas and Mike is going to actually provide some really interesting data that we've been able to collect over the last couple of months. But some of the concepts of what we could do with this 38 acres. It could be an outdoor amphitheater and community event venue, a sports complex like a YMCA style recreation facility, public parks, trails, green space. restaurants, and gathering places for families and neighbors, thoughtfully designed entertainment, hospitality venues. At the same time, residents have expressed concerns about uses that may not align with the character of Upper Mount Pleasant, Including, and I alluded to it earlier, distribution and warehouse facilities. I mean, just devastating. Auto dealerships. Generic commercial development that does not enhance community character. So we definitely know that, you know, there's some great opportunities here. So why does this matter? Upper Mount Pleasant continues to be one of the fastest growing and most desirable areas in South Carolina. With growth comes a responsibility to thoughtfully plan for recreation, entertainment, community gathering places, and amenities that improve the lives of residents. Friends at FaceOn is not opposed to development. Rather, the initiative seeks to encourage development that enhances property values, supports families, creates memorable community spaces, and reflects the vision of those who call this area home. So no idea is a bad idea. Friends at Faison is committed to listening to residents, evaluating opportunities, and fostering constructive dialogue about the future of the property. The Carolina Riverside HOA Board encourages residents to learn more, share their ideas, and become involved in the conversation. Together we can help that this once-in-a-generation opportunity results in a destination that benefits the entire community. And just a little bit of chronological background, 2021, Town purchases the property, 38 acres and face on road for roughly $6.5 million for long-term strategic purposes, including economic development. 2022, Town begins public discussions on future uses and issues and initial solicitation on RFP process to explore development concepts. 2022 to 2023 initial concept and public private development efforts and there was a decision not to move forward with the final project 23 town advances zoning and planning work to establish a framework for future development including economic development uses housing and open space considerations 2024 town hires collier to market the property for sale and redevelopment opportunities The latter part of 24, the property goes under contract with a private developer following the marketing process, and the property ultimately does not close. Currently, the property is still owned by the town of Mount Pleasant, but not actively marketing with Colliers. So just a little bit of the current status. Mike and I have been kind of instrumental in trying to move this forward, along with a lot of great advocacy with Mike and Matt and a lot of you folks in front of me. Recently, July 7th, our friends have based on communication meeting at Town Hall with Daniel, with John, with Mike, with Matt, also have had meetings with Grove Property Funds. Ed Navarro, Jason Hightower, Hightower Construction. So we've been trying to also solicit people that could at some point help sort of guide this into a potential successful opportunity. With a second tour of face-on property, that was an interesting one. Wow, guys, there's a lot of mosquitoes in those woods. I have never seen anything like it in my life. But there were some diehards here that all participated, and we survived. We have an active website, friendsatfaceon.com. We've got... brochures, which we'll hand out a little bit later. And so we've got a lot of good, we've got just a lot of positive press about what we're trying to do. And I think with that, I'll pass it over to Mike, and Mike is going to provide you with just a lot of the data and the surveys that we've got from residents to date.

Thank you for your time today and hearing this. So we did two survey campaigns and it's going to be a lot of data, but, you know, and I'll share this with you afterwards, but we dropped 240 Friends of Faison brochures in the Riverside, Bolden Lake area households in June, we received 17 responses to that survey through the website. And then Riverside HOA newsletter, as Tom mentioned, put out an email to 544 residents endorsing this in July, and we received 14 responses. We have a total of 31 responses of the surveys. Then we drop these surveys into chat GPT to analyze the data, and this is what I'll present. The responses consistently emphasize community-oriented development, entertainment, recreation, green space, while strongly opposing additional commercial or industrial use. The overall responses to the 31 surveys was number one was the biggest, 65%. Community-oriented development, quality of life. The second was 45%, green space, parks, walking trails. The third at 42% was restaurants, outdoor dining. The fourth was amphitheater at 39%. performing arts concert venue. The fifth was 32% entertainment destination events, markets, festivals, gathering spaces. The sixth was 26% YMCA recreational sports complexes. The seventh was 16% at retail, small local retail boutique shops. And the eighth was 10% grocery stores, Whole Foods, Harris Teeters, and local markets. What people don't want The first was 32% no car dealerships. They don't want warehouses or storage or trucking units at 29%. At 16%, no large commercial development. At 10%, no apartments or affordable housing. And 3%, no banks. The funding, we had a question on would you want public or private funding for this? And overall, they were open to public and private. a mix of public and private. The overwhelming consensus is that the residents support public-private partnerships, provided that the project remains community focused. The top request of amenities was number one, and these are a little bit more detailed, is 65%. Residents repeatedly requested gathering places, destination for residents, family-oriented development, improves quality of life, community hub, and civic events. This was far the dominant message throughout the surveys. Number two was green space at 45%. Public parks, walking trails, preserved green spaces, ponds, passive recreation, natural buffers. Residents consistently preferred keeping significant portions of the property open rather than maximizing development. Number three was 42% was the restaurants, high-end restaurants, local restaurants, farm-to-table dining, brewing, outdoor dining, coffee shops. And many respondents specifically requested locally owned businesses rather than national chains. Number four at 39 was amphitheater. Many respondents referenced successful examples such as the Frays Pavilion in Ohio and the Firefly Distillery. Suggested uses would be concerts, movies, performing arts, children events, theater, festivals, Civic events, this is one of the strongest reoccurring individual project ideas through this survey is what we gathered. Number five was the recreation at 26%, and that was the YMCA. Indoor recreation sports complex, athletic fields, swimming, youth sports camps, and recreation centers. So the overall vision, the key takeaways is this survey responses reveals several clear priorities. First, residents overwhelmingly favor community-oriented development that enhances quality of life rather than maximizing commercial activity. A common gathering place with green space, dining, entertainment, recreation is the most consistent vision. An amphitheater or performance venue is one of the most frequent mentioned specific amenities. There is a strong support for restaurants, parks, trails, and recreation facilities, particularly the YMCA Sports Complex. Respondents consistently oppose car dealerships, warehouse, storage facilities, and large-scale commercial development. And the most respondents are comfortable with the public-private funding. provided that the town maintains a strong community focus and develops development restrictions. These findings provide a strong foundation for presenting Friends of Faison as a proposal centered on quality of life, recreation, community gathering, and throughout a thoughtful planned mixed-use development rather than a conventional commercial expansion. A phrase that summarizes the sentiment well would be a high quality community gathering place for Upper Mount Pleasant, not another commercial corridor. And I just want to read two of the surveys that I think really spoke to this. One of them is my neighbor here, Kevin Kress. He said, being raised in Dayton, Ohio, One of the highly anticipated dates was the release of the Frays Pavilion music lineup for the spring and summer and fall shows. Being able to drive just a few miles to see their favorite musician and other shows was a great pleasure. These shows, along with civic meetings, car shows, arts and crafts, other children events, made this meeting place for all to join in the area. What a great way to use this land to benefit all of Mount Pleasant children, families, and seniors. And the next and the last survey I want to read is from Chad Martins, another neighbor. He says, I love this idea and this project, and thank you to the group that put this together. I think a community YMCA within bike or golf cart distance would be brilliant for this area. Park West Crunch Fitness is the closest gym to our community, but they don't offer the same amenities as a local YMCA would. Offerings all in one place of fitness, sports, early learning, summer camps, before and after school care, and many more youth programs is lacking in our community. With 38 acres, there would be enough space to surround the YMCA with green space and public park or outdoor amphitheater the ymca could even offer these programs for the amphitheater this is a no-brainer to be a mix of a private and public funding offerings so that is the surveys a lot of data i can share that all with you guys but you can get an idea what people really want thank you yeah thank you i love that here's some feedback

have a question yes thank you thank you did you guys see i met you all out there i was not prepared shorts t-shirt and tennis shoes i don't i was i was not prepared at all but um did you guys see the old plan that was that was created because because i just heard community oriented so they so they stated restaurants offices like the old planet office space

attainable housing didn't really in terms of the survey no there was nothing about office spaces no they did say restaurants but i think that property that's next to the wando high school that's dirt right now is going to offer a lot of those amenities so um i'm not sure how much of a need is going to be needed for for restaurants okay and i think howard you spoke to the ymca didn't you maybe you could update us i thought you had talked to the ymca now okay that was scary

Thank you.

Was somebody asking to be recognized?

Sure. No, I think it was Adam Farrar had active swimming children and had a relationship with the YMCA and expressed an interest in that. I think that's what it was. You know, when we, thank you for coming. And when we first met, it seemed to me, when in doubt, ask the customer. And so the idea was to do exactly what you're doing, to ask the customer in that area what were the types of things you wanted. And as we were clear then, there wasn't any clear direction from the town. one way or another. Everything from hold the land, sell the land, or develop it or not. So just getting some direction from you all is helpful to see what the tempo of the people are in the area. And I think other than the fact that John got carried away by the mosquitoes that day and we left the property very quickly, I think one of the things that came away is seeing if you could have green space as well with bike paths. But

and saving as many of the trees and the natural, yeah.

Thank you.

Yes, Dan.

Yeah, this is one of the fellow participants of the walkthrough. I still have the bug bites to prove it, unfortunately. I've never had as many mosquito bites as I had from that, but the things that we do for love and for our town. I love the idea of a YMCA there. You know, I think for years I've talked about having a second senior center up in that area. We've heard from families, especially with kids and swimming programs, asking for better aquatics facilities. I thought you... Brought up some great points about the difficulties here with child care and after school programming. And those are all things that the YMCA is proven to offer to many communities. And I'm not sure... you know, logistically how we attract a YMCA to Mount Pleasant. But I think that's for me, that's the kind of the clubhouse leader of all the the things that you mentioned. I could see that fitting in really nicely in Upper Mount Pleasant and I'm certainly open to some of the other suggestions with the amphitheaters and the trails and things like that. I think you've got some really good data and And I really appreciate all that you guys are doing to kind of move this ball forward. You know, from my perspective, I jumped in on Town Council when Faison Road was sort of already midstream. Everybody had already... provided their input and the town kind of put it together into one plan. And I think that that was maybe the weakness of it was it was too much. Everybody kind of had their thing that they wanted in there and it kind of fell apart. And so I think simplicity might be a better route to move forward. To maybe focus on one or two things and do those things really well versus nine different things coming together into one plan. I guess some of us who have gone on that tour and have met about this, I think we really need town council to kind of set a direction. I think we're kind of just in a holding pattern right now. And so I think that was part of our hope for having this meeting is that we could kind of take a temperature check and see what we need to do to move this forward again. So again, really appreciate you guys being here. And those are just my two cents on the issue. Thank you.

And something that John brought up when we did the walk in Jurassic Park, sponsorship opportunities. I think this would be a great way to have a lot of this funded by our local businesses that are predominant in the area. So I think it could be a good way to crack into that.

I have a couple of points I'd like to make. First of all, I want to clear the air about Carolina Park and the development out there. When I got elected to council in 2016, before anybody else up here was there, you know what everybody in this town was worried about? Carolina Park. because Carolina Park because of its 20, 25-year-old development agreement was exempt from every growth restriction and growth management thing we have passed at this town since I have been an elected official. And in the last election, we got blamed for what's happening out there. OK. And I mean, I heard it. I got I got hit in the face with it. Exempt from our tree ordinance. That's why you have the clear cutting there at the corner. Exempt from our design review board. The first car dealership that went in there. We didn't get to vote on that because it was already pre-approved. impact fees, they paid one impact fee 20 years ago. And none of those businesses are paying impact fees right now. So I just wanted to clear the air that a lot of what we are dealing with is decisions that were made 25 years ago that are totally unlike anything anybody up here has made. So I feel your pain. I just don't want any more of your blame. And so, so, so then we built the Carolina Park Recreation Complex. And we have how much in that? $10 million? More than $10 million. The newest, biggest, and best recreation complex in the town of Mount Pleasant. There is nothing like it on the south side of town. So I hope that none of, and I'm not saying y'all are implying this. I'm talking to people who aren't in the room. Y'all are trying to be part of the solution, and I really appreciate that. I hope people that say that this council and this mayor only cares about one side of town over the other add up the money that is being spent on that side of town. And so then we invested $6.5 million into 38 acres. That's $171,000 per acre. This came through the Economic Development Committee of Council. And so I just want to remind everybody, all 700 acres of Boone Hall was conserved for $11,000 an acre. So to think that $171,000 an acre spending for green space, that's not what anybody was thinking. I'm glad to hear us making that change. But what I haven't heard in any of this is everything, as long as we own that property, it is off the tax rolls. So there's no economic development at all. The taxpayers are subsidizing it. So what we did on the first two iterations was to try to get a business to come in either buy or lease and do something there. So it sounds like from the survey that everybody is okay with this being government-owned property that's off the payrolls, that is basically nonprofit activities out there. Is that what I'm hearing?

Not necessarily, no. It could be a mix. Lease the property for a dollar and then private businesses come in and develop it. You know, then you have the revenue from the amphitheater, whatever goes up there.

But they're OK with just staying publicly owned public property government doing all this on government property. Everybody in Carolina Park, the 31 people that answered, they're OK with that because I don't want to be accused of socialism. And that's where the government owns assets and decides how they're used. So I'm a little confused here.

No, people are open to having both of that as a blend. They want to have a blend because they want accountability that the town will make sure it doesn't turn into another warehouse. So I think it's a mess. I'm totally with you on that.

If I could have voted no on those, I would have voted no on every one of those warehouses. I'm totally with you on that.

And I'm glad to hear that.

So I'm just trying to figure out to, I mean, I guess if the YMCA wants to put something there, but I mean, you've got the biggest, most expensive sports complex in the town of Mount Pleasant right there. So I'm trying not to also duplicate, you know, because that's not the best thing, use of the public's money either. For the amphitheater, who would the respondents like to see run and operate that?

Maybe lease it out to somebody? We have not reached out that far. It's just right now, I mean, we could start contacting if this moves forward, start contacting pavilions and see their models. Some of them don't charge the residents to come and sponsorships are the ones that fund it. I personally think it should be a mix of a little bit of that, but then get Hootie and the Blowfish to come and pack the house with 5,000 seat amphitheater.

yeah but but just you know okay this is this is grassroots right we're okay right i mean i you know i'm a former executive you know with craft foods and with george pacific we're doing this because we don't see enough community efforts going on up in Upper Mount Pleasant. And we know that there's this parcel of land that is still owned by the town of Mount Pleasant. And we're just trying to understand, can we do something for the residents of Upper Mount Pleasant? And I think it could have a greater impact in all of Mount Pleasant. But again, whether it's public, private, I mean, my God, there's towns half the size of this that have incredible 5,000 seat type amphitheaters for the community. We don't have those types of amenities in this town. In our town, it's $100,000. And it's a very wealthy town.

We're building a $50 million sports complex on Rifle Range Road, approved by the voters.

Okay. Sorry, I'm talking about an amphitheater. Is there going to be an amphitheater?

To my chagrin, there's not. It's all sports. So imagine. It's all sports.

We have that facility on Rifle Range, and we could have a facility like an amphitheater for a town that's commensurate to something like that, and we could have that on Face on Road.

Tell us where there's one we could look at as a model.

Oh, my God. Okay. No, we could. Yeah, we have provided some of that, but it's.

Is it in your info? That would be great. Yes. It's on the website. Where there are some functioning ones that are publicly.

Oh, absolutely. There's one in Woodstock, an hour north of Atlanta. That was the one I mentioned that they do a lot of community things where they don't charge the people. But the Fades On, the Fades Amphitheater.

Yep. Here's a few. There's the Brace Debling. And there's a lot of people in Mount Pleasant from Ohio, they're quite familiar with the phrase pavilion date. So that's one for sure to take a look at. The other one is Ravinia.

Where? Ravinia, north of Chicago in Highland Park.

Great, great venue for families. It's got everything from formal seating to informal to blankets to tiered level access to great arts facilities. Highland Bolt in Rochester, New York. Cherokee Amphitheater, which is what Mike alluded to. Woodstock, Georgia. Okay. Hmm. pace for a lot of those things so it's it's i think there's just a sort of a litany of different approaches that we could take to this but but to your point mayor um maybe maybe a ymca maybe that isn't kind of that maybe the near term maybe it's more of something in the arts maybe it is something more like an amphitheater with trails and being able to have that

And mosquitoes, apparently. Right.

I'm hoping that we can deal with mosquitoes. We'll take care of those. But again, this is just such grassroots. We are trying to get some different ideas from our council.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

My advice would be for this to fall under where it began, which would be economic development committee. Are you comfortable with that? Yes. Okay. Yes. Yes, sir.

Well, I already spoke, so you go ahead. Okay. Well, it sounds like the ask was just kind of a temperature check of council. It seems like. So I'll just give my opinion. I'm a fan of two things here. One, I'm a fan of keeping as much of it natural as we can. And then two, ever since I've been on council now seven years and I have four children, there's no bowling alley in Mount Pleasant. There's no roller rink. There's very little family amenities or things for families to do. And it's always been a dream of mine that we could somehow partner. But I understand that real estate is too expensive here for most of those things. and so a dream of mine would be to have some of those family amenities on a portion of this uh track i think it'll be a good spot for it and then to keep a portion of it natural so if that's the temperature that's where my temperature is i think family is is definitely the focus on this you know like you said i have children also and

There's no place to go. There's not a lot to do.

Except ride your e-bikes all over town. Exactly.

The kids need to go somewhere. What's that?

There's a local resident who every time he sees me says he would love to put an ice skating rink there. He would himself. He would do it. So I'll give him your number. Let's see. I'm assuming that falls into the family. Absolutely.

Mr. Mayor. Yes. So Matt, do you have a second? Would you mind? We don't have the original scope. The original scope was what, seven and a half acres of development? Or was it 11? Did we get to 11? Close to 11. Had everything they're talking about right now.

It was probably more office heavy.

But there were some sort of like mixed use components. The final plan that you guys saw that it went like was more mixed use.

It didn't have enough attainable housing. I mean, what is it slated for now?

We can have up to 33 attainable units on there.

Right. I don't think it was enough to build. I mean, I think you've got to get to like 50 to make it. It's probably not going to entice too many. Right. And I think the other issue is I think staff did a great job, but the public-private mixture became kind of an issue. It's almost something like you just have to allow it to be private and just restrict what you want. done with it and demand a certain amount of community space with that kind of development and that would be i mean i guess on economic development we could discuss it again which would be great but uh you know attainable housing wasn't enough to entice so there would have to be some things that would have to be changed to make that happen and i mean just like the mayor mentions i mean we do need to bring taxes in and who's going to bankroll it, right? So that becomes a question. So if we start that talk again, will you guys be staying in front when the tomatoes are thrown or behind us when the tomatoes are thrown? So I'd love to talk about economic development again, but obviously with heavy... from staff, especially Christiane and Eric and Matt, you guys were very involved in that. And what went right and what went wrong. So, thank you. Thank you, Matt.

Any other?

Yes.

I will just ask. We were talking about the YMCA. I remember at some time we were handed a notebook that had some proposal from YMCA. So I don't know if that's something we could revisit. But that was brought to us before we started our own plan. But one of the big things was amenities for the community. and leaving most of it green. So when it came to our last vote, that's that's what we were trying to focus on with also that economic development component. So I think we've been approached by

microbreweries and that kind of thing but then that you know they look and then don't follow through but something like that would be ideal i know Asheville has something like that right next to the property is the big warehouse distribution area and you know they're going to start parsing those out individually and so i see breweries being more appropriate and maybe that setting over there so

Well, thank you again. I think a good way to start is what's the tempo of the council? And then a second after the tempo of the council, because no sense if you don't have some interest in looking at the alternatives again that we shouldn't move forward. But if the council wants to do that, then I think that's great. I think the start that they had by doing the survey of 550 and giving a feedback for it With 25,000 people there, once we know something without getting expectations too high, is at some point using a survey similar to that and getting a sense of what people would do and how they would support it. But I thought that was helpful, especially in it. And even though we've been on the property on good days and bad days, when we went on the property in the spring, it was absolutely beautiful and calm. People loved it and almost immediately said, save some space. So I think if we can do more of an economic development committee can do at the point, you know what you want to survey, survey them using something like this and get a sense of it, because then you're building something for perhaps what people will support and pay for.

You know, just sort of a last comment. Mayor, that's a very good point you made in terms of government versus private. And yeah, we can't just, you know, the town of Mount Pleasant just can't subsidize all these wonderful amenities. I mean, there has to be something that pays the bills. And I think if we... do our homework and we have the right level of engagement with the council and with the town of Mount Pleasant, I think I think there is an opportunity there that could really be impactful. And I do think that there is there is there is a demand from these residents. I mean, they have I mean, these are these are wealthy residents. They want they want family values. They want things for their kids. They want to be entertained, but not have to go all the way to Charleston to be entertained. They would love to see some of those amenities. And I think if you found the right, you know, corporate talking to some of these amphitheater, you know, facilities that are throughout the country and talking to them more, you know, there was another one. I it's taken a few years now it's it's like one of the biggest draws in las vegas right now but what they've done now is they've created mini spheres and there's one actually in maryland just outside of washington that's about a five or six thousand seat type amenity so there's a lot of different kind of models that could i think be a real interesting opportunity to match with you know with a very very you know healthy um wealthy town that residents are looking to do more things in Mount Pleasant and not having to drive a couple of hours in order to get that experience.

Thank you. All right.

Thank you. Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Appreciate it.

All right. That's item three. Item four, executive session for legal advice regarding the acquisition of real property for public use. Is there a motion to go into executive session for that reason?

All right.

Council may take action. Is there a second? Second. Council may take action on any item, including any subsection of any section listed on an executive session agenda or discuss an executive session during a properly noticed meeting. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. We'll go upstairs.

Thank you.

Now we got everybody. We have reconvened from executive session in our special town council meeting that began at 1230. No action was taken. No votes were cast. Is there a motion or anything to result from our executive session? Seeing none, item six for our special council meeting is to adjourn. And coming up next is the planning committee. So this special council meeting is adjourned.

We'll call to order our planning committee meeting for Monday, August 3rd. Next item is approval of minutes from the July 6th meeting. So moved. Second. All right. All in favor? Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Item three is public comment. If we have anybody to address the committee. We just need a name and address and you have two and a half minutes.

Good morning. Thank you. Barrett Brewer, 477 Settlers Rest East, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Thank you for your time. I am a board member at Trident Academy. We have been before you several times over the last town council and planning committee, planning commission in the last month or so. It is our understanding approximately a month or so ago that town council is considering an action that would harm the property of Trident Academy and other institutional entities like churches, the Chabad, and schools like the Charleston County School District. by making them taking their property they've either been given purchased or acquired or donated and devaluing that by taking away at zoning rights now that was sent back to the planning i think committee from town council and i believe is on the committee today under a different name which is continued discussion pertaining to a text amendment uh for density to be congruent with the comprehensive future land use plan. And we certainly would like the commission to know that that will still negatively affect Trident. We had a meeting with other stakeholders last week several churches diocese charleston county school district uh habad representatives and the general consensus of that meeting is that this action would be bad for the public institutions in this town that it would restrict their uses it would devalue the assets of these uh entities and it would really affect their missions right and that's the bottom line you want your public institutions here in mount pleasant to be able to perform the mission of its citizens And if the town does not engage these institutions and work with us and passes something that devalues our assets, that will affect the good work of these entities. And I think council will hear about it later. But we really appreciate your time and and the willingness to work with us on this.

Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Oh.

Good afternoon. My name is Erin Stampy, 1230 Illusion Lane. I live at Gregory Ferry Towns, and I've seen you at many of these meetings before as we work towards the discussion regarding the AMI amendment. I'm here today as a resident and on behalf of the applicant who is working to answer any questions that you may have as we work towards a compromise on the AMI that is before you that passed the first reading. And also to provide you with an update that we do have three homes that are for sale in our neighborhood out of 36 units, where the asking price is $60,000 to $70,000 below the cap of the max resale amount. And to let you know that those three houses have not had qualified applicants and have been sitting on the market as well. And we look forward to speaking further. Thank you again for your considerations.

Anyone else?

Hi, my name is Jeff Tibbles. I'll give you my office address, which is 1100 Queensborough Suite 202 in Mount Pleasant. And so my law firm, Bybee and Tibbles, represents the Catholic Diocese of Charleston and just here to listen today. I'm not totally up to speed with all of the history and everything that has happened to date, but I do think I can speak for the diocese when I say we'd like to be involved in this process and make sure that we understand what's happening to our property and make sure that we're protecting our property. So thank you very much. We appreciate your service.

Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Next item, continued discussion pertaining to a text amendment to return density to the comprehensive plan future land use map. The council suggested that we bring this back to committee for discussion. Yes, ma'am. It still hasn't gone to committee again, right? That'll happen. That's correct.

So what, as you mentioned, Madam Chair, This is sort of the alternative to rezoning the properties, as was discussed. It did come as a recommendation from committee. And what I wanted to do is just kind of provide a little bit of clarification on what that looks like. And this will, from here, this has already been advertised, correct, Peter? So it will go to the Planning Commission for a public hearing at the August Planning Commission meeting, and it'll come back to you in September with a recommendation from the commission. So prior to the adoption of our new code and this amendment occurring in 2014, so from 2014 until 2025 when we adopted our new code, when you went to our zoning code, this is what it looked like. When you looked up density, instead of density being established based on your zoning, it was established based on your future land use map designation. So if I went to the zoning code and I wanted to know what my density was, it was going to be based on what the future land use map said and so as you can look through here most of your a lot of times your residential zone properties will have a corresponding future land use designation that is either the conventional the traditional or what have you but in a lot of cases the future land use recommended community facilities. And as you can see, that is not listed here. And so what would happen under the old code was you had to amend the comprehensive plan to establish one of these residential neighborhood districts to establish your density, regardless of your zoning. um as i said that was in place from 2014 as you're well aware until 2025 we adopted the new code and here's what our our code looks like today we've put the density back into the zoning code and um and as you can tell it's a new code so the table looks different too So what was proposed and what's being advertised is to go back to the way we had it before. But because our table looks different, it's going to look a little bit different in the change. So I think the text amendment would look something like this. If you're R1, R2, R3, or R4, you're zoned that, we would just add a footnote that if the comp plan future land use recommends you for community facilities, You would have to come back to town. You could either do a plan development or you could do, you would have to do a comp plan amendment like you did under the old code to establish a residential future land use so that you could establish a density. And so that's what it's going to look like. As you mentioned, Madam Chair, this is how it used to be in the old code. We changed it. The proposal now is to go back. and this is this is an alternative to rezoning all the properties so all the properties would stay zoned what they are as of now but this would be kind of a check and balance that if your future land use is recommended for community facilities town council and we did put in there to establish a density beyond one residential unit Most cases, you would be allowed to build one residence. So what this really gets at is if you want to develop your property beyond or, you know, do a subdivision of some sort, this would require that future land use map amendment. So this is what it would look like. It would work in the same manner as the old zoning code. And again, this has been advertised and it will go to the planning commission. So I'm happy to answer any questions or discuss it further.

So from 2014 to 2025, if the applicant wanted to change the use, they would come back to the permitting or planning process and to town council. for approval of any changes. Is that correct?

You said prior to the new code?

Yeah, in 2024 to 2025.

No, from 2014 to 2025. So from 2014 to 2025, if somebody with an R1 property wanted to develop it as R1 residential, but they were recommended for community facilities, they would have to come to town council for a comp plan amendment.

And what did they do prior to 2014?

The density was in the zoning. So it was more like the way it is now. And for some reason in 2014, that was a year before I came on, there was a lot of text amendments. And this was one of them. One of them was to move the density into the comp plan.

And what was, you just had come on, but do you have any idea in 2014? why it changed to that new wording, where if it was R1 and you were under community, you would have to come back to town council?

I don't know why that change was made. I suspect that it was considered maybe an interpretation of the zoning administrator at that time. But what it resulted in is requiring that comp plan amendment. But really to get at the intent of why it was done, I'm not sure.

but let's go back before 2014 then. So we've got representatives from the Catholic diocese, we've got representatives from school, different ones. During the period of time before 2014, did we have instances where these longstanding public institutional entities, whether it's schools, churches, recreation, et cetera, became developed and without any input from town council that was adverse to what was perceived as the good of the community. And if so, what were those? And I'm trying to get to the heart of why we had a 2014 to 2020 change from what had been practiced for maybe 100 years?

Yeah. That's a great question. I'm not sure. All I can tell you is that prior, I'm not aware of any prior to 2014, any church properties developing residential. But they could have based on the old code. And it's not just church. It would be, you know, schools and other properties as well. But I just, I'm not sure.

So under the current, then moving to the current one under 2020, 2025 to the present, they would fall back to the zoning and it would simply go to staff for approval. Would it go to design review board too or just staff?

no so if so if you had an r1 pro under our current code so the way it's written now if i have an r1 property i know that i have three units an acre and so then i go through the sketch plan process so it's our internal development review team it's the planning commission i would only go to council if i want to increase my density or i want to do a plan development any time there's a plan development it has to come before council But I would not have to amend the comp plan because my density is established and my zoning is conferred through the zoning ordinance.

So we don't know of any situation in the past where it was developed, a church or educational facility used the R1, R2 for development, contrary to what the comp plan would have been.

I I know that prior between 2014 and 2025 I know that there was an attempt to amend the comp plan to a residential to develop it in accordance with the zoning and that was denied. But prior to 2014 I'm not sure if there was an attempt made or not.

And it's come up that lending has been based on the zoning. And if the zoning is more dense, then they have the ability to have better terms for loans. Is that the case in your estimation?

I'm not comfortable answering that question.

Well, anyhow, that's come up in the discussions. I think the concern from a number of the committee members was to have a longstanding educational institution, a longstanding church, or a longstanding, whether it's Christ Our King or any of the ones that are out there, developed and take away an anchor from a community and have it become a denser development and lose the educational component, lose the church component. When these are fundamentally part of a community, when you do a planned unit development, that's one of the first things you put in as a church education, daycare, whatever. And so I think that was one of the biggest concern is to not take away the rights of anybody by any means, but just simply to have a right of review, much like we did with public institutional up by Park West, where it simply came to us, it was public institutional, and it came to us and they said, we want it to be And we voted to have it be townhome with affordable housing, just simply the right to look at that particular proposal, not the right to necessarily deny outright, but just to have a discussion to make sure that it fit the overall needs of the community. At least that was from my understanding. I'll turn it over to you, Laura.

Did you have any questions? Okay. Now, the way we're proposing is exactly the way we used to do it.

Essentially it is, given that our table looks different. Before, it was a table that listed out all the future land use. But our table doesn't look like that anymore. Our new code table looks like this. So based on what the recommendation was, R1 and R2 and community facilities, we felt like the simplest way to do it was to to add a footnote in this density table for our residential districts and say, if your future land use does recommend community. So it's the same thing we did just in a different way.

Okay. Now, is this... I know the agenda item before was only discussing churches and schools because that was the motion to rezone them.

Right.

And then we had a motion not to rezone them. Right. And to do this instead. Correct. But so this discussion is only about churches and schools. I mean, aren't there other properties or this is going to basically take us back to the way we used to do this with any property that doesn't match?

It's not going to be any property. So if my property is zoned R1, but I'm recommended for community scale commercial, this won't apply. This is only going to apply. It'll apply for all properties. recommended for community facilities. It could be an MPW property, it could be school, it could be private property, a church. But it does get us back to the way it used to be.

I guess I'm just trying to figure out, is this a narrower interpretation than the way we used to do it by calling it community facility? Because I know we've had a funeral home now that came to us to become a neighborhood. So to me, that's not a community facility, right? I mean, that's not a church or school or public facility.

It depends on what it's zoned. So if you're talking about the funeral home on Rifle Range Road, so that's zoned R1, but it's recommended for commercial, community scale commercial. This wouldn't apply.

Okay.

This would only apply if the comp plan recommends community facilities.

Okay. I think what everybody should realize is we don't really want to, the intent wouldn't be really to rezone these properties. It would just be to go back to the way we've been doing it because I think it's the will of council to do that. This is something that changed in the new zoning code, which was pages and pages and pages and impossible for us to know every single detail or realize. And then once things get put into action, we start realizing that we've done some things and we've needed to make some adjustments along the way. So this is really just a discussion about going back to the way we've done things. And it's just... putting it back into the hands of council for review. And as he mentioned, we had one come to us that was public institutional and we voted to change it to townhouse. So, you know, it would just be a matter of anything that was coming along would come before council, you know, for a vote and a review. Because I think it would be, you know, important for council to review it if we're going to be eliminating a property like this, an anchor type community property as Mr. Tinkey describes it. I think it's important to the community for council to at least review, you know, and weigh how it's going to benefit the community to make the change and have a vote. So I think that's why this came about.

This is going back to commission.

This from here would.

I would just say that it's important to goes back to commission to them to look at the unintended consequences. What are the unintended consequences of going back to the to the old and just have a thorough understanding of that and make sure we understand specifically what properties are included what they're not you mentioned that but what those are and that way there can be a clear understanding of it. I don't think there's any intention of the group to take away people's rights. The idea is just in something that's for the public good, just have a review of the what's what's happening. And so I think if you can look at the unintended consequences, and then what would happen to any of the people that have talked today or come before us. And I think that's good to have public input, critical public input. on this as we go through the process and you know at the end of the day we may end up with going back into the reviewing it for the comprehensive plan or we could go back to the uh go back to the old after that uh after we review it like that okay anything else okay okay thanks for that um

We'll move on then to review the Planning Commission recommendations from their July 22nd meeting.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

For the past 37 years, East Cooper Family Pharmacy has sat at the corner of Bowman and Johnny Dodd's frontage. They closed in January of this year, and since that time, the property owner has reached out to the town about possibly changing the direction of how this property has historically been used. looking at retail, grocery retailer, prepared foods, things like that. And that can be accommodated with the AB1 zoning that is currently being requested. Right now, the property is zoned OP2, along with 77% of the other properties in this area. So it's a dense concentration of OP2. And it may bring up a valid question of, what amount of bearing should we put on i mean this uniformity of zoning in this area and how should how should that be factored in i think the comprehensive plan is going to be helpful to look at and also historical context and that's going to take us back we'll rewind a little bit to 1980 when It was the early 80s when the town knew that East Cooper Regional Medical Center was coming. It would be the town's first hospital. And with that, the town also knew that it would need supporting actors and supporting industry medical users to support East Cooper Regional Medical Center and what they're doing as they undertake that 17-acre campus. So the concern is... When we're looking at that, we need to think about what was being achieved at that time. One, it was establishing a placeholder for those uses and rezoning. The council rezoned a lot of these properties to OP2 in the early 80s to create a placeholder, but then also eliminate competition. from other general commercial. You didn't have restaurants and other retail coming in. It was just OP2, Office Professional is known as that de facto medical use zoning. So what's changed since that time? In 2010, East Cooper Medical Center moved over to their campus, 55-acre campus at Mathis Ferry. And there's also a mission accomplished that this area is saturated and aligned with that goal to align with The need for medical use is that this area is pretty saturated with medical users and that has been achieved. The other thing that's changed is the comprehensive plan. It has definitely designated this with more of a community scale commercial zoning because it's seen the trend toward community scale and needing to provide uses that address the daily needs of a citizen rather than industry-specific uses that the comp plan has pointed more toward providing those commercial facing uses. So AB1 would be appropriate for this zoning and especially the way this area is trending. And with that, the Planning Commission did recommend unanimous approval. I'm glad to answer any questions you have on that.

Go ahead. You have a question?

Go ahead. Move to approve for discussion.

Second.

Okay.

All in favor? You for it or for discussion?

No.

Let's have discussion because I have a question. I don't know if you want to call the vote or you had a question. What is the height there? If we did, I think, was it 55 feet or something crazy?

I believe it's 55.

that I always thought on that side of the road was a little high because the what is it called now the retirement community on the left is up the palms correct that's only a three-story building right correct but I think here they would be allowed they could do like a five-story building or something they'd have to park it but the height map that was adopted took it to 55 but to be honest you couldn't park park that right right

And I'll say this too. A lot of this request is, and these are suites. There's three suites in this building. The suite that we're talking about is this 2,000 square foot front suite right here. That's kind of the one unit pushing this because they wanted to put a specialized retailer grocer in there. The other use is a marketing company, and they have no intent of changing the building. They're very happy there. They just would like to have on-site a grocer or retailer for their employees.

Okay.

You don't have to leave the office anymore. You can just walk over to them.

Okay. So, Mr. Tink, you had a question?

Just one question. There's one entrance and exit now. Would that stay the same? Correct. Okay. Call for a vote.

Okay. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. That means none opposed. So motion passes. Okay. I'll agree. All right. Next item.

Thank you, Mount Chair. This is two properties located on Vinning Road, forming an aggregate of one acre. You can see that it's located between Mount Pleasant Water Works Operations Center and the Seaside Farm Estates. And if you spent much time on this road, you know that it's functionally a dead end road for majority of the public, just because this dead ends into the Seaside Farm Estates and it's pretty low trips, not a lot of traffic on this road. It's important to note that our subject properties, number one and number two, those are only two that we're discussing today, but it's important to note that all three of these properties are under common ownership. would likely be a part of the same development plan moving forward and that development plan would be to annex these two properties which they're currently in the county zoned r4 and they would match that r1 zoning that currently exists on that one lot and from what i've and what they shared at planning commission they would then clean up the property lines because right now it's kind of non-conforming flag lots So give all three lots equal street frontage. And that is consistent with the comprehensive plan and would be the de facto zoning had they not requested anything. So with that, the Planning Commission recommended unanimous approval.

Okay. Do you have any motion?

Yeah, move to approve.

Second. Mr. Dickey, is that for the annexation and zoning?

Move to approve annexation and zoning as are one.

Okay.

Any discussion? No? Okay. All in favor? Aye.

Aye.

Okay. Motion passes. Next item is 2310 Ruffin Road.

This was actually requested to be withdrawn by the applicant. So move to the last item. And I think this was sent back. It did receive first reading. by council last month and it was sent back for further discussion and I think it really had to do with the fact that they have requested to increase their AMI from 0 to 80 to 0 to 150 and there was discussion about whether 0 to 120 would be more appropriate since that's sort of the standard and so it was asked to be placed back on the agenda just for further discussion Because we're happy to answer questions.

So the first reading was for approving to the 150?

Yes, ma'am.

Yes, ma'am.

With the thought that perhaps an amendment could be made at final reading. Right.

I still think the 120 is where I would vote for. I wouldn't go up to 150 to keep it more detainable housing.

Right. That sounds good. Anything for you, Mr. Dinkey? Any comments?

No, I think it has to go up. There's no doubt the math just doesn't work at zero to 80. And the sales don't work either. And all three pieces have to work together, the mortgage, the property value, as well as the AMI. So the question really on the council and for us was whether it's 120 or 150. I worry a little bit about the 150 may be easier for people to get in. and knock out the people that were at 120. So I'd be more apt to be a gradual situation and see if the 120 would help the property owners with their sales. I empathize with them. I can see why it wouldn't work at the 80. But I'm more apt to look at the 120.

Yeah, I agree. I think I said that when we first talked about it, that I'm more comfortable with if it has to be increased with at least staying within attainable housing parameters. So that would be the 120.

Yeah, it'd be nice if we could test the market and know what that is, you know, but this would be a way to see that.

Right. OK, so yeah, for us, that's just discussion. So we don't really need to bring anything back. We can talk about it in our next council meeting.

I would look forward to getting feedback from Gregory Ferry and the group as to what their thoughts of that were. Would that help with the sales, the five or six sales that have been pending? I can appreciate the people that are trying to move on. having to rent their place or not rent their place i mean i hear you loud and clear and so i'd be interested in getting feedback in the form of correspondence letters calls etc just so we have a sense of that before the next meeting right okay i guess that's the last item so we'll adjourn thank y'all five minutes rebecca's good

Let me call to order the Flood Resilience Committee for Monday, August the 3rd. Let me grab a pen here. Is there a motion that we approve the minutes from our July 6th meeting?

Move to approve.

Second. Any discussion? All in favor?

Aye.

All right. Minutes are approved. Public comments? If you have a public comment, please come forward. Name and address two and a half minutes, please. Anyone for public comments? All right, seeing none, we will move. There he comes. Just in time. Item four is review of a draft ordinance to make the Green Commission a standing commission of town council. I think we have used up the opportunities to extend it and renew it. So now it's a go or no go. We're making it permanent. Yes.

Yes. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and committee members. That is correct. This is a review to determine. By the way, welcome in your new role, by the way. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Bittersweet, but still very, very happy to be here. So you are correct, Mr. Mayor, that this is an agenda item to discuss making the Green Commission a permanent commission of town council moving forward. We have reached that point where it's a decision to disband or to make a permanent commission. That's now.

Okay. I think there have been, I don't know where Mr. Pagliarini went. Okay. I think there were some things, some suggested wording changes that we had asked If we could go over those. Do you want me to? Do you have a list of those? I'm putting you on the spot. One was about we'll meet no less than.

Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor and committee. So in terms of backtracking a little bit to clarify James point here that. we are have created this commission in 2023 and resolution and also resolution in 2024 extended and is expiring at the end of this month um so that's why we are here with the ordinance to make it you know standing um in terms of A couple of key points in terms of what the commission's compensation should be, you know, the commission will be comprised of 9 seats, which would be reviewed by the members would be reviewed by this committee. Of course, now, in terms of. The wording that we have right now under the proposal is the commission shall meet on a quarterly basis at minimum and shall be subject to all state and federal disclosure laws. Each member will be required to attend 75% of meetings per year on a rolling basis and shall be measured the first of every month of the preceding year. Each member should be afforded one excused absence which shall not be counted towards the attendance requirement. If removal due to attendance is necessary, town administrator shall then remove the member from the commission prior to the next scheduled meeting to notify the town council. Does that clarify the question about the amount of meetings that they will have? It will be quarterly.

Right. That's a minimum. They can meet monthly if they decide. Correct.

We'll let them decide. Yeah. So, if this commission recommends that they meet monthly because this commission and water supply would and town council would get to set the agenda. Right. So, they, if it wills of those, they can determine to meet monthly.

Okay. Okay. Just minimum requirements. All right. And was there something added about, I think what we wanted to do is zero out the terms. There are some members who have let it be known they want longer, you know, they want shorter terms and others would want a longer term. So we could just sort of meet everybody's needs on that.

Yeah. Right now, the wording we have is for the term should be two years.

Okay.

For any of that.

okay so everybody's term basically will be expired and we will be appointing everybody for a two-year term yes that's my understanding okay all right okay um so is there anything else in here that that has changed council committee members do y'all have any other uh suggested changes or anything because this would be what we're putting forward to council on next tuesday that would be correct okay

I think it covers what we discussed.

You have a motion? Huh? You have a motion? Yeah, yeah, I do.

I'd like to make a motion to make the Green Commission a standing commission of the town council. It's in the spirit of the town that we run today, and it's indispensable to us running a clean, green, and pristine area of Mount Pleasant.

And if you would, to send this to council.

And I'd like to send this to council as presented. Okay. Okay.

Do we have a second? All right. Is there any discussion? I'd like to thank the Green Commission and the staff for all they have done. They have put us on the map as a town. And this needs to be said as well. I know from our previous chief financial officer that when the bond raiders came here, the fact that we have an established flood resilience committee And the Green Commission is all looked into the resiliency factor of our bond rate. And so there is a direct benefit just from that. That's not all. There's many others, but that's one that it does, in effect, pay for itself, and it's good to have. I know from being at the Dutch Dialogues that the city of Charleston had years ago, which led to the founding of this committee by council, was that they advise every town, at least on the coast, to have things like a green commission and like a flood resilience committee. So that's great. Now, did I take the vote or not? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. Thank you very much. Item number five is a continued discussion of best practices of stormwater pond management. I think this is for our own town ponds.

Yes, sir. So we'll bring up Cody Robinette here from our engineering and environmental division to give you a recap.

Good to see you, Cody. How are you doing? Good to see you again. Good afternoon, everybody. If you recall, we last discussed this in May. We are now going to revisit it once again. We're going to take a little bit of a deeper dive today, discussing our management practices in terms of who participates, how our ponds are doing, and we're also going to have a few examples of hypotheticals to more or less prompt conversation from this committee to see which direction we want to go in. So starting off, we're just going to cover a very brief recap of what we've already covered. Covering that once again, yes, wet detention ponds are design systems. Some people do mistake them as wildlife ponds, a waterfront property, luxury, things like that. But at the end of the day, they were designed and should be maintained to treat for water quantity and quality. to protect our roadways, neighboring properties, things of that nature. They are designed to have that permanent pool of water, hence where they get the name wet detention pond, but those water levels will fluctuate during and immediately after rain events, but also taking into consideration drought events such as what we just got out of a few months ago. We will also recall that our previous conversation was a little focused on Lake Bentatum in the old village, as well as Park West Recreation. These were some of our pilot projects for floating treatment wetlands and buffers or vegetated planted buffers. We'll be discussing these a little bit more today, but in our conversation, we're gonna broaden our scope to all town ponds to get a better sense of where we are in terms of our pond management of all town facilities and parks. So jumping straight into it, last time you will remember that I told you there were 19 wet ponds. Well, we found one. So now considering that we have built a new one and we found one, we are now up to 21. So considering that, we in 2025 performed 20 pond inspections on these wet ponds as part of our MS4 program for our good housekeeping. This is the standard type of annual inspection that we recommend and in some instances require from HOAs, businesses and the like. So we are doing what we say other people should do, filling out the same forms, taking an assessment of our own ponds to look for structural issues, things that we need to work on within the coming year. From those inspections, we did identify seven ponds that have ongoing challenges. Some of them were new, but for the most part, we understand that some of our ponds have repeated issues. So we're not going to go into large depth on those today because we do largely have our finger on the pulse when it comes to those. We know that some of them, they're considered challenges, but they are relatively minor. It could be stabilization of a pond bank. It's simply missing some grass. That is an ongoing challenge. Potentially it needs to be dredged, but in such an instance, that pond is not actually owned by us. So it gets into a little bit complicated of a snafu that we're currently dealing with. But we will go into more detail of the 12 ponds that are currently receiving monthly visits for contracted water quality care. So that is a visit. Our contract is currently held by the lake doctors. They visit each of our wet ponds, those 12 ponds, once a month, and we'll go into exactly what kind of care they are providing. 19 of those ponds receive routine maintenance. We will also cover exactly what we mean by routine maintenance. And then 14 of those ponds I've considered to be buffer planting eligible, which I believe is in line with this committee's objectives of planting more of our ponds with vegetated pond buffers to transition from pilot projects to larger scale implementation. And I would also note that we currently do have two ponds with completed buffers. So we've pulled those from the list as well. In this conversation, we're kind of considering our broader role as stormwater managers. Today, we're gonna be discussing wet ponds, but I also want to reinforce the fact that we do have other BMPs or best management practices that we are responsible for. Those include dry ponds, MTDs, which stands for manufactured treatment devices, bioretention, underground detention, and pervious surfaces. Those all fall within that MS4 good housekeeping that we mentioned before. They receive similar methods of maintenance and contracted care. But for today's conversation, we're going to be focusing on just the 21 wet ponds.

Great.

So moving forward, what exactly do we mean by that contracted water quality care? So that contract, like I said, is held by the lake doctors and 12 out of those 21 ponds currently receive care. So that's a monthly visit and those services and potential items that they may address at that time include the treatment of invasive aquatic weeds. Those are typically littoral. It could be alligator weed. It could be water primrose, things of that nature, things that aren't meant to be here, but they're quite prevalent and we have to occasionally spray for them, as well as algae. Depending on conditions, they will also add beneficial bacteria to help soak up those excess nutrient levels in the same way that sometimes our plants and our enhancements do. And additionally, they do inspect the pond and outfall areas, which is of great use to us because staff can only be so many places at so many times. So that gives us a good sense of if any issues pop up between our annual inspections, they will let us know. And to give you a frame point of the costs of these 12 inspections, Each month, it is $920. That covers all 12 ponds. And annually, it adds up to $11,050, assuming that we don't need to take any larger corrective actions or fish stocking or specialty services. which is at the bottom there, the miscellaneous services. They do have other options. Sometimes we do have to implement other measures. So more or less our base cost is $11,000, but as we manage, it potentially could go up. So moving on to routine maintenance, that is more of the day to day, the week to week, making sure our ponds, our facilities, our parks look in tip top shape. Most of the ponds on our list do receive maintenance from the public services department and their contractors. So this routine maintenance at the end of the day is really focused on landscaping. It's meant to cut the grass, Weed to the edge or if we have a buffer, we do our best to highlight that they're not meant to do that any longer, especially once we put in those expensive plants. And sometimes they will remove the woody vegetation. Typically that's done on an annual basis. You'll see willows, Chinese tallow, wax myrtles popping up on the pond edges. If they're established, they're meant to stay. Pulling them out could potentially cause more damage. But when they're in that young stage, we typically pull them at that point. and of course, maintaining access to pipes. That way inspections and potential maintenance are easier on us. If they're overgrown with trees, it can potentially cause issues. And at the bottom, I have noted that our parks are more high visibility sites. Those typically receive maintenance weekly and the other facilities and properties are typically maintained biweekly. So moving on to the topic of buffer plantings, I went through the list and more or less assessed what I understood to be future capital projects, things of that nature that would either weed one of these out of our list. And I came up with 14 ponds that I would consider to be in good shape, good condition, good futures for receiving a buffer planting. So 14 out of that 21, not accounting for the two that we already have. But we really have to ask what determines eligibility? because we want these plantings to be sustained in the long term, because ultimately it can take likely two years for the buffer to really fill in and grow to its full size. So we need to maintain them in order to get the benefits to water quality, to the ecosystem that we're really trying to get by putting the money into these investments. So we do need to account for future capital projects and potential remediation work. Goodness. So if we consider upgrades, retrofits to a system, if we're going to go in and put in several thousand dollars worth of plants just to trample them because we have to dredge the pond or install a new phase of a park, that would maybe not be the best use of public money. So we're aware of that. And that would bump something off of the list if we knew within the next five years a project like that was coming. Additionally, we do have to communicate these new landscaping expectations with our public services operators and with their contractors. Like I said before, it's one thing to put it in, but if it gets mowed down or weed whacked, we've lost our progress and our money. Goodness. So, another conversation to bring up today is the topic of no-mow buffers. What that really comes down to is using what we already have as a method of practicing. So, the no-mow buffers, that really comes down to using the existing turf grass vegetation, but allowing it to grow taller to about one to two feet as practice. It does still offer benefits for water quality, slowing down that water, increasing absorption of nitrogen and phosphorus. It gives us and our contractors, our landscapers, an example to go off of. Before we put the expensive plants in the ground, we can go through the kinks of the system to figure out if they're going to accidentally mow it down one day because of a lack of communication. So it's one thing to mow down turf grass that got 24 inches tall that's not the end of the world but it's one thing to mow down the pickerel weed that we spent good money on so that's a topic for today's discussion as well and we also need to assess what is our capacity for workload and funding given that we have just started a new fiscal year we will have to assess what we are capable of and we'll have to assess existing responsibilities included in those other bmps that i did mention So I'm just going to briefly run us through one example just to give you a frame point of what one of these buffer plantings could potentially cost. So these numbers are based off of an event that town staff participated in in 2024. And this was for 100 linear feet of shoreline that was three feet wide from the water's edge back. So this was really meant to give a nice, full, lush buffer that ultimately provided the most benefits. In that event, we ended up using 130 pots. Those pots were five and a half inches. And I would note that this was a volunteer event, so staff was there as learners, you know, always learning, lifelong learners as it is. The total cost of those plants was $618 for the 130 plants, including delivery fees, which comes out to about $4.75 per plant. And again, that was only just for 100 linear feet, which was not an entire pond. So if I take us to our hypothetical example, which is going to be Lake Bentatum, which does currently have a partial buffer. It's not complete, but we have done sections of it so far. But hypothetically, if we were going to start from the ground up, The pond itself has a 450-foot edge all the way around its circumference. If we still wanted to shoot for the most lush three-foot buffer, that would come out to 1,350 square feet of buffer space, which is the habitat, is the filtration strip, things of that nature. But it would require us to plant around this pond 530 potted plants. which with just the plants alone would come to a cost of $2,517, assuming that we used volunteers to kind of educate as one opportunity, but to also decrease costs. So I will end with this because it does come full circle. We are doing these enhancements for a reason, and that is to communicate the best findings that the industry has and to educate HOAs, business owners, landowners who are responsible for these ponds. We have Hour 21, but there are, like I said before, more or less 1,000 ponds in Mount Pleasant. We can only have so much of an impact with education, so we're trying to maximize that width. signage we're trying to do our pilot projects and lead by example so if there's any questions or discussion on this map we could be here all day i love it but um go ahead

Oh, I was just going to say with the plantings, it seems like we could start maybe doing half and not going all the way around. And that way, you know, we could impact more ponds. It might even aesthetically look better that way.

I don't know.

But when we talk about costs, I don't know if we need to take just one and work our way all the way around or if we could kind of spread that out.

I have wondered that too.

A third of the way or halfway and, you know, then we've done some work on two ponds. Sure.

And I would go back to our example of Lake Van Tatum. The previous year when we had the volunteer event to implement a new section of buffer, there was already existing buffers. So to implement it in phases is entirely possible. Okay.

Go ahead.

I think go back to your slide of the you might not want to put it on the sign the last almost the last you may not want to put it on this but it really there's a financial benefit to to the homeowner and in the case of seaside it was substantial and and I think a lot of people may think about conservation or environmental, all that, but they really think of their pocketbook first. So if they know that their land is subsiding, that is sinking, five to 10 feet of their backyard is sinking and causing them to have a million dollars to dredge a pond, which they did in Seaside, and they also realize that their assessment is going to be proportionate to that, they all of a sudden decide that this might be a good idea because it's a lot less expensive to put in vegetative buffers and keep the subsidence down and some of the issues that you have. So I think it's good to be for the town to lead by example, to be a best practice. Seaside and Bell Hall have done that. The Green Neighborhood's work, which is a volunteer group, has been very active in HOAs, POAs. The town has been very active in that, too. So I think it's really important to do that. I also think that as we look at these things, we now have more and more firms that are doing this type of work in town. So I always like the idea of a bid to see who's doing it and have professionals that do just this. And so lake doctors may be great. They may do this as a practice. They may not. And there's companies that do that already, like Lake Bend. that Lakeland Tatum at Bell Hall seaside and others that are going through that and the number of you you did a great job last time Cody talking about all the ponds that we have in town is substantial so the 19 or the 14 or the 21 that we're talking about now simply set the stage for for best practices and I think we should look at it that way too the the And when you look at it, they will give you an idea of specifically how to go about it. And one of the ways they'll go about it is do a no mow and identify when they do the no mow natural plants that come up that are already there that do very, very well. and they just weed around the grass, and they leave those because they will come up instantly. I know this because I've done that on golf courses on Hilton Head. And so you just let them come up, and then you add to it. So it's not like you're starting from scratch when you do the NOMO. It identifies what's best and is natural there. So I think getting a professional organization in to help validate what you're saying, what the process is, and what the cost, I think is a really good – uh way of going about that uh particular one you can't and it takes and it takes a minute to do it because public awareness is number one it's number two it's number three it's number four number five and being repetitive because if the public doesn't buy into this you're going to have a lot of people and are the director of public services is here, and he'll say that people complain, well, it's not being mowed down to the edge. So it's a matter of educating and informing people. We don't want to rush to do something if you can have a little bit of education first. That being said, I'd like to get this going right away, but the public awareness in education is really important. No, I think it's long past due to be doing these practices because one of the things that happens is the worst offenders are homeowners. I hate to say that. Having run golf courses all over the country and whatnot, when it's mowed down to the edge and then people don't read the labels when they're putting Roundup or pesticides or whatever in there, then all of a sudden your water quality declines rapidly. Your fish are killed. Your aquatic life is killed. Your birds are killed. And we just had a discussion of rodenticides. Well, this is a massive kill if you end up having sterile ponds. And so it's important to understand that you maintain the littoral shelves, that lip right there with the right types of plants and back from that area. Because if the homeowner then is maintaining their yard with a lot of these things, it hits that buffer. And it doesn't get into the water. So it really helps you help them maintain the water quality there, which helps us all. And so there's just a couple things that will help this enormously. Golf courses all over the country, and they're perceived as being negative. They realize that this is a best practice. People actually come to the facilities to see the wildlife. And they don't come to a sterile place. And so they've learned this best practices. And so maybe someone with the golf courses, but also these companies could be involved with that. But good job with this. And I look forward to getting all of them on with the exception of the ones that are capital that we're going to be tearing up a little while getting them started.

there. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate you covering all of that, which just spawns one question for me. We're 30 days into our new budget. Did we give you the budget this year you need to make substantial progress on these best practices? I mean, everybody could always use more, but I'll ask you too, Jay. I mean, you're new, new into the position. Yes. We really want to do this and we really want to set the example, you know, for the town. And we don't want y'all, you know, having to have a bake sale to try to make it work.

Yes, sir. I mean, in short, yes, I think there's money to start doing this. And the beauty of this exercise is that through Cody's efforts, we've been able to inventory and we'll be prioritizing these areas that are most eligible for this funding. Do we have enough to do all of them right now? No, but that's, I think this is a multi-phased project to begin with. And again, the other side benefit is it's opened up a a great line of communication between our EDS department and our public service department as far as the ultimate maintenance of these facilities, which is in some points more critical than installing it in the first place as it has to survive. So I think over the next month or so, we'll be working internally to prioritize that list and utilize those funds through this fiscal year to start targeting the most applicable facilities ponds in the town to have this outreach. One of those things that we may use to prioritize is location in the town. So that way different HOAs throughout the town can see this and start to think about it going back to the education component that Mr. Tinky mentioned. you know seeing is believing to some extent and and if they see it in town facilities adjacent to their their hoa ponds then that may spur some internal discussions with their hoas and mr mayor uh andy weiss has agreed to fund the entire project okay

Less, less weeding, less, less, less. And I've said this before, I have participated in community outreach things, but Cody, I've seen you in action. You're the right man for the job. And we just want to make sure we're doing the right thing with our ponds. And there's a thousand of them out there, as you mentioned. So. However, we can do that. Mike, you're kind of a one-man outreach too, which I greatly appreciate and value.

We've got a couple of them in the audience here that have really done it.

So thank you very much. And let's just make sure that we know that we are giving them the resources they need to get this done.

And can we get a timeline of what we're thinking about as prioritizing the list and knowing where we're going to get going? And it could be that we have to bring in some of these folks that do that for a living, you know, some of the firms that do that for a living. It would also be good to look at lake doctors and see if they have that as a practice. If they don't, then maybe be thinking about that one. But if we can get a timeline, that would be helpful to understand.

And we're going to need to huddle up on that, sir.

Is this information posted where these HOAs can access?

Most of it is.

Like best practices? I mean, how are we going to get the information out to them?

The best practices are, but our internal assessment, like if I go back here, buffer planting eligibility, that was something I was working on, so that's not public facing. But the information is certainly shared, the information. practice of buffers, what they do, the benefits that it's probably facing.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Anything else on this topic? Thank you very much. Thank you for a very detailed report as well. All right, item six, executive session, legal advice related to potential litigation involving the SCDNR Palmetto Fork Conservation Easement. Do we have a motion?

Moved to executive session.

Okay. And the committee may take action on any item, including any subsection of any section listed on the executive session agenda or discussed in an executive session during a properly noticed meeting. All in favor of executive session for the reason stated, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Are we going into the courtroom? Courtroom. No action was taken and no votes were cast. Do we have a motion resulting from information?

Yes, sir. I direct staff. I'm giving a motion to direct staff to proceed as directed in executive session.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, motion carries. Item eight is to adjourn. This committee meeting stands adjourned.