City Council - Regular Meeting

Minutes have been handed out to you so if you all could hand those back in to the clerk. Item B3 is the police department's vehicle surplus request. This is for a Jeep Grand Cherokee that is no longer needed and the proceeds of the sale would be placed in the asset forfeiture account at the police department. Item B-9 is budget amendment number 20. This is for staff to enter into a master services agreement for the acquisition of right-of-ways associated with the Morgans Branch Pump Station and Force Main project. Four of the five acquisition firms submitted a scope and fee for this work, with Telex being the lowest amount in the amount of $144,250. It does have negotiation services for 28 parcels. It includes appraisal services for ten parcels, as well as attorney services for five parcels. And if those items are not needed throughout the process, of course we won't pay the full amount. So this is for us to enter into a contract and then a budget amendment number 20 for that work. Item B5 is consideration of a facade enhancement grant for 3 North Main Street. This is for $1,150. And funding for the facade enhancement grant is included in the current budget for an owning replacement at that address. Item B6 is the recommendation of a consultant for the Waterfront Village Center area-specific master plan. The amount of money associated with fiscal impact summary is $110,000. The Belmont's comprehensive land use plan was adopted in September of 2025 and that plan recommended the development of a master plan for the area. An RFP was released in April, 13 responses were received, staff worked, scored the submissions, had interviews, and had the various top three consultants. And Bolton Mink, in partnership with Innovate P3, Rose and Associates, Lagniappe?

Lagniappe. There you go. I think it's a Creole word. It means a little something more. Oh, I knew, Jim, that you were going to let us know about that.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Thank you for that, Jim.

So staff recommends council approve the selection of Bolton Mink to complete the Waterfront Village Center area-specific master plan. Item B seven is the consideration of approval of the dirty wolf racing's use of Rocky branch park for their 2026 black copperhead sting 50k. This event will take place on August 15 2026 from 8am to 6pm. Item B8 is the consideration and approval of Belmont Run Club's use of Rocky Branch Park during their 2026 to the Good Times Trail Run event that's going to take place on October the 3rd, 2026 from 8.30 a.m. to 10 a.m. And item B9 is the Catawba River Public Water Intake Excavation Capital Project approval. Of course, you all know that our water intake in the middle of the Catawba River has sediment on top of it from Hurricane Helene. Staff put together a bid, sent out the bids. They didn't get any bids the first time. They revised the bids and re-advertised this project on May 22nd, 2026. The apparent low bidder for this project is the rowboat company, but they were not responsive in their bid documents that they had to provide. And so therefore, the most responsible bidder in this project is HG Reynolds Company Incorporated with a base bid amount of $1,215,600. with staff including a 15% owner's contingency for the total bid amount of $1,397,940. We did receive a $10 million SRF grant for this project, and so you can see that the resolution I handed out, there's already a capital project ordinance included given that it's going to span fiscal years, but the Resolution of tentative award for the public water intake project allows this project to be considered with a $10 million grant. The full $10 million grant is for design and hopefully construction to relocate the intake where it's currently located in the Catawba River. So it's not behind an island out there and that sediment won't get trapped on our intake currently. I think it's a loan. It says SRF loan.

It also says 0%.

Yeah, I think you get the... 100% principal forgiveness and 0% interest.

So I'm not sure they're expecting to be paid back.

They call it, we call it SRF loan. That's the way the state categorizes the state revolving fund loan.

In in just a quick question on this one, have we had any communications with Duke Energy and or any of those representatives? The only reason why I bring that up, I understand this is our water intake for our infrastructure. But if I recall, you know, one of the responsibilities of the energy company is to maintain the lake, right, particularly its water levels and tributaries. I just would be curious if we have even reached out to Duke to see if they would help us with any of this project.

We didn't ask them about, of course we reached out to Duke Energy when we knew it was covered. They have ownership of the lake bed and manage that process. And so we had to get permission from Duke Energy to put this project out to bid and to have a dewatering site. Once they remove the sediment, they'll bring it ashore, have to dewater it just really across the street right there. So yes, we've been in contact with them. Plus, we contacted them to ask them about, do we have any bidders that they could recommend to us? When we knew that the lake level was getting close to where our, we've got what we call a sluice gate, which is a valve that's opened up on the line, so you've got the line that goes out, the intake is a pipe that goes out towards the channel, and the intake portion of it is covered with silt, so we're drawing water from a different location. We know the elevation of that sluice gate, and we reached out to Duke Energy when the water levels got low so that they could maintain the dams along the Catawba River Basin so that it wouldn't allow the lake level to get below that point. So we've been in communication with them all along, but we've never said, hey, could you pay for our project that I'm aware of?

I think it might be worth reaching out to Martha just to see, right?

Martha Wagner, I believe, our representative. She is.

To see if there's any opportunity. Because if you think about it, I mean, a lot of these municipalities pull, right, from the Catawba tributaries all the way up. towards the mountain, down south, down through Lake Wiley, I don't believe it would probably be uncommon that one of those municipalities reached out to Duke Energy for some type of help on this, right? Because if you look at the state, the state tasks the energy company to maintain this. One, for recreational purposes, I don't know what it says about for our purposes as a municipality. So I would just be interested. I mean, I understand we get this $10 million SRF, 0% interest. but could that be utilized for another project, right? Is there something we could leverage with Duke Energy to help us with this particular project? I think it's worth asking. If we don't ask, we won't know.

So you want to move it to the regular agenda? I mean, I think that...

I don't know, Miles.

If we're not going to approve it, we'll have to move it to regular agenda off consent.

Yeah, I think we should. Maybe let's discuss it. I understand that this is probably pressing, but... My recommendation would be to move it. All right.

We will move agenda item B-9.

It will become new agenda item C-6. Y'all good with that?

Yeah. Okay. All right.

All right, any other questions for Miles about anything on the consent agenda?

I had a couple. With respect to the ordinances related to Rocky Branch Park, is the park going to remain open to the public during those events? As I understood it, the folks are just going to use Rocky Branch Park, but I'm assuming the park will be open to the public.

Let me ask staff if Cassidy is in the audience. Cassidy, is the park going to remain open during these trail events? She said to her knowledge, but she needs to coordinate with her coordinator.

All right, well, I'd just be curious, just because it seems to me similar to like Stowe Park, where we don't rent out. Stowe Park, and to the extent that people, the public can't go there, I have sort of similar thoughts about that.

Do we want to, do you want to move it so that we can add a...

have discussion on it and possibly add, because I don't know that that's broken out in the agreement.

I don't know if it needs to be moved.

I did have some questions about budget amendment 20 with respect to the services for the appraisals and everything because I was a bit trying to understand how it all worked, and you mentioned that if we didn't need appraisal or attorney services as contemplated in the, I mean, what would you call it, a quote?

Yeah, this proposal, yeah.

Then, you know, obviously we wouldn't expend that money, but what happens if we need appraisal or attorney services for more than the anticipated number of properties?

Yes, if we need more than that 144-250, we'll have to come back to you all and ask for an additional budget amendment for that.

And I'm assuming it's the same thing then if I think it estimates that $3,500 for negotiation services for each of the 28 parcels. Correct. You know, if some of them come to more than that, you'd have to come to us for a budget amendment in that regard as well. Is that correct?

Right? Yep. If we if we have anything that goes above the initial amount.

Okay. And of course, what happens if a property owner just refuses to sell? Where does that leave the project?

Well, that we'd have to bring that back to you all determine whether you want to proceed with like eminent domain purposes. If I'm trying to put a a new sewer line up South Point Road and we have, you know, one property owner that doesn't agree, we have to bring it back to you all.

What if it's in the, that said property's in the county, would we be able to exercise eminent domain over it? Okay, well there you go. Very good, and we're hoping that this work will be covered by the state appropriation, but we're not sure at this point.

Right, yes we hope it will. We wanted to go ahead and get this in front of you all, but, you know, When we go through the process, if we feel like we can get reimbursement from the state, once we have further conversation with them, we'll bring that information to you and ask for that paperwork to be approved. Okay.

Sounds good. That's all I have. Thank you.

To Jim's point, though, on this, I mean, out of the 28 various different property owners we're going to have to, or you guys are going to have to talk through it, Mike, be well to assume that at least one is going to say no. It might be helpful just to start drawing up, if we already have, kind of what the area of impact is, because I don't think it's within the right of way, right next to the road, I would anticipate, right? It's not like we're taking, because I want us to be careful when we use the word eminent domain, because that's what it would be effectively, but at the same time, we're not taking this whole parcel, right? I mean, it's just a portion of it.

Just the portion that we need, correct? Yeah. Yeah, so our engineer is not the same firm that's going to do that right away acquisitions. We've got an engineering firm that has already drawn the project up, and it shows the identified parcels. Therefore, that's how we know how many that we need right away from or easements from. And so that's what we gave to these companies that provided the proposal to us. And so they kind of know the length, the width, the dimensions of all the easements in there. And so that's kind of how they drafted their proposal.

And I'm assuming some of these would be like temporary construction easements as opposed to like permanent easements, is that correct?

It just might be helpful with a visual just to show, right?

You want me to provide that information to you all at some point in the future? I'm sure when we go through this process, we'll be bringing these back to you anyway.

Mine's more of a suggestion that that's something that we may just want to make sure we make clear if it does come to that, right? Oh, yeah.

Are we actually taking anybody's property? It's just right away, right? Like to run a pipe in the ground?

Well, it's right away, but... The specifics of this project, I don't know. So if you want more information, I'd have to get like our engineering firm to come in to say, all right, how much of this property is needed? Is it needed for construction easements? Is it needed for permanent easements? Because it's not the same throughout the pipe. even a portion of the pipe kind of goes into like NCDOT's roadbed. So you've got property owners, you got NCDOT, because it goes up South Point Road. And it's not like a straight line. So you'll, it'll vary as it moves, you know, through the project. So but this this company here, we know that, you know, staff couldn't take this on, you need a professional company that comes in and reaches out to the 26 property owners goes through the motions to acquire right of ways. And also does that the attorney work for us at the end of it, but the specifics of like how much where how, you know, what they consist of whether it's construction or permanent. I don't I don't have the information. We can make a presentation at some point in the future. But right now, I don't I don't know.

I think that would be prudent just to get our head space in the right area as this comes to us because I think it'd be foolish to anticipate that everyone are doing the anticipation of widening South Point at some point.

Not that stretch. No, it's not. Because that just goes up to Henry's Chapel. Yeah. So right now. I'm talking about like future.

In the future. So I assume this is setting, essentially setting the budget for the project, the funding for the project. But as the project comes up, there are questions that are going to be presented to council. Is that right, Myles? Yes, we can make a presentation. They will be presented, so any further need to share information, I think, will come up in a future meeting. I'm good with this. That's what I was asking. So are we good with it staying on the consent agenda as it is? Yes.

Okay, perfect.

All right, well, any other questions for Miles on anything on the consent agenda as presented? All right, well, if there are no other questions, we'll conclude our work session, and I will call to order the Belmont City Council regular meeting of June 1st 2026 and if everyone would please stand with me I believe we have pastor Jeff Taylor for our invocation and then we will follow that with pledge of allegiance father in heaven we are grateful for your many blessings thankful for your faithfulness

and humbled by your grace. Your word tells us to pray for our leaders, so on behalf of the Belmont City Council, I ask for your grace to lead them, your wisdom to guide them, and your mercy to protect them. Thank you for each member who serves our city, and may their decisions be beneficial for all Belmont residents. May we continue to trust you and to do our part in making our communities happy, healthy, and safe places to live and raise our families. We thank you for all that you have done for us, and it's in your holy name that we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Pastor.

All right, if everyone would join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, you may be seated. Thank you. All right, so that will take us to recognitions and acknowledgements, and I don't believe we have any tonight. So that will move us on to setting the agenda, and we have an amendment. We will be moving consent item B9 to regular agenda item C6. So I will entertain a motion to set the amended agenda.

I'll make that motion. Second. A motion by Alex. Second. Second by Charlie. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Aye.

All right, that will set our amended agenda. So I'll move us on to the approval of the consent agenda. So I'll entertain a motion to approve the amended consent agenda.

So moved. Jason? Second. Seconded by Alex. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

All right, the amended consent agenda is approved. And that moves us right along to regular agenda item B1, public comment. C1. C1, sorry. C1, public comment. Well, it looks like we have... Couple people here. Mr. Chris Owens. All right, if you wanna walk, come on up here. And as you're walking up, I'll remind you, please feel free to get close to the microphone. It does not pick up well, and we wanna make sure everyone at home can hear you. All speakers have up to three minutes on any topic. Speakers must give, must sign up with their name and address. Must be respectful to city council staff and public. It's a time for speakers to bring matters to the mayor and city council's attention. There's no discussion or debate about items. If warranted, mayor or the city council can ask city staff to follow up with speakers on his or her concerns. And this is separate from various other public hearing items, which we do not have tonight. So, Mr. Owens, thank you for coming. And the little light right there will kind of tell you as you work your way through your three minutes.

Well, thank you so much. Again, my name is Chris Owens, and I am the executive director of a nonprofit educational institute based here in Belmont. But I'm also really privileged this evening to represent Troop 56 as a scoutmaster there. We are based out of First United Methodist on South Point Road. And we're here this evening to participate in the government of the local community. We currently have around 25 active Scouts in our troop and over 50 Cub Scouts that are feeding into the program there at First Methodist. This is our 70th anniversary. We were founded in 1956. And so for seven decades we have developed and been stewards of a tradition of producing leaders and outstanding citizens through the scouting program. This year is a particularly noteworthy occasion. In our 70th year, just this past week or maybe two weeks ago now, we graduated five Eagle Scouts from South Point High School. And all five of them earned their Eagle Scouts in this last calendar year. So we're very excited and thrilled to share that with you. That brings our total number of Eagle Scouts that Troop 56 has produced here in Belmont to 143. Wow. So in a particular way, I want to thank this body. and the various affiliated organizations in the local government for approval and support of recent Eagle Scout projects over at Rocky Branch Park. We have one currently in progress overlooking Stuart Kramer High School up on the top of the hill there. And we have one that we understand has taken a lot of interest from the mountain bikers that was just completed earlier this spring as well with some very, very neat mountain bike features. Intrinsic to the nature of scouting is the word outing. In a particular way, I want to thank you all for your own stewardship and to consider and encourage you towards creating, preserving green space here in our local community, places for us to go scouting around. and conservation and public access of those same spaces. And we want to be partners with you in that. We have 11 scouts here this evening, all future Eagle Scouts we hope, and they will have at some point to do an Eagle Scout service project as well. This evening we're here in part working on the communications merit badge and EGLE's required merit badge, which requires them to pay attention to a local council meeting and to listen in particular to debate on particular issues and to document the various considerations and write a report on that. And that, I hope you'll debate well and strongly this evening for their benefits. Well, yeah, challenge accepted, I assume, for my colleagues here. Thank you so much.

Ms. Rojas, thank you so much. I appreciate that. And I would love to get the troop up here before we can all get a picture with them. You know, being involved in your community and government around you is very important, and it's something that cannot be overstated. So coming in and spending some time even at this level, you know, Belmont's not huge, Belmont's pretty small in the grand scheme of things, but it's important that you're involved at this level. So thanks for being here. Come on, let's get a picture. I'm excited.

Is this what we're talking about?

Save that picture so when someone says we don't ever do anything fun at city council meetings, just send that to them. All right, we have one more for public comment. Looks like Mr. Ed Ward.

Hello, I'm with waste connections. I know we're on the agenda. I just wanted you to know that I'm here as well as some representatives of waste connections when you get to the agenda item on the waste collection contract. So I wasn't sure if you needed me to go up during public comment or when you get to that point. So I'm here if you need me. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. All right.

Bear with me for one second. Bring glasses here. All right, so that will finish up public comment. Move us right along to agenda item C2, consideration and possible adoption of the fiscal year 26-27 budget ordinance. And we have Miles will be walking us through this, but I just want to preface this with how much we appreciate all the work that's going into this. There's a lot that's culminating with this, and I look forward to hopefully getting everything buttoned up and moving along.

Yes, sir. So thank you, Mayor, members of council. In your budget packet, you have a budget message. Attachment one is the budget ordinance. Attachment two is our approved staffing. Attachment three is the budget line items. Attachment four is the capital improvement plan for the general fund and the water and sewer fund. And attachment five is the proposed fee schedule. I do want to thank you all for your guidance as we move through this process over the past several months. I want to thank the department heads for all the work that they did to prepare their draft budgets. I want to especially thank Jared Piles, finance director, and Kevin Krause, assistant city manager, who really compiled all the spreadsheets and really did a deep dive, poured a lot of this information together. And so just thank everybody for that. This budget does invest in our staff, provides a high level of operational service, and invests in the city's infrastructure. You can see that the budget snapshot, the proposed fiscal year 26-27, or our final budget, is $32,826,501. The Water and Sewer Fund is $13,454,836. And the Stormwater Fund is $966,968. A few of the highlights from the general fund, the budget recommends maintaining the current property tax rate of .455 per $100 value to support the general fund. Our revenues for ad valorem tax collection is at 99% for this coming fiscal year. We're estimated to increase approximately 7% from the previous fiscal year's adopted budget and 4.3% over the amended budget. Our sales tax revenues are estimated to increase 20% from the previous year's adopted budget and 2.8% over the amended budget. The sales tax collection percentage increase is based on the North Carolina Department of Revenue's forecast and they show a plus 3.1% increase from fiscal year 25-26. So our projected final fiscal year 2526 collection is around $6.9 million dollars. The budget breakdown by department is listed inside your packet. I'm not gonna call all those numbers out, but they're all listed for mayor and council administration, attorney, planning, zoning, police, fire, streets, sanitation, community development, recreation, our economic development, capital outlay, and our debt. For the Water and Sewer Fund, this fund is solely supported by user fees. We are going to increase the water fees by 8% and the sewer fees by 8%. This is background, this was due to a water and sewer rate study that you all adopted a couple years ago, and since that time we've increased rates for the past two years. The stormwater fund highlights, this fund is solely supported by user fees, and really the difference in this year's budget from last year's is the contractor repairs line item has been increased to support our ongoing repairs to the system. The capital improvement plans, really the highlights inside of those two CIP documents, the fund capital, $4,132,580 is budgeted as a fund balance appropriation. The total for the five-year general fund CIP is $84.4 million. The total for the 10-year water and sewer CIP is $134.3 million. And for fiscal year 26-27, the one coming up, that's $45.1 million is budgeted. We do have two large projects. The $10 million state budget allocation is being utilized to fund the engineering and construction for the moratorium project that we just spoke of previously. And the total project is expected at 16.7 million. We do plan to bid that project this coming fiscal year. And we do have a placeholder for our Charlotte Water Wastewater Treatment project in the amount of 26 million. Between all the funds, we have 196 full-time positions. No new positions have been funded for this current year. And during the May 4th, 2026 City Council meeting, we did hold a public hearing and I presented the balanced budget. This budget has been available for public inspection in the city clerk's office since May 4th. We also placed it on the city's website for Councilman Sealinger's request during the last meeting. So that's been out there as well. So tonight, if you choose, you can adopt the 26-27 budget. So, Mayor and Council, thank you all for your leadership and guidance through this process, and I look forward to another successful year.

Thank you, Miles. just one quick question for me and I'm going to open it up to everyone. So on page 80 of our packet, we're looking at the 2627 manager proposed for the general other than the final budget, roughly a little over 3 million more. Could you explain what the difference there is?

Yes, and that that number there was from it says from the April 6, 2026 meeting. We made the presentation on May the fourth. The managers proposed budget was 32 million $950,126. So it had gone up between like the April meeting to that May meeting to cover some of those items that were requested that we fund inside of the retreat. And so we used a lot of money to fund those projects coming up. So it moved from the number you see there on April 6 from 29.6 And then on May 4th, the manager's proposed was 32.9, and then you can see now it's 32.8. The difference between the 32.950126 to the recommended budget is that now we have received our solid waste bid, if you recall. I said there was a couple items that were still remaining from the May 4th meeting. One was the solid waste contract. We were still in the negotiation process of that. That number's now been plugged in about what we're recommending tonight. And then our property and liability was still outstanding. We have since received property and liability quotes, and all those lines have been plugged in. per each department where we need to fund them. So really the difference between the May meeting to this meeting were those two items, property liability and sanitation.

Perfect. So of the things that were still outstanding, nothing is outstanding anymore? No, sir. Perfect, thank you. All right, any questions for Miles?

I know we've done a lot of work on this, and obviously staff has too, but I just was noticing something I wanted to ask about. On the CIP list on page 112, the city hall renovations and that we'd approve 3.3 million for that project. But I see it listed both in fiscal 27 and fiscal 30. Is that same amounts listed for both fiscal years?

Yes, 29 fiscal year 2930 should not be 3.3 million should be blank, right?

Okay.

Yep. So that that project is 3.3. And it's funded in this fiscal year.

Yeah.

So the first that first column you see there, so we'll, we'll make that adjustment. I don't know how that one got plugged in the very back end of it.

Okay.

Any other questions? Yeah, I do.

So is there any update, if we all recall, what we discussed last time, Project Tundra, and how it impacts this existing budget, if we're anticipating to vote this? Any update?

Yeah, Miles. Yes, I have an update on that. So I reached out to the two entities. and scheduled a meeting with them and we had that meeting last Friday with the city and the two entities. The letter of intent or MOU, one of the entities said that they could draft that for us and they'll have that to us this Friday. What we anticipate doing at that point is reviewing it. Marks and I will review it and then bring that to you all for your review coming up. But like I mentioned before, I don't want that to delay us in the vote of the budget. Given that, I don't plan to spend down any of the $2.1 million for that design at all until we have full approval from council on MOU and we start that process moving forward. Even to move to the next step, if we hire a designer, it's gotta go through a process that you all would be involved in. We would bring that back to you all. bring that amount to you all. So it's good to have the monies in the budget doesn't mean we're going to spend it down if it if it falls apart, then so be it, you all can allocate that 2.1 to another project or don't have to spend it at all and go back into unassigned fund balance. But yes, we did meet and so you know, like I said, parks and I will be looking at the draft MOU.

And they understand the urgency, too. Like, we want to get this wrapped up. We want to commit funds to projects that we can execute.

That was my preamble, I believe, speech whenever I met with them, was trying to tell them how important this is. Even on the agenda, I put time is of the essence. I explained to them that we're in the budget process and that here are some of your comments. And I recall your comments to those folks to say how important this is. They're even considering you know, not to spend the funds on this project could spend the funds somewhere else. And so I think they got the message.

We should have an update by Friday, right?

What's that?

We should have an update by Friday.

We should have an update date by Friday internally. I don't think that you all will probably have an update on Friday. I think that Once me and Parks can look through it to make sure we're comfortable with it, then we bring it to you all like it needs to be at that point. But we were shooting for hopefully the July meeting to bring that back to you all.

Just my suggestion, right, is let's say, you know, barring any type of other stuff that may need to push it further out in July, but if we don't hear from it, on the July and get this all buttoned up. I think there needs to probably have a re meeting between council and the group as a collective body to see what are we what are we doing? Right?

I mean, I think like all parties involved. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's fair. Just having seen the way that this is developed, I think to staff's credit, I think it does make sense since we've already kind of got comfortable with the allocated money in the CIP. to let it live there. We're going to continue chasing this thing. It may make it may not make. But from my understanding, if it doesn't make we're really not in a worse off position, having pre allocated or earmarked, so to speak.

Like I said, planning takes time, right? Yeah. So if it comes July, and we're still in the same situation, I think the conversation needs to be had. Let's take our $2.1 million elsewhere and do something else in the community.

Sure. Yeah.

Understood.

Any other questions for Miles about the budget? If not, I will entertain a motion to approve the budget as presented.

Motion approved as presented.

Motion made by Jason.

Second.

Second by Charlie. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? All right. This passes unanimously. Good job, staff. Thank you for that. Thank you for getting that.

Good catch on the city hall.

Yeah. Eagle eyes.

Did mention it. I think it's I think I mentioned this last time, like, this was a relatively quick piece tonight. But this started back in February. I mean, this is actually pretty bad. I mean, there's been a lot of discussion, a lot of inputs and a lot of time and effort put into this. So sometimes we get the comments. Well, that was quick. Well, This has been happening for months.

I can tell you as a newbie in the position and seeing the process, it's an extensive process, but it's an important process. And it's not something I can, I know that I can speak for my colleagues up here, say no one takes it lightly. And so it is a long process, but it does, to Alex's point, it does sometimes seem like what you see is kind of a quick moving process. So we try to make it easy for you. All right, continue to move us right along here. We are at agenda item C3, solid waste and recycling contract discussion. And we have, let's see, Jonathan, come on up.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. So before you tonight is the solid waste contract for the city. For the next five years, we did bid this contract on January 20 2026. bids were due on March 5 2026. The city received three bids for this service contract waste Pro, who currently provides service to the city waste connections and active waste were the three bidders. bid tab is attached showing those bids after review and deliberation with waste connections and waste Pro as our current vendor for this service contract waste pros numbers did slightly change that information is in the packet and the spreadsheets Additionally, the city currently provides dumpster service to some older apartment complexes, which is not common practice now. We are requesting with the approval of this contract to no longer provide that service to those users after six months and it would require them to obtain their own service which is why you see that second spreadsheet in the packet only showing those dumpster charges the four yard six yard and eight yard dumpster charges for six months staff is recommending to award the contract to waste connections as the low bidder Additionally, we would request the approval to discontinue that dumpster service after six months, which would be January 1st, 2027. And then lastly, to allow the city manager and city attorney to enter into contract negotiations with Waste Connections. I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

So let me see if I understand this all correctly. So when this was originally bid, based on the bids submitted and the services that were requested at that time, Waste Pro was the low bidder. And then something changed with respect to their bid after the bids were submitted. Is that correct?

No, sir. Waste Connections was the low bidder. It was a mistake on staff's part with the initial spreadsheet in calculating the, if I remember correctly, it was the bulk pickup that was carried over a 12-month charge.

So Waste Connections has always been the low bidder?

Yes.

No matter which way you correct. All right. I'm confused because I swear in the in the agenda packet itself. If you don't take out the dumpster removal after six months, then waste Pro was that's correct.

Yes, I apologize. That is correct. Waste Pro is the low bidder if you do not remove the dumpster.

Okay, all right. So nothing changed, no numbers were revised after the bids were submitted. What was, there was some reference to a stair-step program? What's that?

That's correct. So Waste Pro did come back to the city and offered a stair-step program. I don't want to put words into their mouth, but the way I understand that program is they wouldn't charge us the full increase in years one and two. It would slowly, gradually get to that point.

I see. And so you also said that it's not typical for municipal services to collect refuse and recycling from apartment complexes, that such apartment complexes usually utilize their own services for such. Correct. Okay. And you also, I believe, said in the report that you talked to neighboring communities about waste connections and there was no negative feedback. Correct. What communities do they serve, just out of curiosity?

The two that I was able to speak with were Huntersville and I believe it was It was a city east of Charlotte. I don't know. Indian Trail. Indian Trail. Yes. Thank you. They both had great things to say about the company. I believe it was Indian Trail is working on contract negotiations with West Connection currently to extend their contract.

Okay. And we just went through some shifts in service dates for waste and recycling. Assuming that we follow staff's recommendation and approve staff to enter into the contract with Waste Connections, is staffing, delivery, routes, services, is that going to remain the same or are we looking at potentially changing service routes and dates again?

waste connections this year i think they may be able to speak to that a little better than i can we did ask them that question in a meeting with them and they indicated that they would be willing to keep the same routes same service day that we currently have okay all right

Yeah, I think it's important that we keep it as painless on the residents as possible, because we're not talking about huge margins, but not turning the apple cart over to change that, I think is important.

On a more technical approach to this, what is the conversion plan here, right? So we all have waste probe dumpsters and stuff like that. What's like understanding the numbers here, but there's always like what I think Joe is alluding to is a cost to convert. So not necessarily dollars, but energy and time to convert this, right? So, like, what is the proposed plan on converting to if we were to decide to award waste connection?

I would like to call waste connections up to speak directly to that. Let's do that.

So Mr. Ward, thank you for coming back up. I guess the question that we have for you is, how does this play out? In the event, there's a lot, as you know, this is not new to you, but it's new to us. And how does that look when we decide that we go back to our residents and we say, your trash can's changing, your pickup is being told it's not changing, but here's what you can expect to happen. Because nobody likes to play in the garbage, nobody likes this stuff, but the fact of the matter is it's very important, and it's important that it works well.

Very good. Again, thank you. Again, Edward. So I'm the municipal relations manager. I'm joined tonight with Pam Stein. Pam is the district manager at our Charlotte operation. I'm going to let her address your question, sir, regarding the transition plan. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Pam.

thank you thank you for having us so I mean like you said it's something we're very experienced in so we actually use a local carp manufacturer right here in Charlotte which is great so they're already on standby ready to go with the carts that we need if awarded this contract and what that would look like is they would they need about probably around eight or nine days to get all the carts delivered so as long as we could have the list of addresses they would deploy their team to deliver all the carts within eight days or so and it depending on contract negotiations we could they could start that At the latest, we would have to be able to start it by June 22nd in order to have it, all the carts deployed by June 30th. But they're kind of ready to make adjustments if needed to make sure that it happens. And they would just need a staging area to, a lot of times with school being out, like a school parking lot or such is great. to be able to stage the carts and deploy their team.

All right, I have a follow-up question to that. I know I'm going to ask it, and somebody's going to say, that was right there. Are these carts the exact same size as the ones we currently have? They are. Okay.

They are. Thank you. And how many carts are we anticipating?

Yeah, probably about... 16,000 carts for trash and recycle.

16,000 each? Each supplier has already committed that. So it's 8,000 trash, 8,000 recycling.

Are they going to pick up the old ones at the same time?

That would probably be WastePro.

Would they be on the same timeline? That was the question I had.

What's that contract look like?

Yeah, we have four out there.

But just real quick, going back to this, to confirm, your supplier has said that they will be available or 16,000 cans will be available for rollout by June 22nd to have everything and all of these delivered by the 30th, I guess?

That's correct.

Okay.

And there's no concern with that?

No. Like I said, the great thing is it's a local cart manufacturer, and we work with them. over many different contracts that we have so um we're definitely very confident that they'll be able to do that

Jonathan, this is a small issue in the grand scheme of things, but the new plan we approved for Poplar Street with the yard waste collection, those extra bins, I think, or does that, is this kind of included in that?

No, it's completely separate.

Okay. That's a whole different company.

That's city, because I was curious about that, too. The yard waste pickup is city yard waste.

I'm sorry. Yeah, that's totally... We bought those. Yeah.

So when does WastePro, if we were to agree to this, when does WastePro's, when do they stop servicing, I guess? June 30th. Yeah. So June 30th. So everything needs to be buttoned up. And WastePro, to Joe's point, they're going to come by and pick up their cans?

I would assume so.

Well, we may want to just double check on that because that would be pretty bad. I don't have a place to store two additional cans right now. And a lot of residents will probably be asking about that. What do they do with the waste-pro cans? Take a couple extra.

Put them all in Charlie's yard.

But when would they be expecting to pick those up, I guess, would be my other question. Because what I don't want to happen is someone is without trash cans during this middle point when we you know what I mean? I'm just trying to understand what does the is it worth the squeeze to convert? Like, sure, I get it from a finance perspective, but it doesn't make sense to all the the implications that this may cause.

I think you might have double cans at your house versus like no cans. I think that they would work to deliver cans before June 30th. June 30th is the contract ending date for Waste Pro. Waste Pro comes and picks up their cans somewhere close after that, but you might have four cans at your house for a small period of time. That's my concern.

Do you know, does staff know, in the current Waste Pro contract, is there some provision that requires the pickup and termination of the contract? Any other questions for Waste Connections? We can call you back up, so don't go too far.

Just to confirm again, I know it's been a minute, but the schedule, our existing schedule is not changing. That's correct. And, I mean, I'm sure you guys are gonna say yes, but I'm assuming you guys feel comfortable and confident that you guys will be able to accommodate that schedule with y'all's infrastructure, I guess, and employment and all that stuff, because one thing we ran across was WastePro, it sometimes became unreliable when it came to pickup dates, and sometimes they would skip neighborhoods and stuff like that, which is why we moved to the new schedule. So you guys feel comfortable that you guys will be able to execute?

We do.

A lot of times, and again, you need to ask some of these questions regarding removal of the carts to Waste Pro, but in my experience, the crews that come in also sometimes will remove the carts. That'll be something they'll need to set up if they want to. They may have their own plans. So that's one option that I've seen done in the past. The other thing was in regards to your question on our ability. The one contract that was not mentioned that we serviced and probably is our newest is the city of Kannapolis. It was about 22,000 homes. We started it in 2024, and it was up and running, and they would... I'm surprised they didn't reply to Jonathan's request, but that's another one. We took it over from Waste Management, and they've been happy. We've been meeting with them on a regular basis, so that's another example of being able to do this. And this town is roughly 8,000 homes, so the city of Kannapolis would be another reference for us.

And Jonathan, since this is a true expiration of the contract, there's no termination costs or anything like that with Waste Pro?

I have not seen any in the current. So there's no other, basically once the contract ends, that's the end of it?

You'd have to look at the contract, but I would imagine if it was for a five-year term that there might be some sort of renewal provisions, which I'm assuming were not invoked, and otherwise the contract would just expire at the end of its term and the parties go their separate ways. Maybe there's something in there about picking up cans at the conclusion of the contract. But I'm sure I've seen it, because we would have proved it five years ago. But I don't recall.

The bids are so close together that it wouldn't take much in any sort of like end of term expenses to kind of tip the math one way or the other.

Any other questions for Waste Connections? feel free to have a seat thank you thank you thank you Jonathan real quick and I don't want to jump in front of any of these questions but explain to me a little bit about these being the dumpsters that are at the existing apartments so this is something that the city has provided to them they did a contract with the city for this is there's just something that's been happening for years and years and nobody's really thought about it and this has been an expense on the city Yes. Awesome.

I thought it was other business too. Is it just apartments?

It's mainly apartments. There is the collective on Glenway that that is business related. We would continue that. But there are changes to the fee schedule to capture those costs that we would then be paying for that service, which aren't currently there.

apartment complexes.

They're much smaller complexes.

So it's not like Chronicle or Aberpole?

No.

So when we go to these businesses and these apartment complexes and we say, you know, it was kind of, I don't know if we didn't know what was happening or whatever it may be, what kind of bill are we going to be handing them to move forward with the same services they're now getting for

whatever they're getting it for. Would they contract on their own?

They would have to go find somebody. They would find their own company and I would imagine whoever is the lowest provider, lowest rate. But it's anywhere from a four yard dumpster is a couple, well they're all a couple hundred dollars. Depending on the frequency. Depending on how often they're picked up, and that all goes into it.

Are we already starting to give those notices out?

We have not.

That'll be going out well before the end of the month? Yes. Well, they get a six-month grace period.

We're trying to give them like six months. Go ahead and send notices out. They could cancel their service anytime with us if they can go out and find another provider. Gotcha.

So just so that I'm clear again, because there seems to be some... angst or controversy about this whole thing because I see two competing sets of representatives here. The initial bid process Waste Pro was lower, you decided that you wanted to remove the dumpster service from the legacy apartment complexes, that made Waste Connections the low bidder, is that correct?

That is correct.

And then that's when Waste Pro approached you about this quote unquote stair step program?

I don't remember the specific timing, they may have approached us with the stair step prior to the staff's decision to, to end the legacy program for dumpsters.

And what made you? What was the thought process about saying, Well, let's take let's take out the apartment complex dumpsters to from what I've seen, and I would want to confirm this with the finance director.

They were Most of these apartment complexes were just being charged the regular residential rate. They were not being charged what someone with a dumpster service should be charged.

And it's staff's recommendation that we contract with Waste Connections for the next service contract? That's correct.

So under this, we would just be providing carts to, I guess, is it homes and businesses?

It is homes and businesses. A business, I believe, in our ordinance code of laws states that they can request up to three carts for a business.

Okay. How do they pay for that?

Currently, I am not 100% sure. I believe moving forward, they would be charged for three carts if that's what they chose. Okay.

Is that three total as in two garbage, one recycler, or three each?

It's not clear in the ordinance.

Is that something we need to clean up?

I feel like that's probably pretty important to know.

Yeah. We're cleaning up. That's the reason we're asking for, like, the way we're changing things and wanting to do things in the future. We've performed, like, audits of all these accounts. We found the issue with the dumpster. Pretty much the citizens were subsidizing the apartment, so we didn't think that was fair, so we're trying to do the right thing, say, hey, businesses, you can go out on your own. To go back to Jim's point, I believe, I think it's important, Jonathan, that when the bid was structured, really we wanted to make sure it was like an apples to apples kind of bid, but we had Waste Pro that was already our provider. And they had our cans. They didn't have to buy cans for this project. And all the other companies had to buy cans to have the city of Belmont as the provider. And so we knew that that's how we needed to structure the bid so we can get like a fair bid.

That's fair.

And then given that WastePro was our existing provider, there was no issues on why we wanted to like remove Waste Pro and hire Waste Connection, we're trying to think about it from the perspective of what's the best price for the citizens at the end of the day. And so we went to Waste Pro to say, hey, if we, you're already the provider, give us a quote given that you already have the cans in place. And so we gave WastePro the opportunity trying to work through that process with us to say, you know, is it fair that you'd have to give us a quote just to put new cans down when everybody has cans already. So we kind of worked through the process with WastePro. WastePro gave us that alternate price that Jonathan included inside the council packet. And it was compared to Waste Connection's bid. Even in the meeting with Waste Connection, I asked Waste Connection, I was like, I can't do my job as a city manager if I'm not asking you, is this the lowest price that you can give us for your services? And Waste Connection confirmed that the bid that they gave was their lowest price. And so therefore, we know that Waste Connection had their lowest price, we work with Waste Pro on an alternate price, given that they had our service. And we didn't think that was fair to for them just to change out all the cans just be changing out cans. And so it came down to the numbers at the end of the day. And that's what we're presenting today is that we're basing it on hard facts, we've got two companies that do good service, they Both are qualified. I'm sure you check Waste Pros references. They've done an excellent job in other places, but at the end of the day, we had to look at it and make a decision that was based on that alone.

That's a good point, because you're right. Waste Connections is going to be providing what, free on loan equipment, or the trash cans, and we already have that capital outlay in the city, and you're only, they're 40,000 something odd higher. I guess I don't understand that. That's a good call out.

We tried to be as fair as we could like both vendors, you know, we're, we got an existing service, we had to put it out because our contract was expiring, we want to get the best rate. And so this is kind of the process we used to get to the point where jobs and they recommended waste connection. So just a little bit more had been more than that.

The alternate, you know, so after considering everything, including the alternate proposal from waste Pro, it's still the recommendation to use waste connections, right? Okay. Yes, sir.

It would be helpful to know if this contract were approved with Waste Connections if the existing contract with Waste Pro does include any kind of collection fee to come around and pick up the carts or if there's any I don't imagine if this isn't in the contract that there's any termination.

That's what I was curious about any costs out the back door.

Yeah because if we had these cans to begin with when they took over are we going to be charged for them to go and collect them?

I don't think so because we've been paying for them all along. It's a fee that we have incurred to buy those cans over a period of time, just like we're going to probably be buying these cans from Waste Connection over a period of time. It's kind of factored into the price. We can go back. We'll definitely go back and look at WastePro's contract. If we feel that there's anything in there that we didn't plan for or budget for that's going to throw a monkey wrench into the machine, then would probably stop the process and bring it back to y'all for consideration. But we do want to be fair to Waste Connection as well.

And to the residents, because it sounds like we need, you know, there's not going to be much lead time.

Yeah. That's the point of us putting it on this agenda, so that we can give Waste Connection an appropriate amount of time to do the things they need to, so they're not like failing to begin with, and we have a lot of complaints and sufficient notice for us to get that notice out.

Because it is this is what we're doing first right now, right? Another thought from maybe a technical perspective. So like, let's say that a business today has three cans with this agreement. I mean, do we have inventory and know how many people because what if they just get to like, are they going to have to go out of their way to disrupt their normal day to day to then call and try to get hassle of getting three or two whatever it is you know what I mean like is it a one-for-one replacement let's say I'm a business owner I got three cans I'm gonna get three cans or am I gonna get two and now I'm gonna have to call to get that additional can more than likely they will need to let us know that they have more than one can this is what I mean like a conversion disruption right because this is gonna be time on on residents and or businesses to be able to across the community to do that

I think that's to Jason's point. If we can get that notice out early enough, start making plans for that.

Well, then when they call in and say, I need three cans, can we use that as an opportunity to make sure we're collecting the revenue we should be getting on those?

Who do they call specifically? Waste Connections or us? They will call us.

They will call us.

Do we have the staffing to be able to, across the community, take on all of those calls, document who's getting what and who's not?

I mean, we've just got to be realistic with ourselves. Well, it's also going to be the businesses, right? Because the residents aren't connected.

Well, some probably would. I'm just trying to make sure.

I know there are multiple businesses that have multiple cans.

Right.

Oh, yeah. I'm sure most.

I'm sure pharmacy does.

I can promise y'all there's going to be hiccups. Yeah. With any change, there's going to be. There's going to be some people that probably don't get the can that they had ordered in the past. We'll have to work through that. Any kind of changeover between 8,000 residents, there's going to be a few bumps in the road at the end of it, I think. But we'll do our best we can to like, send it out, like Jonathan saying, you know, pass that information up. If there's a change, if we deliver something or waste connection, deliver something that's different, work with waste connection, I'm sure they'll be jumping right on it, given it for possibly a new customer for them.

So and to Mark's point, for the three cans that was not specified as three total, or three each for waste and recycling, right?

Yeah, you said there's some ambiguity as far as like, correct.

And then we're going to clean that up.

Yeah, we need to invest in the city side, not with waste connections. Right. So I understand it's just it's kind of ambiguous. Okay. Yeah. So we can address that. I have to worry about any changes in the contract.

No, and again, I'm not calling this out to bring it down. I think we just need to be very cognizant and aware. And if I'm watching this or reading these minutes, I want to make sure that our council is asking these questions because it's going to be disruptive, right?

Yeah, I know staff has put a lot – there's been a lot of back and forth with this specific issue. So I think staff is – trying to make their way through to the best resolution. I don't think any of us want a nightmare scenario with trash cans.

No, because if your route got missed once, we know all the feedback we received then.

Oh, yes.

And that's fair. You know, that's fair. It is.

I mean, it is. You don't have your trash picked up, and that's important.

But it was an issue with Kramerton, where they had blue cans with green lids and green cans with blue lids and everybody was confused is that going to be an issue here where we get two new cans and they're multi-colored and nobody knows which one's which we thought about getting red red red cans there you go yes that's fair that's fair i just see it in the recommendation um i don't really know the color of the cans that y'all are proposing do y'all know the color of the cans

Well that I would associate Carolina blue with trash Strike that from the record From the early exit deacons

Say again? I was asking if WastePro was, representatives with WastePro was here tonight.

I believe there is, yes. Would you like to?

I mean, would it be prudent to have them up and ask them questions as well?

If you have questions, I'll be happy to call them up.

Yeah.

All right.

We have a representative from WastePro. Please join us up here.

Good evening. Good evening. My name is Chip jingles. I'm the regional vice president of the Carolinas.

Thank you for joining us. I think we have some questions for you.

Okay. I think the one right off the top of the bat, I mean, again, if we're looking at the comparison and cost, because I just want to make sure from a council level, I understand this miles brings up a really good point. With a capital outlay that ways connections going to have to do that you don't have to do why are you guys expensive?

Well, That's a tricky question. So when we look at the bid results and the numbers, I know it's very complicated, right? And there are a lot of things to consider. When we look at it, we feel like we're still the low bid. We do. but I understand the staff's calculations, and the irony of it is, too, that we know we were definitely the low bid with the commercial, right, when we had the commercial. Another irony in it, and that is I think our team was actually maybe even brought up the idea of eliminating the commercial, because we consider ourselves partners. of this community you know so we're not just always looking to see how we can make an extra dollar or something like that so several things to get back to your question number one we don't really feel like we are the higher bidder but we understand those are the calculations so we we understand that And if you look at our pricing, Waste Connections had a very aggressive recycle number in their bid, which I haven't seen probably in like 15 years, so it's very low. So I mean, that's just not something that we're able to do. So I think that that's the difference in the numbers. Like you all noted, the numbers are very close. It depends on how you look at it. I like looking at it with the commercial.

Do you know, and you may not, and if not, that's okay, but typically when you are coming to the end of a contract with another municipality that you service, if there's a change of providers away from WastePro, what is the process of the can collection? And is there any charge or expense to the municipality for the pickups of those cans?

yeah so i don't know about a charge i mean uh that's something the only thing i know on the contract you could still do an extension and um let's see another concern would be just the timing of everything so you know uh historically we always like to have a little bit of a time a little bit of a leeway for such a transition uh you know i was listening to waste connections say that you know they could need by june 22nd i mean you'd have some residents getting their last recycle pickup the week prior so you know you know time is really of the essence there that's that's what i would know about the transition but we haven't had an opportunity yet to speak about that

But I guess in that example though, like to the week prior, because that's where I was trying to get to, because my concern is any lapse in service, but technically WastePro would be responsible to continue to pick that up the week prior to June 30th, because that would be under the term of our agreement.

Yes, yes, we will pick up through the end of the contract. What I'm noting is the fact that you'd have some residents we have a and B week recycling.

You're saying you got the trash under you guys and then recycling under connections.

No, I'm saying that we would some residents would possibly get their last service prior to June 22. That's what I'm saying.

All for the recycling. Yeah.

But if the schedule stays consistent, then it goes.

What he's saying is you get your last recycling June 20th, but you don't get the can from Waste Connections to put your other recycling in until maybe the following week. So there's one of your hiccups.

Do you have any other questions for WastePro?

Thank you. But you do you do collect your cans, right?

Yeah, you're gonna go like that.

Can I speak for just a moment? Yeah, sure. You know, because for me, I'm somewhat of a local guy. I grew up in Gastonia. I have family and friends right here in Belmont. My stepmom is right off of Hawthorne. So it's been an honor and a privilege for us to come and service your community. I take it personal, you know, making sure that we do a good job here. I joined the Carolinas for a second time at WastePro back in 2018. And so when I came in 2018, we had some service issues, and we got those things rectified, and I'd like to say that we've done a good job since then. You also know that we're really a leader in the municipal market here in the local area. We have over 22 contracts in this area, just in this area alone. And you can use any of them for reference at any time. So we are proud of what we do. And the thing that separates us from our competition, like you said, they're very qualified and I'm sure they do a great job in the towns that they service, but what I like to talk about is the Waste Pro difference, and that's our people. So you can get a comparable staff, a comparable trucks, and all of that, but you won't get me, and you won't get my team. And I'll say that I think that my team is the best. And that starts with our leadership from the top down. So we're owned by a privately held Mr. John Jennings, And our company is good and bad. Anybody can contact our CEO on up at any time. So we're a little bit different from the larger privately held companies, and we take a great deal of pride in the service that we do, and we appreciate it. All right, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, I have one more question actually for Waste Connections.

Sure, Waste Connections. Do you mind coming back to the podium?

So this is one of the things that was pointed out, I think, in our early analysis of this was there was a huge savings, if you will, in what you had quoted for recycle per unit versus Waste Pro. In fact, it's more than 50% less. Can you expand on that, on how you're able to offer those recycling services at such a...

lesser cost than what we are currently paying right i mean but to look at it just on that line item is difficult okay so when you look at trash you could also say that we're a dollar and a quarter higher per month than the waste probit We have carts. That cost is in there. In this revised pricing that Waste Pros provided, it's not. The other thing I'll mention about the carts is the carts are new. Your carts, as far as I could tell, are about 10 years old, because I followed your contract since I came to the Carolinas, and I believe the last time this was up for bid, the same kind of offer was made to use the existing capital, which is fine, but we're providing brand new carts. So that's that's a benefit to the town over something that's been in place for a number of years. I didn't mean to go off topic for your question.

But that makes sense. But I mean, on the recycling topic, and I don't know how much you know, you know, the technology that perhaps some of your competitors are using, but are there any advantages that waste coat waste connections brings to the table in terms of recycling, that can keep your costs even, you know, factor in the higher cost for solid waste collection? that you bring to the table.

In your contracts, so basically our services are just collection. In other markets, we do own and operate MRFs, recycling facilities, that have a lot of that new technology. I think we're lucky in this market that Mecklenburg County MRF has upgraded and continues to upgrade with a lot of those types of air classifiers, optical sorters, robotics. I was on a Zoom call when we met with your staff, and I mentioned, because I watched an earlier video, there were some questions amongst you regarding recycling. Was it worth it? What are some of the other communities doing? How much is recycled? I heard all those questions. And I've been in the industry over 35 years. So on average, recycling's 75% is usually recyclable. 25% of your tons is typically residue. And that's kind of a common number that's out there regarding communities. If you do a really good job from an educational standpoint, you might get that number up to 80%. versus, you know, another community that does no education that could have saved 50%. So it varies all over the board. But there's no easy answer to that. We don't have a silver bullet that says our costs are we looked at as a whole.

So it'd be your opinion that recycling is definitely worth the cost?

Yes. And you would, and again, a lot of the topic tonight dealt around public disruption. That would be a big disruptor for this community if you've done it for however many years and you take it away.

Yeah, but it's been an ongoing discussion, so it's good to get your perspective on some of those numbers that you mentioned.

How much, this might be one, maybe just ballpark, but how much does a can cost, just one can?

Roughly, I would say around about $60. About $60 to $65. Okay.

And then you guys probably amortize that over a couple of years because it's free on loan. But still, I would have anticipated the other deal to be about a million dollars left, right? Because I get I'm hung up on now what you were saying miles, because that's a really good call out to try to make this an apples to apples comparison in regards to what is the the taxpayers getting?

Right?

The other questions for waste connection?

No. Thank you. One clarification. I'm sorry, sir, what we're asking regarding on the original bid. When this was originally bid, the low bid, and if Jonathan, I mean, our calculation showed us clearly it was a low bid. It wasn't until the request for additional or alternate pricing came up that, I mean, it was, I don't even think it was close.

Yeah, we have, it's in the, if you look at the bid tabulations that is in your packet,

point of clarification. That's all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys.

I don't want to belabor the point. But it is confusing to some degree. And it's very close. But I'm just going to throw out my suggestion. And I will absolutely lean on on you all your opinion as well you know as a resident I like my trash picked up and that's important to me but as a mayor what's important to me is being good stewards of the residents money and leaning on our staff that is way deeper in this than I am And so my personal feeling on this is because I can't delineate or see into the future and know what's gonna happen with these and whether we're gonna have these hiccups or not, I wanna default to being good stewards of the money and leaning on staff to tell us what they feel like is the best situation. So that's my two cents on it.

Is this pretty much fully loaded after five years? Or is there any like negotiations that would come in during what space we go with waste connections to drive this cost up any higher? Or is this pretty much locked in from a contract perspective?

It's a five year contract. I don't know how the in language would be. But I'm sure that we could work it out in five years if we didn't want to go out to bid again to possibly renegotiate a contract without one of the bid.

Well, there's different provisions you could put in there. You could put in like an exclusive renegotiation window or right of first refusal or an option.

Extinction for two years or something like that. We don't have the contract in front of us yet.

I do believe there's a massive start difference about a million dollars right but like what I don't want is we get sold on this and all of a sudden the pricing due to surcharge or or some type of what would you call inflationary type of hit like force majeure would drive this up to the city You know, that's the only thing I'm worried about.

Right, right, right. But, I mean, that's sort of the whole point of the force majeure clause. I mean, it's something that you don't anticipate like an act of God.

Well, you don't always have to put a force majeure price in.

Well, you don't have to put it in, and you can negotiate what's considered a force majeure event.

You can put parameters, indices, and stuff like that. That's the call-out I'm saying. I just don't want this to be unchecked, which I'm not saying it would be. And then we just get this massive price increase.

I think the motion, one of the motions, or the suggested motion here, is to allow the city manager to negotiate and enter into that contract. And it can absolutely have a preface that says, listen, you've got to look at the exit of the existing contract and make sure that there's no type of charge that we're going to hit prior to entering into this new contract. I think that would...

But, I mean, there's also something, because I remember having this discussion with Parks, and this was before I was even on city council, I was sitting in the audience, and I, as a professor who teaches contracts, I was going crazy because Waste Pro came, I think sometime in 2018, and said, oh, our costs are going up, we'd like to amend the contract and raise the rates, and you know, that's not typically you don't have to do that because it's something called the pre-existing duty rule that they were already they wanted basically to renegotiate the contract and for us to pay more without them giving us anything in return basically performing the same services for an increased price and I talked to parks after the meeting and said that's a pre-existing duty rule you don't have to accept that amendment so you know that's sort of the thing if the contract sets forth a price that's sort of the risk that both parties take. We run the risk that maybe we've overpaid or there's some hiccups, but they run the risk that if their costs go up so that it doesn't turn out to be a good deal for them, well, they're locked, as you said, locked and loaded. and they can come and say, oh, well, our costs are going up. Can we please increase our rates? And we can say, no, we don't elect to do that, and we're not required to do that because there's no consideration for this. So, you know, to some extent we're protected, but, you know, that's sort of... the nature of any contract is we think we're getting a better deal. They think they're making a good deal. One of us might be proven wrong, but that's sort of the risk anyone takes in entering any contract.

I'm just bringing it up to potentially hedge ourselves and protect ourselves during that type of negotiation, right? Particularly if you think about like the Iranian crisis and stuff like that, fuel surcharge, like I just want us to be protected, right?

And we, you know, but I mean, there's nothing, You can protect yourself as best you envision under the circumstances, but I can't sit here, I don't think parks can sit here, that we can come up with something that will insulate us from absolutely anything that could come up.

I'm not suggesting, I'm just saying that, calling it out, right? Because something just doesn't make sense to me from a math perspective unless we're just getting overcharged by Waze Pro, right? That's just my two cents.

And I do wish, I've been looking while this interesting discussion has been going on, I've been looking for the old, or for the current contract. I found our approval of it, but I can't find the contract itself because it would be helpful to just understand what the end game provisions are in that contract so that we could be 100% sure that there's no unexpected termination costs, but I can't find it, so.

I'm sure it's somewhere but I haven't seen it so I can't speak to whether there's yeah I think what what I would do again is if we're going to be considering whether we're going to essentially approve miles to make this contract then in that motion can we not say to entering or negotiating that contract, there's a review of the exit provisions with our WastePro agreement and assuming there are no unknowns that are going to materially change the agreement that we assume that we're going into, then Miles would move forward with that. I think that's fair. Yeah. Jim, you see anything from a legal standpoint on that that would not work? I think that would work.

So it's like a conditional approval.

Well, in a way. I mean, that at least gives us the opportunity to look.

Well, to at least be informed. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's fine.

Now, what happens if Miles comes, oh, there's a 20% surcharge.

Then we're going to be talking about this again next month.

On June the 15th, this will be on the workshop. Yeah.

Do we have to approve the new contract either way?

not if you direct staff to work with our city attorney to, which is probably I think that's what we did five years ago, which is why it's not in the agenda.

If we we can always do that. I mean, just parks, you know, you'll work a little extra on this one. And it sounds like if that's the direction the council decides to go.

If we do decide to go with waste connections, is there a way for us to prioritize the people that would be negatively hit with this recycle window? Like, is there a way for us? Let's say we decided to go with waste connections? Is there a way for us to get recycling bins to those individuals earlier, so that they're not left with, you know, having to stack recycling in their garage or something? I don't even know. Is there a way to prioritize that?

That's a good point.

And maybe to make sure we got like the we got the I just don't want I don't want everybody to I don't want that to not be considered.

And maybe one way to mitigate that is you mandate that the very first week if the waste connections contract were to be approved, that you mandate that the very first week needs to be a recycle week. right because that way those folks that did have theirs recycled say what would that be a week of the 15th or that's yeah well isn't every week a recycle week no every other right but for somebody for somebody for somebody somewhere they were getting a recycle truck charlie's saying is like we know the communities yeah we know their schedule can we prioritize the people that would be left without I don't think the whole theme is minimize the disruption. Right.

Yeah, we're either going to be the A or the B.

All right.

Yeah. I'm gonna hold your feet to the fire here. Yes.

But I mean, you have you and staff has heard that directive. Yes. So you said not to belabor the point all not to belabor the point I move that we direct city staff to enter into a contract with Waste Connections for our solid waste removal and recycling service. In connection with that, they review the existing contract and notify us of any applicable termination provisions in that contract that might increase costs and that we phase out within the next six months our collection of solid waste from these legacy apartment complexes as advised by staff motion by Jim second second by Jason all in favor any opposed unanimously thank you thank you for that Jonathan appreciate that and everyone's efforts on that

All right, well, that will move us on to agenda item C4, the McLean property naming in honor of Richard Turner. And we have Jason. If you want to come on up here. Good evening.

Good evening.

How are you? Good. Don't have a presentation, but I do want to direct you some to some documents that how did I get there? Well then that would be a presentation. The documents in your agenda packet, section five in the naming policy, we have met all of those requirements. There was an official application, I believe by Charlie, and we presented it to the advisory board it was advertised in the gazette legal paper twice in a 60-day period the board went back and approved it we had no other applicants during that time the board went back and approved it and we bring it to you

Alright, well this seems like, I had no idea the process to name a part, the way it was so long, there were so many steps. So hats off to you and staff for getting that done and having all the notices done already, and it was, you buttoned it up for us nicely, so I appreciate that. Is there any discussion on this?

what's the advisory board's like thoughts for this project are they the park itself I mean are they thinking timelines or suggested timelines that they'd like to kick up the council on what they want to do with this they're certainly interested in the project we haven't talked about timelines but there have been discussions about possibilities okay gotcha is there currently any funding provided was this one of the ones that a developer was gonna

They were giving the land.

Just the land for this one. I think you're thinking of a different one where there's already a design. There's no design for this one yet. Okay. So we would like to move forward on that at some point soon, but we're not there yet.

It's a flat piece of land, right?

Right.

It's just an odd shape. It's a big rectangle, isn't it?

It comes to a point where they're doing the commercial down on the end of close to drift now. Well, I think it's great.

Lots of people I've talked to also think it's great. Absolutely.

Mark, do you want to make a motion?

I will move to approve the naming of the park after Mayor Richard Turner.

Seconded by Mark, seconded by Alex. All in favor? Any opposed? All right.

And I do just want to add, too, I did talk to Marie ahead of this. She unfortunately couldn't make it. She's at the beach celebrating her birthday. Yeah, happy late birthday. But she did want to pass on her thanks to the council and, of course, the board as well for doing this.

Thank you again, Jason. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Moving right along. Agenda item C5. Let's see. Let me get to it. Bear with me for one second. All right. Agenda item C5. The parking lot leases Freddy Field, Crescent Park, Epigant Park, Imperial Mill Street. So Miles, are you heading this one up?

Yes, sir. All right. Thank you, Mayor, members of council. We've had various discussions about these three parking lots that we lease from Belmont Land Investment over the past couple months when we go through the budget process. We received notice from the company, which is Belmont Land, which is Bill Costarfen and Jess Strombold, those two folks that work there, on November 18th, 2025, that they were looking into the leases and the market rates that they currently provide the city with. We did meet. They sent us a letter. Parks and I met with the folks on many occasions. You can see the layout, how many times we've met and gone back and forth with them. They started out the conversation and carried it through, stating that they really wanted to work with the city, that they didn't want us to have any negative thoughts towards them, that this is a process that they had to go through as a company. And they... hired a third party appraisal firm, which I shared with you all those three appraisals by email. They're pretty large documents. So I didn't want to put these in the council packet because they would cut a tree down just to print them all out. And then they shared those appraisals with Parks and I and came back with what they thought was their new rates to the city and it's based on the land value. And it kinda carries from there as far as how they get into the calculations. The first sheet that they gave us is included in your council packet. It's page, that page 159 of 177, where they go through and kinda it starts at the bottom and it shows what the appraisal lease rates are. Then that carries towards the top. column where they had proposed $165,817 for these three lots in next fiscal year. Parks and I took some time and looked through the appraisals and how they came up with that amount. and then met back with them again and said, hey, we noticed inside your appraisals that you chose the highest value of rent percent of cost. That table inside the appraisal was expressed in like a 5%, 6%, and 7% cost. They had proposed the 7% cost to us And I asked some questions and then I proposed our own offer to say, hey, why don't we use the lowest percent instead of the highest percentage? And that shows on the next table, which is page 160 of 177 in the council packet. And really how it works is that they appraised Dwight Freddie Field, for example. The land value at Dwight Freddie Field was $2,710,000. And you multiply that by 5% and it gives you $135,500. They also provided a 50% discount when they initially proposed that 7% cost. So I did the math using the same 50% discount, which gave you amount of $67,750 for Dwight Freddie Field. So you can apply that same math to each each proposed parking lot that they want to lease to us Dwight Frady Imperial lot in the Gantt parking lot. And we use that dollar figure, given that we went back to the company, and they agreed to those amounts. And so that's the amount that we plugged into the budget. And that's kind of what led to the point of really the last paragraph inside the council packet where they initially wanted to have three new leases to the city. There's a sinkhole that's occurring on the Imperial Mill parking lot. It's a pretty significant sinkhole. It has a creek that runs kind of parallel to mcleod street there's a pipe that contains the creek there's a failure evidently in the pipe which is causing a sinkhole and so they decided that they just want to continue to move on a month-to-month lease for that particular site until they can do some more due diligence and determine what's going on and see how much money it would cost and the liability if they leave that pipe like it is. And so they just needed more time to continue on with that one. So they do want to propose the Dwight Freddie field for a three year lease with an automatic one year renewal, which is attachment the very one of the attachments inside the council packet. And then they also want to do Gantt parking lot with a one year lease with an automatic one year renewal. Like I say, all those amounts are factored in to the budget process. And then this weekend, Councilman Heffron looked at the actual lease agreements and made various suggestions to them for corrections or edits. I sent that to them this morning. They agreed to all the edits, and they agreed sent the red line drawings and the clean versions of the document here. And I've got a copy for each one of you if y'all like to look at those. One of the points that Jess made was that in I'm gonna have to look it up on my phone. So I apologize to up on here, but The one particular item that Jim had mentioned was item 16D. They do state that yes, that interpretation is correct. And then item 17, they said yes, the interpretation is correct, either party can terminate. So item 16D, I think, was probably the one that gave Councilman Heffern the most heartburn, given that it stated that if we had an issue with one lease, then it kinda carries forward to the other two leases that we have. So we posed that question to Jess and Bill, and you can see from the answer on the email that I got that they would like to keep it as is there. So that's kinda how the processes work. The spreadsheets were provided. Appraisals were provided. The new leases I have here, if y'all would like to look at them. Y'all might have more questions for me, so I'll turn it over, and Parks can help me. He's been along the way the entire time through the process, so if y'all have any questions.

I have some questions and observations. On the table where they derive the percent rent as a percent of the, the value of the land. So I'm not an appraiser, obviously, but it's not obvious to me that, for example, a Take 5 oil change in Burlington, North Carolina, or a Wawa in Tifton, Georgia, has any meaningful relationship with land values in Belmont. I also thought it was curious, and I asked Miles earlier about our existing relationships with the Norfolk Southern property and I'm not actually sure who Alliance Real Estate is, but the other parking lot that we rent from Alliance Real Estate 3 Inc. Neither of those properties were considered in the appraisal and they are also both significantly lower than what is proposed. I calculated at an annualized rate the cost per square foot on the Norfolk Southern property is 14 cents and on the Alliance Real Estate property it is 29 cents. The proposed amounts on Mills Street is 46 cents, Frady Field is 44 cents, and the property out by Gantt Park is 70 cents. Now, I understand that the Norfolk Southern and Alliance real estate leases were signed in 2017, so those 14 and 29 cent values are probably a little low for the current market. I don't know that they've tripled since then, but just as far as nitpicking at the uh the rates they do seem a little generous and i don't know that i necessarily have a whole lot of confidence in the appraisal that they provided us the other thing is as far as the terms go the issue the issue with the way that all the leases appear to be written is that after the initial term expires we're basically on 90-day shot clock again so that either party can terminate the agreement with 90 days notice which to me makes the additional terms basically meaningless and we're basically back to where we are now so I don't know that the three two and one year terms that are proposed really i mean we're just going to be right back here again in one two and three years and then for frady field in particular i think it's worth having a conversation about what our long-term vision for that property is i think that the prior arrangement where we basically making a nominal payment for the property made sense. It was nice of them to do that. I certainly appreciate their public spiritedness in doing so, but if we're going to be in a situation where we're expected to pay market rates for that piece of property, I don't know that it makes sense to rent a park in perpetuity. So I would personally maybe prefer us start thinking about how we obtain control of that property permanently. I don't know that.

As I recall, there was a proposal within the past year by which we could have gotten that part for nothing.

For nothing is not accurate. I wasn't on council at the time, but I'm not necessarily looking to re-litigate that either. I'm just mentioning that. No, the point is well taken, but I think that, because I actually ran some numbers here, so if you look at, even if you take their $2.7 million value of the property, which again, my opinion for what it's worth, seems a little high. At the rate that they're proposing, and you assume the 3% escalation that they've built into the lease, assuming nothing changes on that, and they just increase the rent 3% every year, and don't kick us out, we would pay $2.7 million over about 2526 years. So that, I mean, we've got funds available to potentially, I mean, that's not a big lift for us, I think, financially. What have we already spent on that park? I think the existing lease is $6,800 a year.

No, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, as far as improvements. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, well, that was... Because there was the basketball court. Did we do the lights? Yeah.

Not with the new light contract. No, that wasn't part of the new one, was it? No. Yeah.

Okay. But we've thought about doing it, and part of the reason we haven't is because of the uncertainty about... Because we don't own it, right? Right. Yeah, which I think is, kind of goes back to my other point, is if we're going... If it's a park that we want to remain a park forever, it's hard to make investments in something, meaningful investments in that property if we don't own it.

Mark, to your point... I mean, under the renegotiated contract, we're not paying market rate, we're paying essentially about 50%. Well, assume that they're, I don't know, and by your math, if it's right 25 years, I mean, if that's our break even, you know, I mean, I don't know, to me, that's still pretty steep discount. It's gonna take us 25 years before we pay in the full value of the land, you're saying the appraised value, right?

What did you say the prices per square foot was?

Because I'm looking, is this, this is the current as it sits with the gray box, like what you've negotiated?

What page is that? 160. Well, I'm seeing a base rent per square foot at 36 cents for Dwight Frady, 38 cents for Imperial, and 40 cents for Gantt. That's right.

That's what you've negotiated.

That's what's currently on the table, right?

That's the rate we negotiated. Right.

That's not what they came, no, they came to the plate with twice that much.

Yeah, they came with 50%, I mean 50 cent, 53 cent, and 56 cent.

Yeah. Yeah, this, you know, here's the thing. Private property is a thing. You know, and that's the struggle is deal with maintaining private property rights, of course, that everybody loves. We want to own our things. And then to also be able to use things for community use.

And that's a, there's a delicate balance there.

And 50%, we could talk about the appraisals all day, whether they're high or low or wherever they are, I argue appraisals all day long for businesses, not for real estate, for businesses. And everybody's idea of what something's worth is different. So I think it's fair to be questionable about the appraisal rate or appraisal amounts and how those really, I think more than anything, it's gonna be used to get us into the ballpark of a rental rate that they're comfortable with, and then ultimately that we, I don't like to say we, but that Parks and Miles was able to get a pretty steep reduction on. And what's the onus behind that? I don't know, is it the fact that it is, they were appraised high, or is it the fact that they're trying to do something you know, trying to give us a discount because they're team players. What was the end result there? I don't know what the real push behind this was, but what comes to my mind is, It's parking that's currently used, right? We're used to using it, and that's the problem, is we've got it now, and the takeaway hurts, and that's hard. And trying to ease into that, I think, is the hardest part. And doing that in a way that is fiscally responsible is very important.

But to some degree, having parking at our parks is also a responsible thing to have as a city, too.

I'm not saying that I have the answer here. What are you telling them? I'm just telling you that at the end of the day, there's a 50%, I understand that there was a value that went up and we had that sticker shock, right? That we were all kind of living comfortably with the current existing agreement. But as Jim well knows, agreements have a termination point. They die and you have to renegotiate them. and that's the world we're living in. Mark, to your point, the one thing that I have heartburn about is having to redo this consistently.

To that point, and I will say that I don't understand necessarily why these agreements were written the way they were because it's like there's two termination provisions. There's section two and there's section 17. And one says how you terminate it, you terminate it, what, within 30 days. prior to the expiration of the term, or within 30 days prior to expiration of each renewal term. And then section 17 says, well, following the initial term, lessee and lessor shall each have the option to terminate this lease upon 90 days advance written notice. So the question I asked, which according to Miles they confirmed is, At the end of the initial term, either party can terminate 30 days before or 90 days after. But the way I read Section 17 of both leases is that 90-day provision only applies to the 90 days after the initial term. And if it renews, then it renews for a year, and the only termination provision then would be up to 30 days prior to the end of the renewal term. So I don't necessarily... I think this has been made more complicated than it needs to be, but the way I read it is that it's 90 days after the initial term, but after that, it's not a continuing 90 days. It would be good for that year renewal term, subject to any notice of termination up to 30 days prior to the end of that year. But I don't know why you would... I don't know. I had to read that several times to understand how they played consistently with each other. But I don't think it would be...

I think we'd have a little bit more... Once you're in the year, the year's protected, so to speak.

Once you're in the year, you're protected for that. Well, you're protected for the three years with the three-year field. And then assuming that you survive... this 120 day window 30 days prior and 90 days after, then you're good for a year. And you're good for each successive year, as long as any termination rights are exercised up to 30 days prior to the expiration of that year. If that makes sense. Yes. Clear as mud.

Yeah, that somewhat makes sense. Yeah, I think you're right on that.

But I mean, if it were up to If I were drafting that, I'd probably say all that in like one paragraph. I don't understand why you need to like flip back and forth for additional information.

Well, it sounds like they would be open to that because they did say that your knee jerk was correct. That is the way that they assumed it to be. So I think we could clarify that if necessary.

I don't think they, they didn't make any suggested changes to the actual document itself to clarify it. So it is how she wrote it in that section 16. Yeah. Didn't change at all? Besides the leasee, I mean, there's a...

So we're gonna ask you this evening.

I have a question. What's that? For the equation here, you know, on 156, it talks about the market rent per year, then a 50% discount plus operating expenses. In that equation, who's doing the operating expenses?

We are.

Well, it's largely, I think, property taxes, insurance, and there's something else. We're the stormwater and the property taxes, so it's really basically the insurance.

Miles, were you saying earlier that item 16D that they did not agree to change that language regarding the Marks, is that a clause you're comfortable with, that cross-default?

I don't love it, but...

I don't either.

It's a 30-day cure, though, on it, right? Yeah. People show. I mean, why do you not see it independently? It is. Trust me, I saw it, and I was like, ugh. But at the end of that, I feel like it I would love to take it out if they would be open to taking it out, but it doesn't sound like they are. But that would give us a 30-day window to be able to secure anything that they notify us that we're in breach of. So, I mean, we'd have to sit around for 30 days and do nothing for that ultimate window.

Is it basically just not paying on time, though?

Well, you've got to look at the...

the four, there's a number of different areas, things that are considered default, obviously not paying is one, but I'm failing to pay any operating expenses, you know, insurance taxes. But just the fact that it's included in their tie it to the other leases that makes me a little Yeah, not not that we obviously defaulting but still have any other leases seems unusual with them. Yes.

Well, other than these, these are the only three that we have with Beaumont land. We have other leases, but not with Bill Allen.

Right. Well, can we not, as counsel, just, if that's uncomfortable, let them know it's uncomfortable for us and not agree to the terms and ask them to renegotiate it, right?

Yeah, we can say no.

I mean, this is a negotiation, not a final...

yeah because I personally I think the terms on these are way too short I mean they're the whole appraisals built around long-term leases and I don't know how you can call a one-year term we talked about the links of their because each one of them one was a one one was a two one was a three and so it's based on their

I can't speak for them, but what project they want to bring forward next. And so they don't want a long-term lease on a project that they plan to move forward with. And that's what I understand. Is that correct, Bart?

I'm assuming that they do not have a representative here tonight.

Is there anyone here from Belmont Land?

I have not seen anybody yet.

because looking at the Norfolk Southern Agreement, that's a five year term, or at least the initial term was five years. I mean, I think for the park, you've got to look at I mean, 10 years, at least. Oh, I mean, I don't know.

I don't know. We tried that early on.

Okay, we tried to extend them out longer. The projects are like they want to bring something back to the city. Yeah. No, they don't related to these, you know, related to the crescent.

Yeah, no, I understand that. But they don't currently have anything proposed, right? There's nothing kicking around on those. I don't know if they have anything in planning, but the other because it's been submitted. Yeah, because it just feels like we're kind of paying the penalty for them not.

Yeah, they indicated to us they had plans to resubmit.

Is there not a way to address that?

Has it been a year?

Yeah, just about.

mean for that one particular property we want to keep that as a part now regardless of what may be submitted in the future yeah maybe that's your justification for keeping a longer term on that lease versus maybe some of the others yeah yeah cuz I mean they gotta know that it's gonna be really hard for them to get anything approved they do anything to that particular property

So what do y'all propose? Do you want me to go back to them to say we wanted a three-year, four-year, five-year for Crescent Park? I mean, did you already?

We hammered them, yeah. Well, let's maybe, I mean, obviously, it sounds like negotiations are going to have to recommence, so maybe we should leave it a little bit more open-ended in terms of what we ask Miles and Parks to go back with, that, you know, so I'd frame it more in terms of we'd like a longer commitment for Frady Field. You know, if 10 years is a non-starter, I mean... All right, but we would like a longer term. That sounds like what, so we would like that. We don't like the sort of cross default clause in 16D. The termination provisions could be clearer.

Help me on the cross-default thing. I'm not contract savvy 100% for this type of stuff. Basically, if there was an issue at one of our agreements, they serve the right to default on the entire portfolio.

Yeah, so like if we, for whatever reason, we did something that would be considered a default on the Gantt Field parking lot.

Whether it's something just so small or whatever.

Well, it would have to be, yeah, I mean. non curable but regardless the point is that and it's not just pay because you think well if you paid the one why wouldn't you be able to pay the other it's default is not just failure to pay default can be so what you know we could be perfectly in compliance with Frady Field if something constitutes a default at Gantt and Not only is that a default of the Gantt lease, that's a default of the Frady Field lease, that's a default of the Mill Street lease, even though we've done nothing that would constitute a default of either of those two leases. The default was with the third lease, but it's considered a default of the other leases as well. Which, I mean, I don't like it. The more I thought about it, that's probably, you know, I think I've seen it before.

You're saying, let each one stand on its own.

Yeah, I mean, we're a sophisticated party.

The suggestion is that we ask them, each one needs to be individual, particularly if they want three different periods for each of the different properties. And are y'all okay with a one-year term for Gantt?

Yeah, very good, yeah. Like Jason made a good point, assuming we enter into additional lease agreements, then that would also be theoretically subsumed in that, too. So those are a few things, but if there's other thoughts, I would suggest not dictating specific terms, but saying we don't like this, we don't like that, and then Miles and Parks can go recommence negotiations. I feel like with the actual rates, I sort of lean to where Jason is. talk about appraisals and everything but I do think we're getting a pretty steep discount as it is so like I'm not as upset perhaps about notwithstanding the fact that obviously there's significant increases you know I understand and I think no matter how you calculate it we're still getting a pretty steep discount but I do agree with Mark I think about the length of the term and 16D also gives me enough pause that I will join others if they're not comfortable in agreeing to these at the moment.

So I'm hearing cross the fault, determination, and length of term.

Correct.

But if there's anything from the perspective... We're talking about length of term for all of them, right? Yeah.

Keeping it open to see, like, miles and parks. Yeah.

Because they have to... they have to do what we, they're our agents basically. So it's one thing for us to give open-ended instructions, but if we say 10 years and they come back and Belmont Land says no, well then they'd have to come back to us to get further authority. That's why I think we leave more wiggle room. But I mean, if there is anything with respect to the appraisals and any of those numbers, while I think I'm more with Jason, if others are less comfortable with that, you know, feel free to add that to the list of negotiating points.

Sorry, which one? The appraisal rates.

Because, I mean, I agree there's some, I will stipulate that, you know, the value of properties in Georgia and elsewhere.

I was going to say, perhaps that discount, you know, takes some of that into consideration.

Yeah, I would join with you, too. I think the discount is pretty heavy. Even if it is overvalued, with a 50% discount, surely we're in the the ballpark.

Yeah, but isn't that just putting lipstick on a pig type situation where it's like, hey, I'm giving you a 50% discount, but it really doesn't mean anything if your starting point is the inflate.

Well, I mean, would it matter if it was a 25 or 30% discount? Is that? I mean, if we say that's an actual incorporate some of these properties that aren't true comps for our area, yeah, you know, inflates the value by 25, 30%, and they're giving it to us for 25, 30% less than that, is that still a good deal for the city?

No, I don't know what the property in Georgia is comparable to.

Well, you mentioned some of the per square foot rates in your calculations. Yeah. I mean, they weren't 2x or 3x, but they're, well.

I guess they were. They were.

They were based on the 2017 negotiations. Yeah, they're based on 2017 rates.

Yeah. I mean, it looks, based on what they paid for their appraisal, the appraisal is $1,500. I mean, is that worth? I mean, I guess it kind of depends on how comfortable we are with the numbers, but...

You're in real estate all day every day. What's your opinion on that?

Yeah. And the comps that they use surely is not to get rid of part.

I wasn't happy with the comps. But the principal on the other side of the table said, when he looked at the appraisals, quote, I remember he said, these are too bad. And That's when the 50% came in.

Then I think there was another pullback because they're still too high.

But Miles and I talked early on. He didn't think it was worth, you tell me if you think I'm misquoting you, that he didn't think it was worth spending the city money to... get other prices because these are even though they're cops or somewhere else, these are professionals that, you know, they don't have a wide swing in what they could Yeah. No, I think that's right.

I mean, I think our is one of the biggest appraisal companies like around here, even though they're working for the other party. I think they have a professional commitment to do the right thing when they give us an appraisal, no matter who they work for. It's kind of like an architect engineer or something like that. You're professional, you need to do your job. So I mean, that that was my opinion was that we take their information that they found through the appraisal process. And I think that was mentioned when you called that out, maybe at the other business item. Yeah. That we'd go ahead, since we've already got one, I didn't want to go down the path of spending another, what's that, $4,500 to do one. Might get the same results.

Can someone remind me when the current lease is expired?

It's at the end of the month. The one expired, we did an extension on the imperial lots. We're month to month on that.

Frady, I think, is just 90-day notice.

Yeah.

They've given us notice already. So we want that we were shooting for July 1 execution. Yeah. And we worked with Belmont land when they went through this process because they were going to be more aggressive to propose the numbers like mid year last year and I was like, hey, just don't do that work through us through the budget process so we can we can factor it into the budget. So they've extended it out to July 1. And that's kind of how we're leading up to this meeting, trying to get at least you all information in time. We have one more meeting in the month of June that hopefully Jess and Bill can look through these items to see if they would make any suggestions. If they don't, I'll bring it back. If they do, hey, that's great. Bring those back, too.

All right, let me make a suggestion. I want to make sure everybody's heard on this, but I also don't want to get too long on it. So I like your suggestion, go back, open it. You're going back anyway. You're going back to the trough. So when you do, I like your suggestion, leave it open-ended. So I guess the question that we really need to decide is, when we send miles and parts back, are we going to add renegotiating the rates, or are we not? We're definitely going to add the removal, hopefully removal across the default. We're going to hopefully extend the terms. We're going to ask for that.

Cleaning up the termination clause.

cleaning up the termination clause. So those are like no brainers. We got those going back for sure. Are we going to add a renegotiation of the rate or are we not? Because I think that's really where we're at.

You should say simplifying the termination clause.

And if you instruct us to do that, what's our basis for doing that? Renegotiating the rate, you mean? Yeah. That's what we need to know.

I don't know. The comps is the thing that stands out to me. But again, it's

But also see miles point I mean, they're, even if they use I mean, we can argue comps, I think everybody does at some point argue comps on appraisals. But they're, you know, these are not fly by night and appraisal companies soon.

Yeah, see, that's I mean, when parks puts it that way, I guess my lean would not be to renegotiate the rates because if I were to ask be asked why I would have no Because we want to pay less.

Because we're used to it being less, that's why. Yeah, I mean, you know, those changes are always painful, for sure.

But I'm not an appraiser either. Well, I don't like it. So with that...

Let's come to something here.

I think we just stick with those three. Yeah.

So I guess the the mat. So I guess if there were to be a motion, it would be to continue the item to allow the city attorney and city manager to negotiate the points we have identified, when should we continue it to?

I would say June the 15th our workshop workshop.

All right, I workshop. I moved to continue this item to the June workshop in order to allow the city manager and city attorney to recommence negotiations along the points we've identified.

Second. All in favor?

Any opposed?

All right.

Getting closer. Get closer on it. All right, so that'll bring us, I think, to our last item here, the amended item. Let me get my glasses. Yes, agenda, that's the amended item C6, which is moved from the consent agenda, Catawba River public water intake, excavation capital project approval. Jonathan, back up here with us.

So a quick recap. Early in 2025, staff found out that the intake tea screen out in the middle of the Catawba River is covered by sand and sediment. We've gone through several inspections working through that process. to see what it would take to get it uncovered. We did meet with Duke Energy on several occasions. The option for us at this time is to dredge the river. We did go out to bid in December. We did not receive any bids at that time. We re-advertised the project earlier this spring. We did receive bids on May 22nd. Two companies submitted bids, Rowboat and HG Reynolds Company. after review of the bid submittal it was determined that rowboat was not responsive in their bid submittal therefore we're recommending to move forward with HG Reynolds we are also hopeful to include this in the overall intake project that is funded through SRF Helene funds that is a loan with principal forgiveness up to two million dollars

Oh, just an off-the-top question for you. So I noticed the price difference was staggering. It was pretty wide, right?

$700,000 roughly, $1.3 million roughly.

Somewhere those are the two different bids that came in. And I understand that when we look, we're hoping to be able to have this paid for through this Helene fund, which is a interest-free and all that stuff, which is great. Forgive us, all that stuff. So the reason that there was a determination made that the low bid, and I can't remember who it was that did it, was a non-responsive bid, was because of the added scrutiny in order for it to be able to be determined to be funded by this Helene, or only because they were way off the map and didn't ask for anything we asked for?

A little bit of both, if I'm being honest. There are additional requirements to utilize state and federal money, which is what makes up the SRF lien funds distributed by the state. And in addition, they did not submit a proper bid bond, which would have been required anyway for the project.

They're minority MWBE requirements. Right. They didn't submit any of that paperwork. Did they submit their...

They did submit their contractor's license. We did review that. We looked it up on the state's website. They are licensed. However, the sheet that they turned in with their bid stated that they had an expired license. It is valid, but...

Well, that kind of answers that.

It seems rather important, but this kind of stuff. But it was good online. It was good online. Okay. It sounds like they don't have their stuff. They've got to understand that.

quick window. This is a temporary fix to a long term problem, though, right? I mean, what? Well, we're we're going to need a solution for this, right? dredging is just going to move the sediment away from our current intake, correct. But really, what we need to do is take our existing intake and move it further out towards the middle of the channel. Is that correct? What is the estimated full valuation of that project?

We're still working through that. In our application for the lean funding, I believe it It also noted an entire new intake structure in a new location on the river. That was valued at $16 million. I don't know that we will have to go to that extent.

Because this is where I'm going at. I genuinely believe we're going to probably need every bit of that $10 million to probably make this happen, to get it to where we set the city up for success in the future, not just trying to put a Band-Aid on an existing problem, which we have to do. I'm not saying we're not going to do that. In my mind, I feel like we need to reach out to Duke Energy because understanding that this was an event caused by Hurricane Helene, In isolation, or excuse me, outside of that, it would have been an issue regardless. The river is filling with sediment. It is Duke Energy's responsibility to maintain its waterways that they utilize for the production of energy. So in my mind, You know, I don't know if we leverage the state or we reach out to Brad and others. But how have other municipalities handled this? Because in my mind, there should be a shared responsibility with Duke Energy on this.

I agree.

I absolutely believe because they're the ones that are responsible for maintaining this lake, right?

Right.

Well, doesn't Helene kind of give them an out, though? It would have happened regardless of Helene. The sediment is coming and rising every year.

Yeah, probably not at the same level.

No, but eventually we would have had to have moved this. We're 90-something percent blocked, right? Blockage, potentially?

We don't exactly know.

Okay. But prior to Helene, it wasn't good.

Correct.

So, I mean, in my mind, Duke Energy – we should be negotiating and talking with them to see. And I'm not saying they're going to say no, right? I'm just saying we need to at least ask, because this $10 million that we have in this loan funding for Hurricane Helene relief, I anticipate we're going to need every bit of that for what we need to do for long term for the city of Belmar.

I hear what you're saying. And we will ask Duke Energy. But this project is so important that we need to move forward tonight. We don't need to delay to have Duke Energy come back and say, hey, they've gotta think through the process. We've got a drought that's in place. We've got an intake that is clogged with sediment. We worked as hard as we could so we could bid this thing out and revise it and get it back out so that we can move forward as quickly as possible. This is one thing that keeps me up at night is not providing water to the city.

Let me ask you this. So in the event we went this direction, we can still pursue Duke for reimbursement. Reimbursement, yeah.

And we can also ask them for the extension project that you were talking about.

I think that's a fair point, Alex. I think that definitely – I don't think we can sleep on it, but I think that we for sure go after Duke and say that we need to have a conversation about this. We're fronting because we're to the point where – We don't know, I haven't been down there with my scuba gear, but we don't know how blocked everything is exactly, but we know that it's critical enough that we need to do something sooner rather than later. But to your point, how much of it is really due to what's not been upkept, and that'll be an argument for, I'm sure, a judge or a mediator or somebody. But my point is, we can still absolutely pursue a reimbursement.

It's critical enough that we have already met with our interconnect partners through Rivers, Mount Holly, and that we're also getting a quote to put a floating pump in the channel, just in case, because we never have taken our plant offline. And so the first stop would be to put that floating pump out there to draw water in. Thank goodness we've had good rain here over the past couple weeks.

Are we still under drought restrictions? We're still under drought restrictions.

We've got notification from Duke Energy that the stage two drought remains in place for the time being. We haven't had enough water to come out of that yet, but... I say all that to say this is like, yes, we're going to reach out to Duke and get Duke, ask them all we can, but I definitely want to try to move forward with a decision tonight so we can move forward with the contract.

We can absolutely do that, but I think the conversation needs to be had because I know me and you kind of chatted on the phone a couple days ago about this. And I think we need to contact Duke Energy on this, right?

Sounds like we will. But I hear the urgency from both Miles and Jonathan. And we're looking for direction tonight to prove this. Anybody else have any?

No question. Do you want to make a motion? Are you good?

I'm good, but again, I just want to make it clear because I did bring this up. I think we got that, right? Yeah, I'm good. Okay, Tim?

Yeah. So I'll make a motion that the capital project ordinance be approved for the Catawba River Public Water Intake Excavation Project.

Motion made by Jason. Second. Second by Charlie. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Approved. We will definitely follow up with Duke on that.

Let's do it. I mean, they also, I know they can't manufacture water, but they also control the water levels, right? I know we're talking to them, right? Fair point.

Fair point.

All right. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you, Jonathan.

Appreciate that.

All right, so that will move us along to agenda item D other business. So I'll start with Alex. Do you have any other business? We do have a closed session this evening. So after short, yeah, yeah. Just get the highlights.

Nothing for me. I'm good.

The only question I had was the water restriction question, which I just got an answer to. You said nothing for me.

I just have one quick item. When you submit a, I forget the name of the platform, when you go in to submit a ticket online for your yard waste, that system, I've gotten some feedback from residents that it feels kind of like a black hole because you submit the ticket and there's no email or confirmation or anything that goes out. If they go in to check their status, It doesn't look like it gets updated. I'm not saying it actually goes into a black hole because clearly when you submit something through that portal, stuff happens. But from the sort of citizen perspective. User experience. Yes, it's not great.

And that may happen, I guess, I suppose on an exception basis for certain folks, but I can say I use it probably once a month. And every time, and I do it online, I don't do it by phone. I don't know if that's different, but when you do it online, you get clearly a confirmation that says request submitted successfully.

I guess I've never really gone back. Yeah, I've done it for Yardways.

Are you talking about a follow-up email that says it's completed?

Yeah, because I've had some people talk to me like they'll, like a tree falls down or there's a pothole or a light's out somewhere, they put it in and then they don't feel like there's any like affirmative.

Like close the loop, we've done the work.

Yeah, I think it would just, that would be helpful. I don't think we're necessarily doing anything wrong. I think it's just a matter of almost taking credit for what we're doing. if that makes sense. And I don't know how much of that's a system limitation versus, you know.

Do they get anything like tickets been closed or anything like that?

I've never gotten one for the yard waste.

No, of course, I've had my yard waste picked up.

Right, that's what I'm saying.

Your waste has been picked up.

Yeah, like the process of working. Email confirmation. I mean, really. We show up. There you go. Well, yeah, well, I think it's less necessary for stuff like that, whereas, like, if you report a pothole, and, like, that goes into a queue, and, like, we don't always get to it right away because there's stuff that needs to happen on our end, but, like, citizens don't necessarily know that, so they just pull it up and see that nothing has happened on the ticket, and then they think that we're ignoring them, so...

is on that point is there a pothole request on the city website I know we have the DoT link that we can use for state on roads but is there one on our website too I think so because somebody told me they sent one in I believe it's I don't know he didn't actually exactly tell me like what he and I didn't have time to check

I know there's like a long list of things in there. It's everything from like gravestone stuff to yard waste.

Right, there's like a drop down menu.

Miles, if you'll just give that a dry run, see if you see anything that maybe can be easily added to the farm, especially with the potholes. Much appreciated. Yes, sir. Jason?

I just had a few quick items. Miles, I don't know if we can look in to see whether the city is part of our landscape contract, if we could give maybe any additional attention to the monument area at Greenwood Cemetery. We were up there doing the flag installations for Memorial Day, and the monument has basically mulch you know around it but there's some weeds growing up in there and it'd be a quick simple fix but just to get some weed control maybe mulch it i think there's actually four grave sites in that area around the monument so be sensitive to that but i'm just wondering if like like i said it'd be a pretty nominal thing to get taken care of but maybe just give that some attention to dress that up please Also did want to thank all those that did come out and place flags on all of our veteran grave sites. That was a tremendous help. 670 veterans that are known and marked sites just in that cemetery. Many more that are unmarked, so thank you for that. then lastly I hear that congratulations are in order for Jared and Ben and the rest of team no permit no problem for winning the championship in the city basketball tournament so kudos to those guys and girls what was their team name no permit no problem That is not advice, by the way. I probably shouldn't advertise this. That's not advice.

Not legal advice. That's great. Thank you, Jason. Thank you. Jim?

Well, I want to congratulate our mayor, Joe, for his efforts, those of us that went to the ball game Saturday night for Belmont Town Takeover at the Charlotte Knights. Joe was one of three illustrious individuals chosen to throw out a ceremonial first pitch, and your first pitch was better than Mr. Dilling from Dilling Heating and Cooling, as well as Tinkerbell. So you managed to throw better than both of them.

I'll be hiring you. Jim, I'm going to hire you to negotiate all of my sports contracts that I'm about to get.

Very good. And having watched, having stayed at the game until the bottom of the eighth inning, you were certainly also more impressive than at least one or two of the Knights relief pitchers. You threw... You threw more strikes in one pitch than one guy threw in, like, 20 pitches. In any event, the only thing substantive I have was, I was just wondering if we had an update as to how the implementation is going for the Safe Streets for All grant that we were so excited about several months ago.

Yep, and I have an update here. Staff's met with the FHWA on April 17th to coordinate with them on completing the first draft of our federal grant agreement. At this time, they're waiting on our FHWA point of contact to provide some clarifying information on how to proceed with certain elements of the agreement before they submit it back to them. It's going to go through several rounds of technical and legal review, and then execute and work can begin. Still anticipating an execution date at the end of this calendar year, so December 2026, 2027. So they said it would probably take 12 months to execute an agreement. It looks like it's going to be 12 months to execute the agreement. So staff is working with FHWA on that. Thank you. Yes, sir.

I have a question out for Tori, but just for everyone's kind of understanding, I'm sure you guys saw where Charlotte City Council is trying to pull out of this I-77 piece, about $600 million. I mean, I'd be interested to see if that $600 million, if you guys could probably talk to anyone you know, or maybe even you leverage your relationships with the Charlotte Council to see if they'd be willing to try to reappropriate those funds to the Catawba Crossings project. Obviously, it has to go through the reprioritization, and then the money will probably... you know, they'll have to determine, but I just want to call that out. We need to keep that on our radar, because we brought it up at the MPO as well. That's going to be on our tech agenda.

I talked to Donnie Loftus about that specifically, and he said he had already made some phone calls.

That could be the door that opens up to try to expedite this project. Absolutely.

Thank you. Just a couple things for me. So to that point, Jason and Miles and myself, we went up to Raleigh. We had a good meeting with our lobbyists and our representatives. Spent the day with them up there. Got the opportunity to sit down with each one of them. I talk about the projects that we have, our pain points, what Belmont is looking at coming at us in the near future, and I felt like we had good meetings. I think everyone was receptive. I think one of the challenges that we specifically have is that a lot of our pain points are the same pain points as a lot of other municipalities in North Carolina. So as we're jumping up saying we need help with these projects, a lot of other ones are too, but I am confident in our relationship and the fact that Belmont gets a lot of hard things done, that we're gonna be able to float to the top and look for those funds as they're coming in. So I feel good about the meetings we had. I think that's a great point. So I'm gonna reach out to all of our representatives again, just like you did, and say, hey, I understand these funds are maybe not gonna be used for the project that was already proposed. Are those gonna be redistributed in any way?

Could we leverage our lobbyist and bring that up to him as well? Yep, that's what we'll do. And to your point too, Joe, did you guys feel pretty good with the lobbyist? I would assume that he took you guys around.

Yeah, it was kind of a quick whirl of a day. You know, nice guy, seems to know everybody. One thing that did make me feel good was you that pointed it out. It's like everywhere we went, there were three or four people that came up to him and was like, hey, how are you? Hey, what's going on? Not based on our meeting with our representatives, but just based on him knowing everyone around him always.

Did you think it was comparable to when we went up with Mike?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, he's, he's not got as much experience as Mike, but he seems to know a lot of the, you know, the players and folks that he actually brought up some things I think that we hadn't thought about to say, hey, in fact, we got introduced to one of the liaisons at NC DOT. You know, as someone who kind of an additional communication channel, you know, for communicating some of our transportation needs. So yeah, I think he was very helpful. Just wanna make sure we're getting like the bang.

Yeah, I think so far so good. We'll see obviously proofs in pudding right if we get those funds start coming in then we'll feel real good about it But I thought it just as an initial for myself an initial meeting at home there their home court My last thing mark and I went to City Vision and We had a great meeting, so that was kind of a little multi-day meeting. North Carolina, a lot of municipalities come out. We all share what's going on and look at some of the things that they're facing as challenges that maybe we're not facing but are coming. So it was a good opportunity to sit down and network with a lot of people, go to some good classes, and to spend some team-building time together. I think we did good. So I enjoyed the meeting. I hope that you did as well. And I look forward to future meetings. So that's all I have. So at this point, that will— Mr. Mayor?

Yes. I know I didn't get to attend. Jim already commented on your pitching prowess, but the town takeover winner, we had good attendance. Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm glad you brought that up. He thinks Joe's got more power than the president. That was the best question I got all night. Who's more power, you or the president? That's a good thought. I loved it.

I don't know if you put him up to that, but I loved it. I didn't. So I talked to Will Champion. He's the one that put this together. And they started this last year. And they reached out to all the municipalities around Charlotte. And so this was our first year of doing it. And when we compare Belmont's first year to all the other municipalities around Charlotte's first year, we beat every one of them.

Nice. That's awesome.

Yeah. He was highly impressed. Because some of them were large. I mean, like Harrisburg and things like that. Bigger. municipalities and we are and we showed up I think we had 260 tickets sold we had a number of vendors that were out there it was a good time so I was I was really impressed with Belmont showed up I was proud of them proud of us and I think it was a good time I look forward to next year yeah yeah so thanks for reminding me on that I meant to share that All right, so that will close up other business, and I will entertain a motion to enter into closed session pursuant to NCGSTAT 143-318.11a3 to consult with an attorney employed or retained by a public body in order to preserve the attorney-client privilege between the attorney and the public body, which privilege is hereby acknowledged, to discuss two items, one, Karen, and other unnamed items. I'll make that motion. All right. Motion made by Alex. Second. Seconded by Mark. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. We are in closed session, and we will take a short recess to let the gallery clear.