Town Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. Welcome Welcome to the May 20 meeting of the Chapel Hill Town Council. We are glad to have you join us. This evening, we have four items on the agenda for discussion or action. The first is a public hearing on the f y twenty twenty six twenty seven recommended budget. That will be followed by a discussion about updating the town's climate action and community response plan as we mark the plan's five year mark. Third is a public hearing on a proposed incentive agreement for project Stark Tower. And our final item I tried. I tried to keep it tried to keep it serious. Thank you, David Putnam.

And our final item will be a legislative hearing concerning a request for a zoning modification at 11 White Oak Drive. Council will also be making appointments to the community design commission tonight. I am gonna turn in my ballot any minute. It's totally happening. And those names will be announced at the end of the meeting. And council members, we have a closed session this evening as well. To get us started this evening, we have four proclamations to announce. Up first I

don't know.

He's he's cracking up back there. Up first, we have public works week. Council member Louis Rivers will be making that announcement, and we invite our public works director, Lance Norris, to join him up front.

Good evening everyone. Tonight we are recognizing May seventeenth through the twenty third twenty twenty six as National Public Works Week in Chapel Hill. Public Works Week is an opportunity for us to pause and recognize the people who keep our community running every day. Our public works team, about 113 professionals strong, builds and maintains our roads and sidewalks, traffic signals and signs, storm water systems, public buildings, solid waste services, and the vehicles our staff relies on. Their work is often behind the scenes but directly supports public health safety and quality of life in Chapel Hill.

We're especially grateful for the wide range of skills they bring from operators and mechanics to engineers, technicians and administrative staff. During this week and year round, please join us in thanking our public works staff for keeping our community safe, sustainable and connected. And I'll add doing it with like a very pleasant attitude. Our public works, they're always very pleasant in the community even when it's very hot like today. So we deeply appreciate it. Thank you all.

Thank you so much, mister Norris, for being here with us tonight. And please share our deep appreciation with your entire team. Our second proclamation is for Asian American and Pacific Islander month. And council member Camille Barry will be making that announcement for us tonight. And we are pleased to invite members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in the audience up front for that announcement.

Nick. Good evening. As the daughter of a Filipina, I am so proud to stand up here. And Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders come from many different countries and cultures across Asia and The Pacific, each bringing unique traditions, languages, and stories. Here in North Carolina and in Chapel Hill, AAPI communities have been part of our story for generations, providing leadership and have been and making contributions in many areas, including education, health care, business, technology, public service, and the arts.

As a community, we know how important it is to keep learning from one another and to celebrate the rich diversity that makes our community special. And so tonight, we are pleased to recognize May 2026 as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in Chapel Hill. In so doing, we encourage everyone to take time to celebrate and to appreciate the impact of Asian American Pacific Islander communities here at home and around the world. Thank you.

Counsel, we need a group picture.

If this hand could scoot

in just a little bit more. Paris, if you could scoot in some too, maybe come up front. Yes. There we go. Oh,

there we go. Awesome. Alright. I'm gonna take a couple. One, two, three. Everybody smile. Got it. Thank you.

Thank you for everyone for coming tonight. We are so grateful to have you here with us and, of course, all the contributions that you make to Chapel Hill and to our broader community. That brings us to affordable housing month. And we'd like to invite our affordable housing partners, advocates, along with members of Chapel Hill's housing and community development team to join council member Miller Fucci up front, please.

Good evening, everyone. I have the pleasure of reading two proclamations this evening. I will start with our affordable housing proclamation. Tonight, we recognize May as affordable housing month in the town of Chapel Hill and reaffirm that access to safe, stable, and affordable housing is essential to the well-being of our community. Affordable housing month highlights the innovative programs and collaborative solutions that help strengthen housing affordability in Chapel Hill and support a more inclusive and connected community.

During this month, we want to acknowledge the town's ongoing work alongside regional partners, nonprofits, housing advocates, and developers to expand and preserve housing opportunities for residents of all backgrounds and income levels. These partnerships are critical to making meaningful progress and creating lasting housing solutions for our community. Furthermore, we wanna encourage residents to learn about and support these initiatives as we continue working toward a community where everyone has the opportunity to call Chapel Hill home. So tonight, on behalf of the mayor and council, I would like to present this proclamation for affordable housing month to who would like to grab it? Council,

we've been asked to do another group photo.

Everyone stay where you're at. No. No.

We gotta get this.

This is.

Well, I need to

bring the c h t.

Yeah. Please.

Come back, c h t. We'll we'll let the rest of the council go back, and we'll

So for our tonight's second affordable housing proclamation, this proclamation celebrates two remarkable, remarkable milestones for community home trusts, which is marking thirty five years of partnership and leadership in expanding and preserving permanently affordable housing opportunities in our community. During that time, the organization has created and preserved 300 permanently affordable homes for local residents, including working families, first time homebuyers, and essential workers. In recognition of these important milestones and Community Home Trust's lasting contributions to our community, we are pleased to proclaim 06/15/2026 as Community Home Trust Day in Chapel Hill and encourage everyone to recognize and support their continued

Okay. Congrats, congrats, 300. Holmes is amazing. Well done. And thank you all for being here and all the work you do every day. So very exciting. Our fourth proclamation is for historical preservation month, and council member Melissa McCullough is all set to read that proclamation. And we invite members of the historic district commission and our planning staff to join her up front. Hi, Josh.

Oh, where's the planning staff?

Bummer. Okay.

Good evening. Tonight, we recognize May as historic preservation month, a time for our community to reflect on the people, places, and stories that shape Chapel Hill's heritage. In so doing, we honor the indigenous stewards of the land and celebrate the diverse communities whose histories and cultural contributions form the foundation of our town. We also recognize that historic preservation helps protect our unique character, supports sustainable development, and strengthens pride in the places we share. During this month, we invite everyone to learn more about Chapel Hill's historic districts, landmarks, and the many individuals who have worked to preserve them for future generations.

Thank you.

Wonderful. Many thanks to the members of the Historic District Commission and to our staff for helping Chapel Hill celebrate the people and places that make Chapel Hill special. That brings us to announcements. I have three things to share. First, tonight, we join communities across North Car North Carolina in recognizing this week, May eighteenth to twenty second, as heat awareness week.

We are feeling it. As our region experiences more frequent extreme heat, we wanna remind residents that dangerously high temperatures can affect anyone, especially older adults, young children, outdoor workers, and neighbors without reliable access to cooling. Earlier this spring, the Orange County heat action plan was approved to help local governments in our area better prepare for and respond to heat. Additionally, state and local public health partners all provide heat alerts, safety guidance, and emergency resources to help residents stay safe during hot weather. As temperatures rise this summer and especially as our bodies get accustomed to the heat, we encourage everyone in Chapel Hill to take simple steps that make a real difference, drink plenty of water, limit time outdoors during peak heat, and check on neighbors who may be more vulnerable.

Small actions can help prevent serious illness and save lives. To get the latest heat safety information and to sign up for OC alerts emergency messaging, please visit orangecountync.gov backslash heat. Second is a reminder that the Orange County Memorial Day celebration is scheduled for Monday from 08:45 to 10:15 in the morning at the Veterans Memorial Site. Later that day from two to four, members of the local peace and justice community will gather at the Blue Hill Event Center on Elliott Road to commemorate the day and rededicate themselves to peace. And third, council's next regular meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, June 10 at 6PM here in Town Hall.

Council members, does anyone else have something to share? Yep.

I would like to take a moment as the Planning Commission liaison. The Planning Commission last night were discussing the strategies, the goals, the priorities that we worked together in the last work session on and made a lot of progress. I thought it was a very good meeting where we were able to work with staff and really drill down in what the priorities are for how we're going to work with staff on receiving the LUMO and making sure that it's meeting our priorities from a policy level. We have a work session coming up for the budget. And I think that's the only item on that work session.

I think the piece we're missing and that we talked about at the last work session was getting from the goals to the priorities and then to this idea of weighing the options on how those priorities can be best achieved. And I would like to ask counsel and you, Ted, manager, we could make time in that work session to have a process with staff where we do the same thing that we did for priorities but take some time to go into the high level options on how to get at each of those priorities in that document. The main reason for this is I want us to be successful as we look at the LUMO when it comes to us. And I'm worried that if we don't spend more time looking at what the different options are for achieving these strategies, I know I could be tempted to get in the weeds on the details of what each particular section of the new ordinance would have. And I think it would be very helpful if we could have that conversation again.

And I think a lot of it is already out there. I was on the planning commission and attended a lot of these meetings with this information. But I think it's very important to document those conversations and reiterate the high level policy parts of this process so that we're focused and we have a clear understanding of our role going into the final stage of this LUMO. So I'm asking for time in the work session to discuss this further with staff.

Mr. Manisher, do you have information that you could provide on how you're planning on how you and staff are planning on bringing those options and policy decisions and then the draft and kind of getting us through that process?

Thank you, Mayor. That conversation was teed up for June 17 meeting with counsel. I think what we can do is take this interest back and think about it. If counsel's not needing the June 3 work session on budget or doesn't need very much time on it, we could flex and move into other topics. So we'll take that back and consider how we might adjust.

Yeah. Mayor Pro Temburi.

Thank you. I understand that it is the interest of a single council member. And I know that you tried to reach me today, but I have a policy folks of not doing business a few hours before I try to decompress. This unfortunately, is not one that I support because I want to make sure that we are focused on that budget. And if we already have a plan to discuss at June 17, I think that that is sufficient.

So just to make sure that I'm clear also, if this is coming, I know that there maybe is some confusion about the interaction with the Planning Commission and also what we're going to do in the work session. So if you could help clarify what we're going to do, maybe that would help us feel more confident about the when.

I'm not prepared to have a discussion about it right here. But we have information that staff's worked on in preparation for the seventeenth. And maybe we can share that out to members for comment in advance and see where that leads us.

Okay. Councilmember Miller Fucci, did I see your hand?

Yeah. I just want to make sure that we understand how we do business in terms of giving directives to the manager or staff to do things. I think Councilmember Barry was kind of touching on that, that when we give directors, it needs to have not consensus, but support from the board to move things forward. Because we each have our own interests and things that we'd like to see. And so I just want us to be very mindful of that.

And so this, I think, is the opportunity that we had been told by the manager now that we don't have a petition process that this is the time of the meeting where we can decide that. So that is the goal here, I believe.

Well, yeah, I would like to say, I still feel very new. I was directing it to this group here saying, what do you all think about that? Because it's something that I would like to do. And I think bringing that up in this environment makes it very public and open. And I do believe this is the time we've set aside for type of things. So I thank you, Councilmember Barry, Councilmember Miller Vashee. I'm interested in hearing what others think about this as we head into this LUMO process and building off of what we did the last work session. So if there's not a consensus, that's one thing. That's fine. Just I wanted to raise it.

GREGORY Yeah. I think if that's an interest of yours, I would like you to be able to reach out to me so I can have a better understanding of what it is that you're asking as opposed to trying to make a decision at the dais. We're all working, but taking the time to reach out to colleagues with these interests is important to me.

Understood.

Thank you.

Yep. Council Member Ryan?

Yeah. I'd just like to second Councilmember McMahon's comments about the last work session, which I thought were very productive. And I know that we're going to move into the process of having to digest and analyze a very, very complicated document. And as he mentioned, I know that you all don't want us getting into the weeds. So I think we did some really good work at that work session of trying to set out what high level goals are and then what our priorities are so that we have a yardstick as we're going through summer meetings and talking with you all about it that we kind of know what the council direction has been decided on.

I think the point has been made, we don't legislate or direct as individuals. We only do that as a board. And I think it will be super helpful for the board to have time to do that. I know that that June 17 meeting shortly thereafter I mean, that's when we actually get the draft. So I can see that it would be helpful to have the discussion about what those yardsticks are before we're actually going into the draft itself. So I would be happy to meet to have a discussion about those things continue the work that we started at that work session.

JULIE Councilmember Naulert, maybe followed by Councilmember Rivers. I'm not sure.

Thanks, Councilmember McMahon, Formality of the dais.

I'm totally happy to be able to have a process like this to chat as a group about interests. No objection to raising an interest, discussing it. I struggle to see what the value add is of doing this like a week or two before we get the LUMO. It might be a different question if it's a year ago, but we've been having a lot of fairly long meetings. We're about to get the whole

LUMO, and I just don't understand

yet what the value out of this would be. So I'm not in support at the moment, but appreciate the interest and certainly no hard feelings about raising it.

Councilmember McCullough?

I'll throw in $00 I understand the reasoning in all this. And I think that in some respects, the way I see it, I don't want anything to derail either the budget or the work that's coming forward to us. I don't know that this is something that staff could even get done in the next couple of weeks before you already plan to do it. But it does bring to mind the context of getting the draft explained to us, which I see as being the way that I would appreciate having it explained is sort of in the context of the whys and the goals, which I assume staff will probably do. But that's just sort of my 2¢ on this right now.

I don't know that there's time to do anything before then.

Councilmember Rivers?

Councilperson McMahon, would you mind repeating your proposal?

All right. Not to draw things out, but my proposal is that we build on the work that we did in the last work session, got us from goals to priorities. But then that last piece is putting together some ideas of what are the different ways that you can achieve those priorities. I've been doing Google searches on the priorities, and it comes up with a bunch of different options. I understand that staff is making those choices, and they're putting that in the limo.

My only concern is that I've been involved in these meetings on the planning commission, and I know some of these choices that were made. But I'm not sure if everyone on council does, if we have an understanding of what those choices are. And I don't think people in the public have an idea of how informed we are in what those choices are made. I don't want anyone to derail the Lumo process now. I definitely don't want to derail it four or five months from now. So I'm trying to think ahead. And if we have time, even if it's late, any amount of work we could do to help clarify, document, and really communicate among ourselves and the public why these different choices are being made in Illumo, I think it will help us as we look through it.

Yeah, thank you. In general, I support the idea also. I don't see it as derailing the process. I know that the Planning Commission has been very deep in looking at Lumo for a long time. So I hope we wouldn't be seen as a derailment. But if we want to bring in new voices, I'd rather do it earlier than later. And I don't even see them as new voices. I see these as people who have been also looking at these documents and process along with us.

Mayor Pro Tembury, followed by Councilmember Nauert.

Thank you. Once again, I want to underscore that we have a budget before us that we need to discuss. And we are looking at shortfalls from the county, not as well as other. We have in work sessions, before we got to the pieces, not addressed issues. We've already let we've let them go.

So to turn around and ask our staff to come and hang out with the hopes that we will finish discussing the budget and then we can address what we've asked them to speed up does not sit well with me. I think that if there are specific things that you want, then perhaps we ask for small groups or you send in an email to all of us. But I am very concerned about asking our staff to change and put pressure financial office to get through their presentations so we can reach a decision in order to get to the limo. I appreciate the planning commission. I was a liaison to the planning commission before you joined.

And I understand the hard work and many hours that those individuals put into it. I do not want them to have to drive, nor do I want them to drive the work of this body. I appreciate their desire to understand and be able to contribute. But priority is the budget than the limo.

Councilmember Nullar?

Yeah, I just want to say, mean, seems

like we need to move on. But I wanted to say, if you wanted to

put something in writing, I'm still struggling to understand the sort of specific new thing that we would be doing.

I can't tell if the idea is to have planning commission members come and talk to

us or if the idea is doing a new rubric or something like that. So maybe if

we could get something in writing, we can kind of come back to this conversation.

Councilmember Sharp followed by Councilmember Miller Fucci.

I know that we were all given Mayor Anderson gave us all a matrix that, to me, seems like very much meets this need that you're talking about. At least some of us have expressed strong interest in having information presented to us in some format like that. And I wonder if we were able to know if we might be getting information in a format like the matrix that Mayor Anderson created for us all sort of as an idea of what could happen that might ease some concern that we would not have that background information.

That's the intent.

Councilmember Miller Freeshee?

Yes, I'd like to just underscore what Councilmember Nullar just stated. I believe that in our work sessions, we've made clear multiple times what our interests were. And what I'm hearing, Councilmember McMahon, is the why, the understanding of the why. We've talked about that as well. And having served on council for the last two years, any time staff is presented changes, they present us with the why.

And so, again, there's a gap for me in understanding what is going to be new that you're asking for. I'm just not understanding. I feel like we're repeating and revisiting something that we've already made clear to staff that we want. And we just need an opportunity for them to be able to do the thing. And having it before us, the actual Lumo rewrite before us, and going through the process, if we need to make adjustments, then I can see that as an opportunity for that to take place then. But, again, thank you, Councilmember Berry. The budget and the Loomore rewrite is the priority for me.

I guess I'll just say I appreciate you bringing this up. I think some of the confusion that I myself am feeling is maybe that I'm not sure how the planning commission is dovetailing into our process. So maybe it's just understanding that and then also figuring out what we're going to be doing on the seventeenth. So I'm pretty sure that we can come to a good I'm hoping we can come to something that will meet the interests of counsel. And I'm sure we can get there.

And I think, Manager Voor hees, if we could get maybe some information on how the Planning Commission is feeding into that. And then certainly, think we all would agree that the budget is very important and that we don't want to rush the budget. But if we had open time that we finished up the budget, then perhaps that's an option. But I'm not sure that we need to figure that out this evening. So does that sound reasonable?

Yes, it does. Thank you.

The most Ted response ever. Okay. Counsel, I think thank you for the helpful conversation. And I'm sure we will have a good work session. Next up. Oh, any other council thoughts, comments, things to raise for the good of the cause? Okay. Next up, we invite members of the public to comment on items not listed on the printed agenda.

How many do we

have? Eight.

Oh, seven. Okay.

If you are wishing to speak, please sign up with the clerk at the table on the left side of the chamber toward the front of the room. If you're here to speak on a specific agenda item, there'll be a presentation on the item followed by counsel clarifying questions and then public comment. To help keep things running smoothly, Mayor Pro Tem Barry will call two names at a time. The first person should come to the podium, and the second person, if you can make your way down to the front, you'll be on deck and ready to go next. Finally, public input is very important to us.

And I want to remind our audience that we want everyone to be heard and to feel comfortable when they're at the podium. So if you can please refrain from commenting or clapping, it also helps us on council hear the speaker. So Mayor Pro Temberi, take it away.

Thank you. Jerry Mercadoes followed by PJ Miller.

Thanks, folks. My name is Jerry Marcatos. And I have been a volunteer here in Chapel Hill for about three decades or so with a group that looks at media, balance and accuracy and journalism. Some of you may have attended. Years ago, Councilman Bob Gwynn came to us with some exciting news. It was something in the works to establish support for spontaneous and professional level media work.

We need the timer on. I'm really sorry.

A big question?

I am sorry to interrupt you. We just don't have the timer on.

Oh, Okay.

Oh, so it'll just go off? Oh, well see, I am so sorry. I did not mean to interrupt you. I apologize.

Okay, well, so one of your own really led the way of I don't think any of us really anticipated the depth of collapse that we're seeing in journalism. And so the importance of local initiatives just gets more important as time goes by.

Mr. So Marcatos, we are both interrupting you. I want the folks in this room to be able to hear you. So if you could talk into the microphone. We can hear you, but the folks behind you, I think, are struggling.

Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Well, I'm here to thank this body for some work that started years ago can you hear me? When Bob Gwen's initiative took a project in Atlanta as a model for what was possible here, empowering people to be able to come in with an idea or with something that they had done a sketch of and end up with professional equipment to work with.

And so as a former photojournalist and a professional photographer, I've been impressed with what you all are doing, making that available to our public, to our community. So that's pretty much it. I just think I will mention that one example and it wasn't through the People's Channel, but it's an example of what is possible. Diane Bloom lives in Chapel Hill. And she picked up a story that is now famous when Ann Atwater and the Klansmen became friends because they realized what they had in common, what they had to accomplish.

And that was done as a documentary we showed at our gathering, and it was picked up by Hollywood. And it became a movie called The Best of Enemies. Well, pretty good leap from a small town sketch of important stuff. So thank you again for making it possible for important stuff to reach each other and a broader audience.

Thank you. Thank you. That was impeccable timing too.

PJ Miller followed by Bridget Adamu.

Good evening. My name's PJ Miller. I've been a community home trust homeowner for about three and a half years. I live at 140 West. And of course, that's right down in Downtown Chapel Hill. Chose that particular community because it was close to where I was working at the time. I'm retired now. Yay me. It's close to grocery stores, retail stores. You've got the bus system right there, which I've been utilizing a lot lately with gas prices going up.

I just want to say how important Community Home Trust and other housing organizations are for affordable housing in the area. So many people, especially now with rising prices, would find it almost impossible to be able to afford a home they a legacy that they can leave to their children and so forth. So I'm really just here to say thank you to every one of you for supporting Community Home Trust and at the same time, I guess, supporting families in the area that otherwise wouldn't have an opportunity to live in Chapel Hill. And that's basically it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Bridget Adamu, followed by Tom Jepsen.

BRIDGET Good evening, Mayor Anderson and council members. I'm glad I'm following right on the heels of PJ. My name is Bridget Adamu. I've been a Chapel Hill resident for several years. I have worked as public health practitioner, volunteered at the local schools, attended many events and celebrations, and raised my family.

I am proud to serve as the president of the board of directors for Community Home Trust. I'm here tonight to thank you for your continued support for Community Home Trust and for your longstanding commitment to affordable homeownership in our community. As you've heard earlier, this year Community Home Trust is celebrating thirty five years of service and the milestone of 300 permanently affordable homes. This achievement would not have been possible without the town's longstanding vision, partnership, and investment. What makes community home trust models so significant is that through a land trust, the homes remain affordable, not just for the present homeowners but for future generations.

Every public dollar you choose to invest continues working for the community year after year, homeowner after homeowner, and family after family. Your support has helped create a system that not only builds affordable housing but also protects it over the long term. Since its founding, Community Home Trust has served nearly 1,300 households and provided over $1,800,000 in homeowner support for critical repairs through its stewardship program, helping families remain safely and stably housed. For me, this organization's mission and work is personal. Because of Community Home Trust, over fifteen years ago, my husband and I had the opportunity to buy a new home, I might add, which we are still living in today in a wonderful neighborhood.

Being community home trust homeowners meant that we could put down roots, invest in our family's future, and live in a community we love. I know that so many other families have had that same opportunity because this council has seen the need for affordable homeownership and prioritized it. So we sincerely thank you for your leadership, partnership, and continued support for this very important work. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, Tom Jepsen, followed by Brianne Mendez.

Yes, thank you. My name is Tom Jepsen. I am the treasurer of the Chapel Hill Historical Society. And first of all, I wanted to recognize the town council members who have attended and participated in our programs and events, including our community treasures event. I thank you for your support.

It is much appreciated. I also want to thank the town for designating May as historic preservation month. The concept of historic preservation covers a wide variety of activities, not just preserving historic buildings structures, but also preserving local history and the history of our neighborhoods and communities. And I'm here to suggest that there are ways to turn this concept into action without major impact on the town budget. One is to make historic preservation a strategic objective along with affordable housing, health care, and safety when considering applications for outside agency funding for nonprofits.

Another is to include historic preservation as a category for community arts and culture grants, which currently focus on the visual and performing arts. I am here representing the Chapel Hill Historical Society, which has been preserving the history of Chapel Hill and the surrounding area for sixty years. In fact, we will celebrate our sixtieth anniversary as an organization this coming October. But I also wanted to acknowledge the work of some of our partner organizations, Preservation Chapel Hill, the Marion Cheek Jackson Center, and the Chapel Hill Library's Community History Project. All these organizations are part of preserving history and all deserve your support. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Breanne Mendez, followed by Talib Madion.

Good evening, everyone. I'd like to say on a different side of community home trust, I am a tenant at The Landings at Windmoor. I'm 80 years old and three weeks. I have been a health care provider in UNC as well as Duke and LabCorp. I was injured during 2001 while working with the American Red Cross.

Were it not for the fact that I have been able to have a home or a place to live that's affordable for me, I don't know where I'd be. My Social Security is only 1000 a month right now after twenty five years. And I will tell you, it's difficult out here, as you all know. So I'm grateful to the town of Chapel Hill and to this committee for giving me the opportunity to have a place that's in a decent neighborhood, it's a decent place to live, that cares about the community that they're in. I thank you so much. Thank

you.

Thank you. Talib Madion followed by Linda Fajardo.

Good evening. I'm here on for the behalf of People's Channel and I was given a call today to come and try to speak in front of you to help make a decision to keep them active because we were given an opportunity to bring a program on the TV, and it was very beneficial for us because of the Islamic perspective. Also the training that we received, I was a cameraman, so I'm not very good doing public speaking, so behind the camera was an ideal situation for me. Me. And Carson, she helped us out a great deal in that way.

She was hard tasked, especially you've to stay still and all like that. But the skill set that we received from that was So I hope that the committee will take that into consideration of the service that they provide and also given a chance to have a platform where we can express ourselves because knowledge shared is knowledge gained. And if we take that avenue away from public broadcasting, then, you know, it would be a big loss. Okay? Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you. Linda Fajardo. Hi, good evening. My name

is Linda Fajardo and I am both a proud homeowner with Community Home Trust and a former member of the board. Since 2018, my son, Sebastian, I have lived in the lovely Ballantyne community in Lake Hogan Farms. Having a stable, beautiful place to call home has allowed us both to thrive. Today, my son is pursuing his passion as a culinary student at Wake Tech, while I am a veteran social studies teacher at North Carolina Cyber Academy. And I'm the chapter advisor for our National Honor Society.

In my role as a National Honor Society chapter advisor, I get to help high schoolers look beyond the classroom to see the real world needs right here in Orange County and across North Carolina. I see my primary responsibility as cultivating their ability to spot where people are struggling and teaching them how to step up with impactful, compassionate service. And that is exactly what you have done in supporting community home trust for me and my family. For me, CHT has been a lifeline. As a teacher and a single mother, owning a home was always a dream that felt out of reach.

But thanks to Community Home Trust, I didn't just find a place to call home. I found a true partnership. Knowing that they are always there to help means I never have to feel like I'm navigating the challenges of home ownership and maintenance all by myself. Homeownership, while a dream for many, can quickly become overwhelming without the proper resources and support. Through the vital programs that CHT offers, homeowners like me are empowered to maintain properties in a way that is permanently safe, permanently habitable, and permanently affordable, ensuring that essential community members like educators can continue to live, work, and thrive where they serve.

If you had told me years ago that I'd be living in a neighborhood like Lake Hogan Farms, I wouldn't have believed you. As a teacher, my income barely covered rent, and the idea of saving for a down payment felt impossible. Even if I had the affordable market options were always in areas where I wouldn't have felt secure, Community Home Trust changed my family's future by matching me with a home in a wonderful community I never thought I'd be able to afford. This life changing opportunity exists because of this council's dedicated support over the last thirty five years. On behalf of myself and the owners of the 300 homes and counting that you have made possible, Thank you for your endearing commitment to affordable homeownership and our community.

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. And our last speaker will be Dennis Dowdy.

Feel like I'm back in college. Now I came dressed for the occasion but I don't see you didn't get the memo, did you? Okay. My name is Dennis Dowdy. I've spent my entire working career in nonprofit public media serving local and statewide.

I worked for thirty four thirty one years at UNC TV, now public media in North Carolina. And in 2017, I began working for the People's Channel in Chapel Hill. I was asked to speak tonight on behalf of the People's Channel and our director Carson Riddell who has been working diligently for months about putting together a package for budget force, an additional budget force. And I've been asked to help get this message out. The People's Channel is your public access channel.

It services Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and the Durham communities. But it's also much more than that. Our mission is to give everyone in the community a voice while focusing on underserved children and adults. We offer more than just content on a cable channel. We teach individual and group classes in production and post production.

These classes are offered through the People's Channel and in partnership with the Durham Arts Council and the Arts Center. We have offered and we will continue hopefully to offer documentary and narrative film camps to children. In recent years, we partnered with the public school systems, the Boys and Girls Club of Durham in Orange Counties, and the Emily K Center to provide these camps to the underserved kids, middle and high school students, free of charge. We did this by securing grants from various community programs, and we appreciate what we've done. We also offer we support let me try this again here.

We supply all necessary gear for video production. That's cameras, lights, headphones, etcetera, etcetera, well as a video recording studio, an audio recording booth, computers with editing software. Our members can air their productions on our channels. It's through Spectrum Digital Cable. It is their product. They get to keep it. It is not ours. We allow them to broadcast it on a channel, but it is theirs. This year we're planning to start an online channel to increase our footprint in this community. But these tools that require to teach and learn professional video production are extremely expensive.

But our membership and classes at the People's Channel are reasonably priced. Our basic membership is $75 a year. And no one is ever turned away because they can't afford our fees. And they're offered to everyone in the community. We are currently the only nonprofit specializing in video production and filmmaking that offers classes to the public.

And we've had members who go on to pursue the career in filmmaking and documentary studies. We just had a former member who's actually won a Sundance Award with his first film. So we've been serving the community for over thirty years, and we've assisted the town whenever they needed requested. We did cover the Christmas parade, fourth of July celebrations, and PSAs. Anything you needed.

Thank you.

And was that my time?

Yes.

Oh. If you can just finish up your last sentence, I just that said, would be

we've never offered we never asked for support before, additional support, but our we've been getting dwindling funding from the town. So now we're asking, please help us. We just moved into a new facility. We paid for that with our own funds, But we need continuing operation funds. So thank you for your time.

Thank you. All right. Thank you to everyone who came forward with support and also with requests tonight. While the town no longer has a formal petition process, sharing your ideas with your local government is a valued First Amendment right and one that we always support. Council does not take immediate action on these requests, but they are carefully reviewed by the town manager and staff who will review the matter and respond to us and to you.

Thank you. That brings us to our consent agenda. Council members, do I have a motion to approve? Move consent. Moved by council member Ryan, seconded by council member Miller Fucci. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say nay. Motion is unanimous. Up next is item number eight, which is a public hearing on the proposed twenty twenty six-twenty seven budget. And our presenter is Amy Oland, our director of business management.

Okay. Good evening, mayor and council.

We're not seeing it here. It's only there, which we can roll with if it's not possible to get it here.

We can't see here. That's what they're working on. No, he just came out.

If you are okay with that, I'm sure we can look there and then maybe it'll come up here at some point as you go. Do you want me to go? I think so. I think we'll just crane our necks for a little And then if it comes up, then it comes up. Then all the better. Good

evening, mayor and council. Tonight, you'll have the opportunity to open up the public hearing on the fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven recommended budget and to hear from the public. The recommended budget totals $169,700,000 for all funds. Of that amount, about $100,000,000 represents the general fund and the remaining $69,700,000 represents the town's four enterprise funds. That's transit, parking, storm water and public housing, the debt and capital fund and our other smaller annually budgeted funds and represents a 3.4% increase over the current year budget.

This budget balances day to day operations with long term investments that support council's goals. A key highlight is that we are not recommending a tax increase for the fiscal year 'twenty six-'twenty seven budget. The property tax remains at $0.50 per $100 evaluation. This stability reflects our commitment to financial stewardship and long term planning. This budget is about moving from planning to action for council's goals.

It's incorporated complete community, our housing goals, our environmental goals, and our work towards fiscal sustainability. We want to take a minute just to highlight some key revenue changes in the general fund for the current year's budget. Property tax is up about $3,500,000 which is close to a 7% increase. The growth is primarily driven by the county's overestimation of how many revaluation appeals which would reduce the tax base. With fewer appeals than expected, revenues are trending higher than anticipated. Last

year, we

held the sales tax budget flat for '26 based on performance at that time. Over the past ten months, however, collections have exceeded expectations growing 5% in the first seven months alone. Given the strong performance and statewide trends, we believe that a 3% increase is a reasonable estimate of what we can expect growth wise to see for next year. The town is intentionally reducing its dependence on appropriated fund balance to balance the budget. This approach aligns with best practices for long term fiscal and financial sustainability.

And our revenues and other categories remain fairly stable with minimal year over year change. We're making intentional investments in our workforce. This includes a 4% of market pay increase, a mandated 0.75% retirement contribution increase and increases to our employee medical insurance coverage. Based on feedback we heard from counsel at the five thirteen budget work session, staff provided additional details about the rationale behind why we're proposing the three new positions, which are a fleet technician, a library experiences associate, and the destination coordinator. And that information was shared with counsel in yesterday's questions and answers.

We're also recommending that we implement the FIRE pay study based on the needs in that department and the skills based pay adjustments for our inspectors to help with recruitment and retention in those areas. And these investments help us remain competitive and support that employee retention. The fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven budget focuses on investing in the five year budget priorities for facility maintenance, street maintenance, vehicle replacements and fire capital to help us reach our sustainable funding need in each category. This budget continues sustained investments in key council priority areas. We are continuing to create and preserve housing in low and moderate income households by leveraging federal funding, the affordable housing loan funds, and the affordable housing bond funds, all of which help us move closer to implementing the town's affordable housing plan and investment strategy.

We're proceeding with the public housing repositioning plan to determine next steps for long term sustainability in our housing portfolio. We're building on our ongoing climate action work by continuing investments in sustainable facilities, fleet electrification and stormwater and resiliency infrastructure. And we're advancing our Greenway network by identifying and evaluating creative construction delivery methods. And we're partnering with our outside agencies to ensure funding is effectively allocated. We are also continuing to strengthen and operationalize our capacity and modernize our systems looking for ways to advance efficiency and innovation.

This includes building some in house capacity to complete greenway segments, implementing innovative approaches to complete community by aligning with our strategic plans with fully funded capital projects that reshape how the community lives, moves and connects, modernizing our internal systems and processes to streamline workflows, reduce administrative burden and support consistent service delivery aligned with ongoing operational updates referenced across our departmental business plans. Looking at our four enterprise funds, the transit budget decreases overall by 1%. The the actual town and our partner contributions are increasing, but that increase is offset by reductions that we're seeing in interest income and by, the four twenty route, going back to GoTriangle. For parking, we did some, rightsizing of some of the revenues. And so there's a 1% overall decrease to that budget.

But important to note that that budget is balanced with a almost $2,000,000 transfer from the parking fund to help support the debt service on the new deck. And we are working on kicking off a parking study to really look at the long term fiscal and financial sustainability of the parking fund. Our housing fund is up 4%, and that's really just representing cost of doing business increases. And our stormwater fund is up 23%, and that is due to a proposed $8.79 per ERU, increase. And, when you look at an average household, that average household would have two ERUs, which is equating to about a $17 per year fee increase.

And that is for, an inventory mapping project that is required per the NPDES permitting requirements under the stormwater framework.

Could you help us, could you remind us what those letters mean? The ERU and

Oh, yeah. Equivalent rate unit. Right.

And then

It's the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. Thank you.

So it helps us, as well as the people

I apologize.

Who are not in this to understand what you're talking about and doesn't just fly over our heads. Thank you.

Thank you. We wanted to touch a little bit about the county library contributions. So currently with the current year budget, Orange County allocates $621,323 towards the Chapel Hill Public Library. We received notice late in the budget process that the county is proposing a two year strategy to eliminate this funding, meaning that we would now have to make up a $310,661.5 gap in fiscal year 'twenty seven. The town is currently approaching this issue with advocacy to restore this funding while also evaluating a mix of revenue and expenditure adjustments, including the potential of charging downtown residents a fee to access access the library and looking at possible reductions in service hours.

So in summary, we believe that this budget maintains the current property tax rate with no increase, which we're really excited about. We hope that it advances council's priorities in complete community, housing, affordability, climate action, and greenways. We hope that you find that it advances our five year priority area funding levels, that it makes workforce investments in our market pay benefits and adds three new positions. It reduces our reliance on budgeting fund balance. And it positions us on a path toward long term financial sustainability.

That is it.

Any questions? Now that screen's oh, it's back. Council clarifying questions? Council Member Miller Fucci?

Yes. I would just like to request just a little bit of information regarding any MOUs or contracts we have with the People's Channel to understand their funding over the years that we've provided and where we are today. Thank Are

you asking for that information at some point in the future? I'm sorry. Oh, Okay. Good. No, no. I was lost a thread. Any other clarifying questions? Okay. Are there members of the public wishing to speak? Yes.

George Barrett.

Welcome. Hello.

Good evening, mayor and council. My name is George Barrett and I'm with the Marion G. Jackson Center and I'm also here today representing the Orange County Affordable Housing Coalition. And so I just want to say that, you know, as we are continuing being this period of local budget cuts and strained budgets as ever, the Orange County Affordable Housing Coalition is here to speak on behalf of the importance of housing as a service that keeps everyone in our community affordably and stably housed. This is especially timely as we are celebrating affordable housing month in Chapel Hill.

So as you know, we are still continuing to be in a housing crisis in our community. In this current moment, Chapel Hill presents its own unique challenges, things we know around the area median income continuing to rise as wages and low paying jobs remain stagnant, black home ownership continuing to decrease and be a challenge in our community, and as we all know, property valuations threatening the displacement of black, brown, low wealth communities within Chapel Hill. And we all believe that housing is a core service and affordable housing is crucial. And so as always, we know that even with the tight budget, we must continue to move forward on the town's affordable housing plan and investment strategy that was adopted in 2023. We do want to thank the town manager and council for your efforts to prioritize affordable housing this year even in a difficult budget climate.

And based on the '27 budget, we are happy to see that the town is maintaining its level of existing support for urgently needing affordable housing through the affordable housing funding programs. This funding is critical to meet current housing needs that our providers have to mitigate these challenges around housing in Chapel Hill. We are happy that the town is maintaining property tax assistance of $100,000 in next year's budget, though again, that could always increase. And the town is protecting the health and safety of residents by maintaining existing human services and outside agencies funding, which we know these services are crucial to be maintained at the least because due to folks in our community needing these services because of housing insecurity. In addition, we wanna continue to uplift things that we know are important, that we continue to strive for that are also in the affordable housing investment plan that the town adopted, continuing to figure out how we assistance, upkeep of the towns, public housing stock, and again, the health of core human services that we need in this community.

And I just wanna quickly say as we look forward to the next fiscal year, we know there's an opportunity to allocate up to 5,500,000 in additional funding towards affordable housing, 4,000,000 of that being bond funding. And so that these critical resources must be allocated to make the most impact in our community and advance the goals in the town's affordable housing plan. So we urge you to, the town, continue to identify sources of revenue to fulfill your commitment for funding the plan and funding affordable housing, and look forward to continuing conversations next year around the bond and other funding. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, counsel. I did have one clarifying question, which I forgot. If you could just kind of go over or remind us the approach to the position in the library, given the uncertainty with the county funding?

Thank you, mayor. I'd be happy to. We've had conversations about all three positions that are proposed in the budget. With respect to the fleet position, we see no reason to make a change. That's pretty essential.

And nothing's really changed with anything we've heard over the course of our deliberations. But with respect to the library position, we learned of the county's proposed funding cut after we had recommended the position. Clearly hiring a position while we're looking at potential impacts to part time staff in terms of reduced hours or reduced services, those are sort of at opposition. So we would not be just moving forward without hiring, without really working through that issue and coming up with an approach that makes sense in light of where the funding lands. But we're leaving the budget as proposed because we don't know how this is going to land.

So that's why it's presented as it is currently. So should funding be restored, we'll know where we would go with the position. Should funding not be restored, it's unlikely that we would hire a new position before we did other things. Then with respect to the destination coordinator position, David and I have talked about this, that in light of some potential leadership changes with the Visitors Bureau as well as some proposed interests of the university's athletic department enterprise. We have a couple other partners who might be able to work down that vertical of event attraction, destination development, heads in beds, if you will.

And

so we'll explore those options before making a decision about where that funding might be best put.

Very helpful. Thank you. Councilmember Miller Fucci.

Thank you, Mary, for your question. Clarification to the responses that you gave regarding all three positions proposed in the budget. So just so I'm clear, we're looking to keep those proposals in the budget and holding off on hiring potentially for two of them.

That's accurate.

Thank you.

DELL: Now that I dragged us back to questions, any final comments? Council Member Ryan.

Yeah. Thank you, Manager Voorhees, for that comment. I appreciate your approach to the library funding issue. And I would strongly recommend or see how my colleagues feel. I But would very much sort of like to establish a priority list of, if we do lose that funding, that we then make it a priority to keep the part time positions that we can and to keep the hours to the extent that we have to use this funding. And then only after that would we consider if we didn't need the money for those things, then we would consider hiring the position. I mean, is that the position you're taking? Or it sounded a little bit more fluid when you were describing it?

Well, think that speaks to the spirit of the thinking. We would not be likely to hire a new position and then end up setting aside our existing staff, that just doesn't feel right.

I would agree with you. So again, I strongly support a commitment for that kind of approach to this uncertainty that we're feeling. Mayor Pro Tem.

The library matter, I would encourage my colleagues, if you haven't already, to please reach out to our colleagues, our counterparts on the Board of Commissioners to hear what their perspectives are. I have started meeting, and I would like for us to be very clear in the facts that we are presenting. And I think we need to be really prepared for them moving forward with the manager's proposal. So far, I've heard three people in favor of that because of what they're facing, which is very much what we're facing, right? And I think it's helpful to talk to our colleagues who are on that board.

So this comment was really more towards the folks up here. And I just know that we're going to have to look at because we did really well. You did. Your staff did really well in presenting us with a budget that delivers a lot. And now it's my guess that you'll have to come up with something else. And I just want to say thank you for what you're able to bring to us. And I promise to be open to consider what you present with the new information that we've received already and what may come. Thank you.

Any other comments? To make there was something you just said that I guess made me then have a question, which is, are you coming back to the council before you hire those positions? Or are you just kind of waiting to see and developing a strategy? I wanted to make sure because what I heard you say made me think that maybe I was missing something.

No. So my thing was I'm not expecting you all to run hiring through us. That's not our role. What I'm saying is if you have to amend the budget that you've presented to us, I understand. I appreciate what went into it to deliver what I thought was a stellar budget once I could understand where I am right now. And I am prepared to consider any tweaks, any adjustments that you may have to make to it based on conversations that I've had with commissioners.

Because I didn't assume it was coming that those were coming back to us. So I just wanted to make sure we were clear. Heard an interest and it sounds like we're on the same page. I heard an interest in creating priorities. Yeah, Council Member Rivers.

Yeah, thanks for an update. I guess I'd rather see those positions removed from the budget. And if we go through this year and things are fine, maybe we bring them back next next year. So I know I'm a bit of outlier here, but that would be my preference.

Understood.

Not for the fleet position, but for the downtown coordinator and for the library.

And is there I I have not heard a majority in favor of holding on those positions. Is there an interest in making a prioritization of current employees over hiring a new library position as part of the budget process? I think that's what you were asking for, correct? Yeah? Council Member Sharp followed by Council Member Miller Fuschee.

I'm in favor of finding out what situation we're in before we make decisions about I think I'm in favor of, for the moment, proceeding as if we have our full library funding and knowing that that may not be the case and then figuring out what we do if that is indeed not the case. That said, I think it sounds like everybody's taking a pretty reasonable approach to the idea that we might not have our full library funding. Well, I've got the microphone. I am in support of the destination coordinator position, because we're moving money from one place to another. It's revenue generating.

We were funding that economic development strategy through one vein, and now we'd be funding it through another vein. So I don't see it as a major shift in policy strategy. And I think it supports our goal of diversifying revenue streams. So as long as we have all of the money that we mean to have, I'm in support of all three positions.

Councilmember Miller Fuschi?

Thank you. I think Councilmember Sharp stated a lot of what I was feeling and just wanted to underscore Councilmember Barry's point about running, hiring through council. Town manager will be able to, with those positions in the budget, be able to make the decisions. And I think what I've heard tonight serves the interests of what I've heard from my colleagues in terms of a new hire versus laying people off. That's been clearly communicated. So that's all I wanted to say.

Mayor Pro Tem Veri followed by Councilmember McCullough.

Thank you. I am so sorry, Councilmember Miller Fuschi, if I am repeating you. I didn't quite follow, and I want to make sure I'm going to say something, so forgive me if I repeat. It means that

I'm

supporting. I want to be clear that I do not want to dictate to Utah manager hirings. And that, for me, is the scope of your work of how you balance that. What I am curious to see if we have to, if the county moves forward with the recommendation of their manager, how you think we should pivot financially where those investments are. But I really don't want this body to say to our manager who has that responsibility of where the hirings are, I'm going to trust you and your senior staff on making those determinations.

We know what we want the outcomes to be. But how we get there, I think that is your role. And I just wanted to go on record for that.

Councilmember McCullough?

That's basically what I was going to say, just ditto what y'all said.

Other thoughts? Councilmember McMahon?

I mean, while we're all chiming in, I would say that I have no objection to the manager's approach of allocating but not spending. I feel confident in the written responses and your verbal commitment to stay in touch with us as you make those decisions. That's what I have to say.

Any other thoughts before oh, we didn't open the public hearing. Is that fine? I I mean, know we could have technically did.

By practice, did. We're Okay.

Okay, great. Because I will never remember to do that.

It's one of those nights.

Okay. Do I have a motion well, do you have the information that you need from the council at this point, manager?

I do. Thank you, mayor. Okay.

Do I have a motion to close the public hearing?

Moved. Second.

Motion by council member Miller Fucci, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Barry. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say nay. I think we close it. The public hearing? Yeah, I believe so. Then we vote on the this is just the public hearing, and then we'll vote on the budget when it comes. All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, please say nay. Motion is unanimous. Okay. Up next is item number nine, updating our climate action and response plan. And we'll get the table a little higher for John Richardson, our community sustainability manager.

There we go. Okay. Good? You can see? You can hear?

Alright. Well, good evening, mayor and council. My name is John Richardson. I serve as your community sustainability manager, and I'm back before you this evening to talk a little bit more about the climate action plan update, specifically trying to get some priorities from you all or at least make sure we're aligned with your priorities heading into the community engagement So the agenda tonight, I want to revisit quickly a little bit about the update and its purpose and why we're doing it, then talk with you about the schedule and some of the framing there. I also then want to share some of the priorities and strategies from the current plan that I think connect well with some of the possible actions that we could see going over the next five years, and then end with a series of engagement questions that we we have for you all and that we think could potentially also be the ones that we provide to the public.

So the bottom line up front here is that the climate action plan calls for an update every five years. And as we told you last time, we've been preparing for the public outreach and engagement. But before we take that step, we're here tonight to engage with you all and to share some of those questions and ideas and get your thoughts to make sure we're getting off on the right foot. So just a little bit about the update. I just wanna answer the question of why why we do this.

So really quickly, back in 2021 when the first plan was adopted by council, it was really led by council policy guidance. We also had, of course, community input, and it was all supported by technical expertise as well. And that's really important because a lot of this work is science based in order to reach those targets that we have. The five year update is important because it helps us account for changes that occur over time, advances in technology, changes to state and federal policies, or to funding levels, and some other factors. And I'm happy to go into this if that's helpful at any point tonight.

And we're also not proposing a full rewrite of the plan. We think that the plan and its foundation are quite good. This is really a chance to provide a progress report to you all later this year, and then also through our work with the community and with you all to look for ways to make adjustments that will be important for the next five years. So changing gears here to the schedule and the framing. This is similar to what I showed you last time.

What we're planning to do is May through July, conduct the public education and engagement. So this is where we will share about some of the progress to date and check-in with the community on some of these key questions. Between August and October, we will then look at what we've heard, analyze that information, and begin developing an update for you all to consider towards the end of the year. Within the IAP2 public engagement spectrum, which I'm thinking you all have probably seen on different projects before, we are proposing to be in the consult end of the spectrum. And and really what that means is what you see on the screen here.

We're making a commitment to keep you and the community informed, of course, to listen, to acknowledge ideas and concerns and aspirations that are brought forward, and ultimately to provide feedback about how community input has influenced your decision in the end. So with current strategies and actions, this is this is a framing that I as I mentioned earlier, comes out of our current plan, and these are some of the the key questions that we have for you tonight and those that we ask you to consider for the public as well. And I can go through these a little bit. So we're wondering about are we missing any priorities? I've got a slide that follows this one that serves as a reminder to what those high level priorities are.

We're also curious to know about town level actions and what you think may be missing to help meet our goals. Similarly, community level actions, things we wouldn't do ourselves but we might promote and encourage within the community. And then finally, programs, things where we and the community come together, what are some things that you all think might help serve and meet our goals? So as promised, this is the slide. These are the high level priorities that come from the current plan.

And as it says on the slide here, we do believe these are still the right priorities. And I'm going to spend just a minute going through some examples within each of these categories just to give you a refresher on some of what is in the current plan. So under buildings and energy on the left hand side, you see the strategies listed. These are just examples of things. And on the right, what we have are action examples that connect to those strategies.

And so I talked with you all last time a little bit about the rooftop solar project that we've got going on. That's a key pillar for us we think going forward. And the reason that's in bold and in the next one down is because anything you see in bold is also one of your council's strategic priorities or it has a has a direct connection. Energy and water efficiency upgrades in town facilities. These are things we continue to do over the years.

We have a really good performance contract in place that's saving about $80,000 a year in three of our largest facilities. We've done lighting projects at the library and public works and other facilities over the years that have also saved energy and money. So these are things that are ongoing for us. The electrification program we've talked to you all about, that is something something we are building and getting up and running this year. That's gonna serve residents and help them electrify things within their homes that are not currently electrified.

So think lawn mowers, possibly fossil fuel powered heating, that sort of thing. And then finally, C PACE, we talked a little bit about that last time. That's something that we're working on with David's team. This is, we think, a really excellent financing tool for commercial property owners that provides long term, low cost financing to do sustainability and resiliency upgrades, should say. Okay, so just I'll be a little faster with some of these transportation and land use.

You can see infrastructure regulations, vehicle electrification are some of the key example strategies, and of course that connects to ongoing work that was started in the first plan, and we think it probably continues with the mobility plan and the everywhere to everywhere greenways planning and build out. The Lumo rewrite, we know that's a priority for you. Town vehicle fleet electrification, a continued priority for you. Right now, our fleet's at about 7% electric. Transit's close to 20 if you're looking at their coaches.

So that work continues. The North South BRT, of course, will be transformative. And then we wanna maintain our public EV charging stations. Even though the majority of charging still takes place at home, having public charging spread around the community is also serving our community in positive ways.

I just wanted to say I think that North South BRT should be bolded. I think that's a really central priority. I think that the community needs to understand why that's a climate issue during engagement.

We can do that for sure. Under wastewater and natural resources, you can see that the the strategies range from waste diversion to natural resource conservation and enhancement. So we would continue looking to do tree planting programs in neighborhoods and in our parks. The implementation of the stormwater plan, and that's something you all have been talking about. Expansion of composting at town facilities, and also programs like leave your leaves, which are well received in the community.

And then with resiliency, again, see a little bit of overlap here with the stormwater implementation and outreach. We've also been investing in flood early warning sensors. We're looking at the possibility of heat sensors as well. Speaking of heat, it's getting warm. The mayor made an announcement tonight. We've got our new heat action plan, and we will begin implementing that this year. And then that connects also to the resilience hub idea, which is not lost. I mentioned we did lose our federal funding, but we may be able to pick up some local funding for that. So I'm gonna leave this slide again and just say that one other question we had for you tonight was is whether or not you have other questions you think would be important for the community as well.

So I'm assuming we're asking you clarifying questions now. Right? And then talking about, are there questions that we want you to ask the community

That works.

In a bit. So any clarifying questions? Yes, sir.

Yeah. Thank you for this really critical program. I'm curious if we've modeled, in terms of thinking about total impact from vehicle emissions, for example, is possible to try to approximate a sort of like if we had x miles of connected greenway and we hit a sort of critical level such that it were actually plausible that people would comfortably and safely bike around to multiple destinations. I tend to subscribe to the thesis that like the vast majority of people here are not quite comfortable actually doing that with our current level of infrastructure. Can we model the sort of like trade off of emissions impact of like hitting critical point in the Greenway network unlocking say 5% more ridership or whatever versus like vehicle investments and try to figure out some sort of like dollar to dollar comparison of if we make investments in this arena, we think we might reduce emissions in this range and in this arena, this range.

I have no idea what the outcome would be, but that's like a comparison I would be interested in getting approximations on if if you were to tell me that it's possible to get meaningful approximations. If you were like, there is no meaningful way to model that, we would just be making stuff up. And I would also be like, Okay, interest retracted.

So we can explore that. I don't have the answer tonight. What you're saying sounds plausible to me based on the inputs that I know go into the modeling we have done, but we would probably just need to check on that to be sure.

Council member Rivers, followed by council member Miller Fucci. Oh, okay. Followed by council member McCullough, and then I'll keep going.

Yeah. Thanks, John. This is always, thanks for the update. I want to hear a little bit more about the engagement plan, specifically, like, how do you plan to engage with the youth during the summer? Like, do you have plans to go to summer camps? Maybe, like, the summer camps run by the town, think of, like, car graves, like, kind of low hanging fruit ideas.

I think it's all of the above. We've got the plan to go where things are happening more so than just being the I may have said this before but being the center of attention and hoping someone comes and finds it interesting. So I think it's summer camps, it's events, it could even be things like office hours. Could be so it'll be a variety of things that we are developing with the Equitable Engagement team, similar to other projects we've been working on lately.

Council member Miller Fucci.

Thank you for this update. I have a question regarding our engagement and conversations with the university. I know that we do some work with them, especially with our buses, the rapid transit, all of those. But what ongoing conversations are we having with them? Like, are we getting buy in?

How are we collaborating with them? What kind of engagement are we having in terms of what their goals and our goals and how we I know there are touch points, like I just mentioned, but what are some of the ongoing conversations we've had? I know before, I think the first year I was on council, we had someone from UNC come and talk to us. But since that kind of reporting has ceased.

We we do have at the staff level, we have regular meetings with the university. And I think the alignment is very good in terms of what we're trying to accomplish and what they're interested to do. And as part of this plan, I think we would ramp that up and look to find as many areas of overlap as possible. I can tell you that one example recently has been more on the research side. So they, with the water sensor project, they helped do the research that led to sort of the proof of concept that we then implemented. And I think there's opportunities to continue doing things like that. Heat is another example where we're working with them currently. So that and also larger scale interests in terms of decarbonizing cogen and other things like that.

Awesome. Thank you for that. I know well, I wanna preface this with I know this would really take, legislative action first and foremost. But looking at, energy, the ongoing rate hikes that our community is facing, across the state, really, and just thinking about, our trip that we made to Ann Arbor. I know just looking at their climate action plan, they have what is called a community choice option, which is pretty much a which allows local government to procure power on behalf of residents, businesses, and other municipal accounts separate from other allocated suppliers like a Duke Duke Energy.

Again, I know this would take legislative action, but being able to do something similar to that not just for us, but other communities across the state where they could potentially have 100% renewable electricity that all of our folks, business residents could benefit from. In your field, Have you seen any interest in that, in in really pursuing that, pushing that, any lobbying taking place to really empower us on a local level to be able to do something like that?

It's possible I missed it. I don't know that I've seen anything quite like that here. On the solar side, I've seen the utilities trying to bring more utility scale, community scale solar options to the table. And part of the challenge with those has been historically that there's there only so much capacity, and it gets eaten up pretty quickly. There's also a lot of competition with tech companies who are interested in this renewable energy for their own purposes. And so I think to answer your question more directly, though, I've not seen anything quite like what Ann Arbor offers.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, what they're doing there is just really amazing. But I think, you know, they have a state legislature that is willing to do that. But I think I just wanna put it out there, and it would be so amazing if Chapel Hill could now I'm making a comment. Sorry, y'all. Could be on the Just raise your voice hand. Say what?

Just raise your voice hand and make it a question.

Right. It would

be great.

Yeah. It would be great. It would be great.

Would it be great? Yeah.

Member McCullough, followed by Council Member Sharp, followed by Council Member Ryan.

Okay. I've got a few things. Some of them might be comments. One of the things is I'm wondering whether or not you're considering, during this engagement, to sort of combine the engagement for the climate action plan with the engagement about the heat action and that program because that would be a good way to get things home to people? So that's one question.

I think we can do that. I think that's a very good suggestion.

Okay. And per per council member Miller Fichy's questions, I know that there are some things in the the general assembly right now. I was looking. I was there this morning with the CR Club talking about the Ratepayer Protection Act. And if there are things that are going on in the general assembly, might you be able to tell us about those things so that we can do lobbying? You can't, but we could.

Yeah.

Okay, think the rest of them are just comments.

I'm just gonna say

I'll wait.

I think we we are part of networks that help track a lot of the legislation that happens at the state level, both with the legislature and with the utilities commission. So I think I think it is possible that we can continue to bring you information like we did with the legislative breakfast, for example, so that you all know where those points of advocacy are possible.

Thank you.

Council member Sharp followed by council member Ryan followed by council member McMahon.

Thank you. So in the responses to the questions that some of my colleagues submitted, I noticed a phrase that came up a few times, was to help monitor a variety of topics. We will be developing additional metrics as part of the council's strategic priorities tracking process and reporting through the business plans. I would love to have a little more information about what that means, particularly in a few areas that it was used to answer, which were questions about tree canopy, stormwater planning alignment, and the natural areas map. Because those struck me as three areas that are pretty critical to our decision making when zoning decisions come before us.

And so I would like to have a more concrete answer to those. I mean, they're very, like, ground level things. But to me, feel like things that we can really affect when we are making zoning decisions or conditional zoning decisions and make sure that we are looking out for things like tree canopy, storm water management alignment, and making sure that we are making the best use of the natural areas map. So I guess my question is, can you tell us any more about the additional metrics that will be developed? And when we will, let's see, track those and have a report on them through the business plans.

Yeah. It's it's a fair question. So we I think part of those questions where you saw that repeated answer are questions where we are seeing connections to to metrics and ways of measuring information that we think directly responds to some of your questions as part of how we will reshape and begin responding to your strategic priorities through the business plan process. That was a mouthful. But if there are specific details that we can help provide sooner rather than later, that's something we can look at too.

And when you say through the business plan process, you mean the plan update process? Or the what are you referring to when you're talking about the business plan process?

Council member, each department prepares a business plan annually to operationalize the budget.

Got

it. So the reporting back on metrics is related to that because that's we do the business plans and then carry out operations. Then we're tracking metrics from that that we wanna feedback to counsel. It's

Got it.

So when developing those business plans for each, you will use these metrics in order to decide how to spend money, essentially.

Well, they certainly inform how we spend our money and if we're on track or not and if we need to make adjustments, if we need to change our resource requests in future cycles. So yeah, they're they're certainly related to it. Yes.

I guess a better way to phrase that would have been whether or not the ways we are spending our money are helping us reach the goals that we want via those metrics. Okay. Thank you. I guess then comment or question. I would just like to reiterate my interest in making sure that we have metrics and information about the things that really affect how we make conditional zoning decisions so that we can be part of helping carry out our climate action plan and make sure we aren't working at cross purposes to that when we make development decisions.

Understood.

Councilmember Ryan followed by Councilmember McMahon.

Okay. I would second what Councilmember Sharp just said. I think that that's really important for us to be able to have that kind of information when we're actually doing our day to day jobs. So thank you for that. For Theo's comments, I agree, any data that we can get and I know some of it won't be available to you but the idea is very intriguing that maybe by investing in that green way we could be achieving some climate goals.

Instead of directly investing in a climate goal, we are investing other places. But we're actually getting more bang for our buck. So I think that that's very intriguing if there's any way to get at that kind of decision. And just to follow-up on council member Miller Fuxi, Apex has its own electrical utility. They do. They do? They do?

Yes, they're in electricity.

And I don't know how renewable or energy efficient it is, but they run their own thing. Didn't know that either, but that's true. My question sorry about that. My question is, you talked about the engagement frame, and you mentioned a string of initials. And I know that I've seen that slide before, but can you just remind me what that stands for, what the organization is?

Oh, International Association of Public Participation, which is the P2 part, think.

Okay. Thank

you. Thank you.

Camille just said it wasn't me asking for the acronym this time.

Okay. Right.

Plenty to share. Council Member McMahon.

Thank you. I'll tack on with the evaluation angle and the reason why I see that as important is this idea of we're adapting and how do we adapt. So question for you is as you prepare visuals to communicate with us and the community, I'm curious about how we indicate where the priorities are weighted. Like, think of a pie chart. Like, are we doing mostly in carbon reduction and some in resilience?

Like, what is a way we can communicate? I saw you had some stars in the PowerPoint there. But you know, if we go out to the public being clear about this was our pie chart in 2020. This is our pie chart now. This is kind of where we think the pie chart will be in the future so we can clearly show how we're adapting with what we're doing.

So really investing with communications and these visuals that help people understand where the effort is being put and where the focus is being put because I would imagine some of it is about how we're, if we're not rewriting the plan, how are we adapting the plan because adaptation is the whole thing we've to deal with. So waiting those priorities would be a great thing. Would just like to say you do that. Situational awareness, I'm wondering how you can integrate that into it as well, like helping people understand where are we at. So I don't know what situational awareness information you're putting in there.

And just do you have volunteer groups that you're working with? I feel like this engagement could be a real do you have volunteer groups that you work with that could help you with this?

We haven't identified any at this point, but the last time we did the plan, we talked to a lot of local organizations who contributed to the plan, and some of which were interested to really talk about the plan, and so that might be an opportunity for us this time.

Right. So no one's tapped from like Sierra Club or the Audubon Society to actually go out and help you with this effort?

Not to this point.

All

right. These resilience hub grants, I see them framed as grants. But I'm wondering, is there a concept of a resilience hub that we would create that the members of the community I think some people are gonna ask questions about how do we prevent and recover from disasters. And when I

see the word resilience hub, I imagine some organized prevention and response teams or something. I just don't know. Do you have a vision for resilience hubs beyond grants as a part of how we deal with resiliency? Actually, we use a definition that comes from the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, which really describes a resilience hub as a trusted community space that gets used on a regular basis, but also one that not only provides services, it can be supportive to the community during a disaster or an So I mean, I'm shorthanding it, but we don't define it just based on the grant proposal. Although the grant proposal, we think, would help us identify ways to enhance the, what I would call, the existing resilience hubs that we already have.

So in some ways, I would say the Hargraves Community Center, the library, and the community center off of Estes are three examples of resilience hubs that we have that can be further enhanced through additional investment.

But, John, I think we're doing we're actually applying for grants through Central Pines. Right?

That's right.

Yeah. So that it's I know you maybe you have two questions, but it's not that we're it's that there is we're trying to get money to create these things. It's not about giving out money necessarily to

No.

No. I'm saying that aside from getting the money or not, I I think when we go out and engage with the public, there's gonna be a question of you know, we talked a lot about mutual aid after Chantal.

Oh, I

see. And it also ties in with how you're connecting with volunteer groups. Another question on top of that would be congregations. A lot of our congregations respond in these ways to help, you know, low income folks. So my question would be how are you engaging with congregations? Maybe one question would be focus groups as a part of engagement where you would pull these really central community members and engage them at a higher level intentionally because they're all doing this work. And being able to coordinate them I think would be good for the town and help us be a good partner in that. Partner in that? Yeah.

Question?

Question?

Uh-huh. Question time.

But thank you. And I just I really hope you can thank you.

Councilmember Mayor Pro Tem Berry.

Thank you for this. I also am curious, as we're talking about partnering and working collaboratively with other groups, we have a group that is connected to the town, and it's the Youth Council. Have you considered this is a question. I'll turn it into a comment next time. Have you considered working with those young, brilliant people who are chomping at the bit to contribute? I have seen some videos, and one may have just been released tonight. But I've seen some videos that they've done to elevate services around the community. And I so that's my question is, have you considered that?

We we have. Actually, we worked, we were fortunate last time we did this that the there was a member of the youth council who was on one of our advisory boards who, was a a sort of an ambassador for the project back to the youth council. And then from there, and some of you may remember this, the night that the plan was adopted, there was a petition of over 500 high school signatures from the community in support of the plan based on the youth council ambassador and their work within the high school. So, yes, we have considered that and we'll consider that again. Yeah.

I okay. Let me get my brain together. I'll get there. I don't know that this evening you're necessarily really asking us about what's in the plan. But so I guess my question is more about the engagement, and then I must then I think what you said is then it comes back to us, then we talk through.

So I think that's great. I I guess I'm having a hard time myself understanding how are you going to give the community members something to decide between or have, like, a realistic framing of what is possible because I know that there are I think we should always have an opportunity for people to come with something totally outside the box and amazing and interesting. And I I think that we often set ourselves up to for people to be frustrated when they're like, I said I want wind farms all around town. And then you're like, well, that can't be a thing. And then people are frustrated.

And they're like, but you asked me what town level actions can help meet our goal. You know, like, so how are we helping people deal with the questions you're asking them? And and how are we conveying at least some of the things like this this real I, you know, I agree with this just shift to resilience and really thinking about what does resilience mean? And so how are we helping the public answer those questions in a way that helps them be smart because you're smart. You know?

Like, how how are we helping them to weigh options or at least have that those guardrails in place so that they can really engage productively and tell us things we think are possible or are reasonable or are on the table as opposed to, like, what should we do, and what do you like? And, you know, some of it might be like, well, people really want people have wanted composting for a long time, but we just it just hadn't made sense to scale it up in that way when people can pay a service to come to their house. Right? And so but then then we're just asking people, like, what do you want? And so I guess I'm wondering how how are you actually going to be doing this engagement, or how can we understand what you're really gonna be asking people?

So, and this happened the first time too. I think this is a challenge of doing this work. What I would say is, and we tried to do this last time too, I mentioned this earlier, we try to make sure that the work is rooted in reality and science. And so when we have questions or maybe sometimes they sound like opinions, you know, someone might say, I think the solution is renewable energy. Another person might say, and these are real examples from last time, I think the solution is a 100% nuclear. And, you know, we don't control the utilities, so that takes us into a different conversation about what we do control and what we don't.

I I also don't think we have a zoning for nuclear power plants last time I checked, but

Exactly. So I think what we try to do as a staff is if we have good information, when we hear those comments or those interests, we try to then turn that into a conversation that is based in reality and try to share what we know, not to discourage someone, but to educate and and have that conversation. If we don't have the opportunity to have that conversation, then our commitment within the consult model is to try and provide that information in the written work that we will provide as part of this. So if somebody sees their question, we will then try and respond as staff in the best way we know how to say that this is possible for these reasons or we don't think this is possible or practical for these reasons. And that's just it's a line of directness and honesty that we're just gonna have to take with the work.

So is it that the way we do this work is driven by this model that we've adopted and that in order to change that foundational paradigm of if we could give people options or we could give them something upfront instead of waiting for them to give us an answer that doesn't make sense or then having them go and read a report. I guess, like, what is the way that we get to a different way of engaging then, I guess, is my question.

SPEAKER I'm hearing your question now, too, a little differently. So I think the other part of this is we would give them enough information to see, like you all can see tonight, some of our thinking around strategies and actions and things that we think would support some of the high level goals so that they can get a sense of what kinds of work we're already imagining. And so for them, it's not sort of this whole cloth exercise, but more reacting and maybe thinking about, well, maybe something's missing here, or maybe there's something we could change about this, or I'm wondering about this. But, yeah, we would we would look to complement, in some ways, similar to the work we did with the police station site, we brought a couple of different scenarios and options, and folks were reacting to that as opposed to sort of a blank canvas and more generalized questions.

Yeah. That's helpful. Thank you. What's the timing on the sustainable facility study? The study will be completed in July. Oh, okay. So soon. Mhmm. Also, I guess as we're talking about, obviously, stormwater management implementation is a huge part of council priorities and and and this plan too, I think. How does the timing for the new stormwater plan work with the climate climate action plan update? And, also, do we have any updates on the Built to Endure work that's going on with the modeling?

So for the first question, what I would say is we still have to determine that. I don't have an answer for you tonight. And as far as the modeling goes, I believe we're scheduling we have something maybe the manager can speak to.

I don't have an answer on the modeling, but we'll we'll certainly try to get that to you. What what we're trying to schedule is the collaboration with NC State for the plan review, and that's we're obviously at the end of the semester trying to get a university's staff on board has a little pause there. So we're trying to get that scheduled.

Okay. Thank you. And finally, could you give me a little bit more of a timeline on that that resilience hub grant application with Central Pines and kind of, I guess, how long would it take if we were to win? And then are there things that we can be doing in the interim?

We hope to hear back about the results of the grant in June at our meeting in June. And then from there, awarded, we would begin the work of the assessment process. It would probably take us a month or so to get under contract. And then I think the assessment would probably be three to five months following, maybe hopefully a little shorter. And then from there, we would know what we can do to continue investing in the hub space.

That's great. Thank you. Councilman Rivers.

And for the resilience hubs, is there space in that for the community have a say in like what they would like to see? Like thinking about the engagement like

Absolutely the assessment part would be sort of an exercise in what's possible and then from there before any decisions get made about changes to facilities we would we would want to have conversations about what makes sense.

Okay. Do we have any members of the public wishing to speak?

Okay.

Council members, it's back to you. Council member Ryan followed by council member Sharp.

Yeah. Thank

you for all this.

Thanks for all this. So when you're talking about priorities, one of the things that I've heard from a bunch of my fellow council members is a shift to not a change, but adding resiliency in a stronger way than was present in the original report. I think we were back in 2000 or whatever, I think we were more optimistic about holding the carbon tide back. So I think that that is going to be something, as we update and tweak things, that I would like to see more of. In terms of actions, I'm really going to need to rely on you to help us figure that out because I can think of things, but I don't know what's practical.

Like having our own utility would be fabulous. Ted, I don't know if he would run out the door being asked to implement and operate in a town utility. So I just need guidance.

The long and the short of that is it's highly impractical. Years ago, municipal governments led the way in starting a lot of utilities. They built their own power plants to run trolley car systems and put lights on Main Street and that sort of stuff. So you had places like Wilmington doing that and what have you. Over the years, the state's already been carved up by the utility commission to assign service areas to the investor owned utilities as well as the co ops.

And there really isn't any service territory left. While you can read in the statutes that municipal corporations have some inherent authority to provide electric utilities and some other utilities. As a practical matter, once the infrastructure is in place, there's no way to displace it without protracted legal wrangling and what have you. And it's only been done once in a blue moon, to my knowledge.

I thought you got a little paler when that subject came up. So Katzewoven Sharp brought up finding ways to operationalize things like the natural areas plan as part of decision making so that we actually have so that we bring in that connection to environment and sustainability when we are making planning decisions. I think it's super important. I've long been jealous of Chatham County. They actually have a I think it's a half time FTE that does environmental plan review and looks at their looks at things from that point of view.

And I that is something that I would love to aspire to for the town. So we got information on that. And in terms of engagement, I know you presented at last week's climate council meeting. There was a group there that was talking about volunteer efforts. And especially as the federal government has become less engaged and state governments have become less engaged just at the power of things at the volunteer level.

And I know that we've got groups like the ones who have done invasive removal on our greenway who've been incredibly successful, supported in limited ways by the town in terms of providing some materials and providing cleanup of the brush. The volunteers are doing the planning and the labor. I think that if we can figure out a way to engage community in that way, I think people would love to find things to do. The turnouts to those were incredible. So I think that that might be one other thing we can add.

And in terms of engagement, I think the mayor spoke pretty eloquently about making sure that we're doing engagement in a way that's really asking questions that we can act on the answers to. And so I think going to be really powerful. For instance, I can see if you guys as the experts say, Okay, here are a list of volunteer programs that we think could be viable, which ones would you participate in? I think that kind of question would be a very useful sort of input from us. Because it constrains it at the beginning to things that we realistically and legally could do and then hears from the community about what kind of things they would like.

Council Member McCullough. Sorry. Sorry. No. You were next. So

I don't know if you would put this in the town level actions, community level actions, or programs categories. I'll let you decide where it fits. But a couple things that I would love to see added to one of those places, one would be street tree pilot programs to see where, as we are advancing our connectivity goals and multimodal transportation goals, that we are also adding street trees in order to make those both more usable for people so that they are actually they actually function as a way to get people out of their cars and also help mitigate heat islands. I think just just street trees are the best. We should put them in everywhere.

And I know that that's tricky with DOT roads, utilities, etcetera, but I would really, really, really love to see us dig in and try to tackle that problem because I think it would just be such a huge benefit on so many levels. So street trees, please. And then I would also love and I don't know if this is potentially maybe more for storm water, but it certainly seems to me like a resiliency issue would be. I think we have a lot of us mentioned wanting to adopt a program like Carbara has with the watershed assistance program where they help cost share with homeowners for putting in green storm water drainage and erosion measures. I feel like if we are only addressing the our own drainage, we're only doing, like, a fraction of the problem since everything is contiguous.

It's not like water decides. It's just like, oh, I'll only drain over here on townland. So I think the more that we can reach out into to private property owners to help them do the same thing, the better we all are off. So those are two that would fit into any of those last three that I would really love to see us add.

Councilmember McCullough followed by mayor Pro Temburi.

Okay. You know me. I've got opinions.

And and you probably know what all of them are.

But most of what I have to say is about the messaging. And the first thing I want to say is that you've got two members of the Sierra Club executive committee right here. And I think we can pretty reliably say that Sierra Club will help with communication and outreach, however possible. One of my real concerns about messaging around climate resilience is that many people are in a mindset where they're saying, well, climate change is happening. We need to forget about mitigation and and concentrate on resilience.

And I hope that we are continuing the messaging that we are in damage control right now and we cannot give up on mitigation efforts for resilience. We must advance both at the same time because this is such an important way to just teach the public while they're engaged. I would and this is partly comment, partly question I think it's important that we work on as we outreach to and engage the community that we create a sense of identity and buy in and ownership. There's a great book called Switch How to Change Things When Change is Hard. And this sort of creating ownership and identity as we are a town that does this is really important in actually getting people to that action, especially if we're looking for voluntary actions and people to buy into the money that we're going to be spending.

One way can I hope be the community climate action fund, but there are other things that we could do that would be in the social marketing realm? With regard to council member Nauert's discussion about trying to estimate the kind of emission reductions and changes in the OCOMO share that might happen. I think that where we can't necessarily come up with numbers, we can certainly come up with examples. And I think to use Paris as an example, I believe that I think the last I heard was that in the city center, more than half of the people are out of their cars and that the air quality in the city center has really have you heard differently? No.

You

were talking about the city. Paris,

with the five years of bike infrastructure they have installed and the mode chair that they have seen and the air quality in the city center has been really amazing. And so I think that showing the before and afters of a place that was just as drowning in cars as America will be a very helpful thing. You know me and co benefits. It was in the original CARP. I think that's something that we need to continue to emphasize, that we're getting multiple benefits for the same buck.

Okay. That's all for me. Thank you.

Councilmember Berry? I just want to say that I love my colleagues. And I'm going to continue on the vein of engagement. I am really looking forward to it for the town, for the folks in the town, because they want to be part of the creative, the idea making, and then the realization of those ideas. And I want to go back to groups that we can tap into.

And this is not the exhaustive list we've heard about others, but the youth council. And not just the youth council, but area high schools, and maybe middle schools. And because our youth, as you know, are extremely passionate about this matter and want to have a say. And then you've got service clubs in the area. I belong to one, Rotary Club.

There are three in this area. They are chomping. We are chomping at the bit to support. And in fact, I could see these groups, service groups, being willing to sponsor or support in some way this. So please, if there are ideas that you would like help from us, I think we have plenty of I'm a connector. And so I would love to be able to connect groups that have asked to be of of help.

Anybody else? Councilmember McMahon? I

echo everyone's sentiment. I think I raised a lot of my things in the questions. But I I do I read this week that, you know, our our Chapel Transit's back up and running every route. I'm an f route guy. It's amazing to see it back.

And I again, one of the things we talked about at the last meeting was doing our best not to compartmentalize, and I think one of our biggest heavy hitters in climate change in this town is the investment we make in transit. So as much as we can keep transit for in the forefront here of of what we're doing and what makes this town special, and I just applaud us and the Chapel Transit folks for getting all the lines back up and running. And after filling my gas tank today, I'm going to find extra times that I can take the bus. So so thank you, Chapel Transit, and just making sure that that really stands out as one of our shining stars in my opinion.

Councilmember Rivers?

I know you're gonna come back to us after the engagement, but would it be possible for us to see some, like, the high level messaging themes that you plan to have before you go out with it at the engagement? Because I I think council member McCullough has suggested some stuff, especially this idea of, like, mitigation and balance with resiliency. So it'd be nice to see those before you go back out.

Thank you very much for bringing this back and for engaging with the council in advance of the public. I think that's really helpful. I think I think that I I very much agree that it's not just resiliency or just mitigation. And I think a lot of our mitigation is actually our our carbon reduction is largely driven by UNC or, you know, that there's not as much as we that we can do in terms of our town investment in mitigation. But I love the idea of getting volunteers and getting people engaged and having that be a community ownership thing.

So to me, the mitigation is where I feel like the town has the biggest role knowing that we really wanna facilitate the other piece too. So I don't think it's that we don't do it. I just think they're different. So I really feel like it's important to make sure that there's a big focus on resilience, The resiliency hubs, the resiliency proofing of the town, I think, is huge. And and I don't wanna give up on carbon reduction goals as well.

I I do really like the idea of making it easier for people to volunteer, I think, in ways that would be helpful. I know I know there's a lot of interest in all sorts of things, but I think finding out from the public, like somebody said, you know, what what are things that you would like to be able to do in terms of participating and volunteering. I think I hear all the time that people, they wanna go and pick up all that trash behind the behind the what is it over there on Elliot?

The cookout.

The cookout. Cookout.

We did it.

And I'm like, bless. Because that is terrible back there. But, like, you know, people really wanna do things. And so I think finding ways to make that easier for them and making it more official or something that people can feed into, I think, would be really, really exciting. I think figuring out any other opportunities for partnership and then kind of really building that energy around November and trees in April and Earth month and, you know, getting getting the community as engaged as possible.

And I think I think all those metrics and other things will make that more interesting and more concrete for people too. Like, we're making progress. We're actually seeing a, you know, a needle move or something, you know, that there's something happening. And that's what I think will also motivate people. And then, you know, we can, like, have fun competitions against our neighbors and do all you know, like, whatever. Just like well, we would win, obviously. But I think it's really paced, Carbara. But yeah. Carbara will be mad if we say that. But, anyway, I I really I think there's a lot of energy around this, and I think people are looking for things to do.

And I'm I am really interested in those metrics and understanding how that's gonna fit into all this. But but, yeah, thank you. And I think we're we're really excited to see how this goes. I I personally am not one that I want I would ask you to go everywhere. I would ask you to, like, go to really strategic places and and be smart about engagement. We don't you know? And getting some good sampling is great, but I think having you out, like, all summer talking to every single group is probably not what I would think is the best use of time. But I'm sure you all will figure out a good balance there. So thank you. Next up is item number 10.

It's a public hearing on project Stark Tower. And our presenter is David Putnam, who is our director of economic development.

I don't know how to lower this.

That's a high table there, David.

But Thank you. He's a pro. Y'all might not know this about me, but I am the tallest one in my family. Yeah. It really shocked my wife.

She thought I was joking. Good evening, mayor and council. My name is David Putnam. I'm your economic development director, and I'm here today to talk to you all about Project Stark Tower. So the location of where this project is proposing to locate in the town of Chapel Hill is the 136 East Rosemary Street Building in downtown.

This would be a headquarters location for the project. And they would take over a significant amount of space over time in this building, reaching nearly full occupancy. And what the company is proposing to invest in the town is 152 jobs with an average wage of $77,000 $1,500,000 over the course of five years in personal tangible property, and, again, a headquarters investment in downtown. What they are asking for an inducement from you to consider is $261,000 worth of parking credits for five years, $57,000 cash grant, an award for five years, and then all of these awards would be performance based, though, and break out annually. So the company would have to perform in order to unlock the full package of the incentive.

And that is how we have structured this. Real quick key points of return on investment in modeling what this looks like for you all, I've forecasted and combined parking revenues and property taxes. This is a positive cash flow project right out of the gate, which is a really competitive position for you all to consider. And over the course of about a decade, we're talking about potential $2,000,000 in revenue for the town of Chapel Hill. So this chart that I'm displaying today really describes two kind of timelines.

We're going to focus on the bar chart first. So the blue boxes are essentially the expected revenues that the town is going to see, again, combined revenues over the course of every year. And then the red bar is the projected incentive offering to the company every year. And the green line, this is where we start to get into a cumulative timeline. This is where we are stacking the revenues over the course of the full period of performance of this project, so about ten years.

So essentially, the green box is just the difference of the blue and the red over time just added together. So this Project Stark Tower is a priority industry for the town per your incentive policy. It is a local business, in fact. It's a high impact project. And it also presents you all with a high growth opportunity, especially in our downtown central business district.

The company is Blue Sky Robotics. It's an advanced robotics and precision software company. They design, build, and deploy automated robotic solutions to solve complex problems in the fields of health care, logistics, manufacturing, and hospitality, to name a few. They have a really diverse kind of industry offering that can be adapted in many different focus areas. This is also a highly competitive project due in part because everybody's chasing these.

This kind of checks the box for high growth technology companies that we should be really proud that we're getting this look for. But the company it's competitive, quite frankly, because the company's need for rapid talent and the industry sector that they touch. There is additional capital investment, like many office lease opportunities, that are wrapped up in their lease negotiations with their landlord. So the $1,500,000 number that I'm showing you today is just the personal tangible property. It is not recognizing the real property tax improvements that you could see from this project.

But we don't have a way to capture those and report those to you right now. But you'll be able to feel them over time, and you'll see them on the tax roll. This company is a launch Chapel Hill graduate, specifically from the new Powered by KPMG program that we're on the third cohort of. And so we're really excited to see that these sorts of investments from you all and partnerships are being fruitful, right, and have rapid turnarounds on return on investment to the town. And this is a heavy job retention and creation project, of course, because it comes with it 152 new jobs.

This is a rapid talent project that I mentioned before. These are your core competitors. And of the three, Grapevine Texas is the most real. They have a partnership with an industry provider over there. And this provider is offering this company space, which is a really lucrative offer considering space is in such scarce demand or scarce offerings, excuse me.

And so I'm presenting this because I have a recommended action for you to take. My recommended action for you all is to approve resolution twenty twenty six five twenty r two offering incentives up to $318,000 allocated between cash awards and credits to Blue Sky Robotics Inc. Based upon, again, their company full time job creation goals and performance. And I'm happy to take any questions.

Council questions? Members of the public wishing to speak? Oh, hold on. Do I have to open the public hearing? Hey. Look at look at me go. Council, can I have a motion to open the public hearing?

So

moved by council member Ryan, seconded by council member Miller Fucci. All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, please say nay. Motion is unanimous.

Okay. No comments from the public. So I'd like to move oh, sure. So sorry.

I just have a an anecdotal comment to share, which is that one of our own employees who, is a recent UNC graduate with a degree in computer science has been hired away from us by Blue Sky Robotics, which is bittersweet. But I just think it's a great we wish we could keep him, but it is a great opportunity for him. And I love that it means that one of our UNC graduates, his skills are staying in town. And it's all happening, David. Very exciting.

Yeah. It just gave me goosebumps.

It's working the way it's supposed to. Seriously.

That's Yeah. That's magical.

It's very cool. Yeah.

Yeah. It is very cool. Okay. So Do I have a motion to close the public hearing? So moved.

Second.

Moved by mayor Pro Tem Berry, seconded by council member McMahon. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say nay. Motion is unanimous.

I like to move r two.

Second. Moved by mayor pro tem Barry and something over there by council member McMahon. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say nay. Motion is unanimous. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you for this excellent work and for bringing this exciting project. K. Last but not least, item number 11 is a legislative hearing on a conditional zoning modification for 11 White Oak Drive. And Tarnika Harrell has been waiting patiently to walk us through.

The applicant I'll let the applicant present first, and then I'll follow-up with a brief staff presentation.

Because the presentation is a

Good evening. Evening. My name is Brian Harris. I'm with Dwell Design Studio. We are the architect of record for this project, and I'm here on behalf of our client, Zom Living. In light of the time, I know you guys have received the slides in your presentation packet. I'm happy to jump right into questions and answers, but I'm also happy to do a brief presentation if you'd like.

Counsel, would you like a presentation? Yes. Yes, please.

Sure. Absolutely. Alright. So it's showing on there. It's not showing on here. I'm gonna try to go through the slides. Is there a way to move it? Okay. Got it. Alright.

So I'm here to request a modification to the previously approved rezoning of CZD20Dash24Dash6, which was approved by the council in June 2025. As part of that rezoning, modification one kept the height of the buildings at 62 feet. Also, as part of that rezoning, the plans identified the locations of the building on the site. I'll pull up the site plan, and we can take a look at that. So this is the site plan.

Also as part of the reason, the plan's identification of the building on the site that you see there, the site has a lot of land with a lot of topography change. We're at the intersection of Old Chapel Hill and White Oak Road. Going from Old Chapel Hill North to the Greenway is 20 to 30 feet of fall. Same occurs on the north end of the site going south towards the Greenway. So we really wanted to have these buildings naturally step with the grade of the site, lean into the site instead of grading it out completely flat.

And as a result of this, the average grade plane that we were able to achieve, which is a calculation we must do and show for zoning compliance, was much lower than what it would have been if we just had a flat site. So at the same time, were working on the design of this project. And we were playing around with various roof lines on the exterior design to break up the facade, which I think was a goal of the initial rezoning. And so we were looking at mixing sloped and flat roof conditions to kind of give a blend of both traditional and modern aesthetic. So I'm going to pull up the next slide, which will kind of convey.

If you look at this is one of the buildings on-site. We've got in the blue right there is the sloped roof portions.

I am so sorry. Do you mind backing up just a hair from the Yeah. You're really close, so it's coming out really strong.

Okay. Sure. Just want you to hear me. Yeah. Yeah. Is this better? Not. Is this fine? Okay. You can hear me there?

Okay. There's no one else here anyways. And so if you look at this if you look at this exhibit here, the blue area indicates the ridge of the sloped roof portions, and the others of the roof would basically be the flat roof portions. So with the natural grading of the site and the roof design coming together, we were dotting our i's, crossing our t's, making sure we were building code and zoning code compliant for the roof measurements and determined that the Chapel Hill Lumo calculates average grade plane and building heights differently than the building code. The same building code calculates it with a couple measurements around the building, and they measure to four a slope to roof.

It's kind of the midpoint of the ridge and the eave. The Chapel Hill, I believe, the LUMO states you have to have two points at each end of the building on the street facade. You take the average grade of those two. And if you're building fronts two streets, then you have to put the lowest of that grade. You also measure to the top of the structure and not the midpoint.

And so with, you know, the average rate being lower, the the height measurement being higher, we realized that the measurement of the roof was higher than the 62 feet cap at those sloped portions. And, again, the other 70% of the roof is well below that 62 foot max. So the additional measurement we're asking is essentially, you know, four to seven feet of additional height, essentially, you know, one of me depending on what shoes I wear. And so, you know, do wanna point out the following that, you know, there is no change to the other massing the floor area. We're not adding dwelling units.

We're not changing setbacks or any kind of shadow issues. Most of the roof is flat. It is well under the height. We're just asking for a minor adjustment to this technical discrepancy. So that is the presentation and appreciate you guys' time and would open up to questions now.

Clarifying questions, counsel.

Mayor Potembury. Thank you. What beyond aesthetics is the the motivation for this change?

So as part of the rezoning, we there's some stipulations and requirements to kind of break up the massing of the building. And so we wanted to undulate that with the roof as well too, right, creating varying roof lines kind of helps break up the articulation of the building, break the massing down, make it feel more friendly and and pedestrian. So that was the goal of doing the roof lines.

So making it taller breaks up the massing?

Making it taller Making that Making it taller. Sorry. Can you repeat the question?

So increasing that makes it breaks up the massing. Am I understanding?

It does not break up the massing. I was just saying that the various roof lines that we were trying to achieve, increasing the height allows us to keep the sloped roof portions. If we were to not have the height at those we if were not allowed to have that taller height at those sloped roof areas, we'd have the whole building flat, which doesn't quite, I think, break up the massing as well as the various sloped roof portions would.

Council Member McCullough? One

of the one of the solutions that you talked to them was changing the pitch of the roof from a nine twelve, I think, to a a five twelve. And I was wondering what kind of a delay it would cost to have to redo all the roof pitches. Would it delay the project?

You know, we have submitted for plan review for billing permit, and we are well in the site plan process. So it would delay the design process.

Okay.

I'm not sure the magnitude, but it would.

Do you need me to open the public hearing? Jam. Okay. Council, can I have a motion to open the public hearing?

So moved. Second.

Moved by oh, you get all of them tonight. Alright. Moved by council member McMahon, seconded by council member Nallert. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say nay. Motion is unanimous. Do we have members of the public wishing to speak? Shock. Council members? Yes?

I very much appreciate the articulation of the roofs on this project. And I would like to put it to our planning commission that perhaps we consider incentivizing articulated or gabled roofs with added height since I assume that part of the reason we don't get those in projects is that that pitched part of the roof is not revenue generating because you can't lease it out as apartments. So the fact that we were able to get better design by allowing a little more height, I think, is really great. And I would love to see that in other projects.

Tarnika, I didn't wait for your presentation. I am so sorry.

It is fine. It's late. So I will just put up the slide with the ordinance and resolution numbers if y'all are ready to Fantastic.

I think that is we are ready to roll. Okay.

I can get the mouse.

We've opened the public hearing.

Yes. Yeah.

You may or may not know. We have received public comment. Do I have a motion to close the public hearing?

Oh, I comment, had but that's Okay.

Moved by Mayor Pro Tem Berry, seconded by council member Miller Fuxi. Any final comments? Yes. Thank you.

I didn't realize I'm so sorry. No, I didn't realize that I do want to hear from my colleagues.

We're going to do final comments. We're doing it. We're

Okay. I'm so sorry. Thank you.

Yeah. I actually have a different point of view from you. The gabled roofs on big apartment buildings always look super odd to me. And I think that the flat roofs just look more honest. So think it's an aesthetic. I not that either one of us is wrong. I think it's I don't know that I would want the town to put their finger on the scale for that just to let the architects work that out. So that's my 2¢ on that.

Council member McCullough? I don't know

if this went to the CDC, but I tend to like articulation. It's not going to make this building pretty, but it will make it less boring. And I don't think that the difference is gonna be that noticeable. I am a little perturbed that this mistake was made, and I don't want to see future projects coming in and trying to make this mistake intentionally and then going, oh, we made a mistake. We wanna get extra height.

Not that I'm accusing y'all of that, but I worked in government long enough. I know people look for loopholes. And so I just want that I want us to be able to point out in the future to to people who are discussing things like this with staff that we make sure and point out this is what it means in ours, and you don't use the state building code numbers. So that, for what it's worth. And the last thing is that if it's already in the process, I don't want to see it delayed.

We need housing. This is already going. I wanna have it done and get some people with roofs over their heads.

Mayor Pro Tem Mary. Thank you. I seem to recall when this came before us that we had members of the community who were concerned about height with different projects on that road, and this was one of them. And so this does not lend itself to me. If it's for me, it's it seems to be just aesthetic.

And I had asked that question when I was approached about this some time ago. If it were functional, if it were if it were serving a purpose more than this, then I could consider it more readily. But for this, I'm not in support of it given what the public said when they came, when this was considered.

Okay. I've got one other quick thing. Sorry.

You all are killing me.

Yes. Ma'am. Keeping you on your toes. Thank you. Somebody had a question about the CDC. They did see it and were very excited about the project.

Okay. There's a motion on the floor. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say nay.

What I

thought you were voting against this project. Oh,

no. Wait. That was we were closing the pub public hearing, I think. Oh,

I even lost track. Sorry.

We were closing.

And I said, do we have a second for closing it? Okay. So I move I move that we

No. We have a second. The motion on the floor, sorry, is to close the public hearing. Motion is unanimous. Do I have a motion for for r three? So moved. Second. Moved by mayor member Miller Fucci, seconded by council member Naller. All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

All any opposed, please say

nay. Nay.

Motion passes eight to one. Do I have a motion for a one? So moved. Moved by council member Nallard, seconded by council member Miller Fucci. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say nay. Nay. Motion carries eight to one. Thank you.

Okay. Next up, we have ballots for the Community Design Commission. We wanna thank everyone who applied. And, of course, we hope that people will always consider volunteering, be it on our boards or other ways in the town. The council has appointed Kelly Mills and Rachel maybe, to the Community Design Commission.

Thank you, counsel, for turning in your ballots on time, except for me. And finally, I need a motion to go into closed session. I

move we go into closed session under North Carolina general statute one four three dash three one eight dot one one a six.

Second. Moved by mayor pro tem Barry, seconded by council member Ryan. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say nay. Motion is unanimous, and we are recess to Room 102. Thank you.