Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Thank you, Commissioner Cagle, for hustling over here.

I know you had to. Thank you all for understanding. Sooner than expected. All right, so we are here. And with that, I will go ahead and call to order the September 1st work session of the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners. We have just three of us present. We expect Commissioner Weatherby will be here. I don't believe we're expecting Commissioner Ragsdale.

Not until the 6th.

He'll be here this evening, but not for the work session.

And even this evening, he'll be calling in.

calling in this evening. OK. All right. So that does give us three and hopefully four by the time we finish. Welcome. First order of business is to recognize Brett Buchanan for 22 years of service as he proposes to retire and to move into the consulting world of engineering. Brantley Day is going to take that item.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, commissioners. Good afternoon. And Jeff Morton is also going to join me. And Brett, do you mind coming on up? So this one's tough. This one's tough. I met Brett, it's hard to believe, 20 years ago when I was with a city here in Cherokee County working. And I met Jeff, I think, about the same time. But one thing. The city of Holly Springs. See, now he's out of me. See, you had to go and do that. So yeah, don't hold it against me. But being that I've worked with the county five years now, And Brett and I worked together. Of course, I always knew Brett from afar. I knew that he was somebody could be counted on, just outstanding technical knowledge, a great transportation engineer. I mean, frankly, one of the best I worked with in my career. and last five years getting to work with him, he was always someone I knew that could be counted on for sound technical judgment, someone who could be counted on to make the right decision, to stand by that decision, and do what was in the best interest of the people of Cherokee County. He's done just a fantastic job, and been with the county now 22 years, 22 years and a month and some days, right? And so this is really, really tough for us. We're happy for him and happy for his next chapter. He worked for Jeff for a long time. Jeff, you might want to say a couple words, too.

Yeah, 22 years. I remember the day interviewing Brett and hiring him. And the county has come a long way since you've been here. We were at the old Jones building. Remember our offices there? You were right outside of my office. This guy is an amazing traffic engineer, traffic signal engineer. I don't know how many signals you've put up in Cherokee County, but probably about half of the county-maintained signals you've had a hand in. So it was kind of ironic that today we turned on 140 at Stringer Road, his last signal that he got permitted here in the county. So congratulations. That was a tough one. But you've been my right hand, my wingman for all those years in the engineering department. We always play kind of good cop, bad cop. Brett would be the bad cop, and Jeff would be the good cop. have done a lot here at the county. And you will surely be missed. And congratulations on the dark side in the private sector. And they've got a good man coming to them. Congratulations.

First, like I said, I do want to thank Jeff for hiring me 22 years ago. It was an interesting ride here. I've enjoyed it along the way. The fun story, Brantley's probably going to laugh now that he told about us meeting 20 years ago. We were probably about ready to come across the table at each other. And in a meeting and when he was with the city over a traffic signal possibly and one of the first questions he asked me when uh He got the Community Development Agency position. He's like Are we good? Yeah, Brandon, we're good. Don't worry about it. It doesn't bother me. So it's been great working here. Commissioner Johnson, I think for the most part, you've been here the whole time I've been here. Pretty much. Commissioner Carter, been a pleasure working with you. Commissioner Cagle, enjoyed it. I see you got the hair done. We'll miss you. You know, the great hair. So I am in your post, and I can call you a citizen if she needs it. So I've thoroughly enjoyed it, all the coworkers. I appreciate it and look forward to hopefully doing some consultant engineering work for Cherokee County in the future. So thank you.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. I'll say this while you all take the picture. First thing I asked Jeff was, OK, does this mean we can not fill this position? And Jeff's answer was pretty quick and to the point. He said, there's no way we can not fill this position. We have to have an engineer. So I'd say we can't replace you, but we actually have to replace you. So there we are. All right. All right, thank you for that. And next up, we've got what's going to be a significantly more in-depth item, and that is to first official review of our proposed budget for fiscal year 2027. Our CFO, Mr. Dinkins, will take us through this. He has 38 slides, so buckle in. 32 slides, sorry, 32 slides.

I will try to go faster than a slide a minute.

And by the way, this is all on the website, on his portion, the finance portion of the departmental pages of the county website. So the good news about 32 pages is if you want to know something about the proposed budget, it's probably in these 32 pages, at least at a reasonable level of detail.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think everyone is aware this one has been a difficult and extended process, but here we are. Just to go over some of the trends and assumptions involved in this budget, we're looking at an inflation trend somewhere around 2 and 1 quarter percent for general inflation, medical inflation, of course, being significantly higher than that. Revenues other than property taxes are going to look very flat going into 27. We are looking for some significant modifications to the health care plan, as well as a 2% COLA, which will be effective at the beginning of the calendar year, January 1, so one quarter into the fiscal year. We've got 18 new deputies that are New funded seats, we've had some of those seats prior to this, but they were not funded. They were just in the headcount. We have no other headcount additions for the second year in a row, and no general fund funded vehicles are in the general fund for the second year in a row.

That doesn't mean there can't be replacement vehicles, but no net additions?

No additions to the fleet, yes, sir.

Here is the FY27 proposed sources of funds. If you kind of look down there, the general funds increase is at about 9.7%. That's due largely to property taxes. The ARPA fund has no revenues budgeted for 26. That is now a defunct fund. The funds have all been received and expended. Transportation, the CATS fund, has a significant reduction in planned revenues, and that is due to the completion of a grant-funded capital project to the tune of $2.8 million. The group medical has experienced significant budget overruns in the prior year, so we're looking for additional budgeted funds there to make up for sort of the under budgeted piece from prior years. If you look at total revenues as a whole, they're up about 25%. But the big caveat on that is that almost 18% of that 25% is due to the advent of T-SPLOST. So we have about $73.5 million coming in that was attributable to a new source of revenue that was not there in prior years at all. Absent the T-SPLOST, revenue growth would be about 7.5%. Here are the sources of funds. And if you look at these, you'll see some variations in some of your smaller funds. The ones I want to call your attention to are E911 and the DATE Fund. Both of these funds are very reliant on the general fund, and so the numbers you're looking at here include transfers in from the general fund. So E911 in particular is experiencing a little under $700,000 increase, but having said that, 565,000 of that increase is from the general fund. So it's only a little over $100,000 increase on its own resources. And so while that is good news for that fund in and of itself, it's kind of flat news for the county as a whole, because that increase here represents an increase in the transfers out for the general fund. In this section, total expenditures are very flat at about a 1.5% increase. Here are the proposed inflows, kind of, in a pie representation. Taxes make up well over half of the total budget. If you look to the arrow to the right there, you can see property taxes make up the largest piece of that. And this is countywide, so not the general fund that you're used to in a lot of the slides. This would be across the entire county. So for property taxes, we'd be looking at general fund, fire, and the debt service fund. You see SPLOST coming in. You see TSPLOST coming in, which is, again, a new fund. That's the actual tax revenue coming into TSPLOST. The number I showed you a few minutes ago was slightly larger because there are a few non-tax revenues coming into that fund in the form of state and federal grants and a little bit of interest, that kind of thing. Your next largest would be your license fees, permits, that sort of thing. That would include your business license, alcohol fees, that sort of thing. That intergovernmental is the next wedge. You can see the arrow off to the side, the Kind of largest piece of that would be the city payments into the fire fund. Then you have some state payments, which are largely payments for capital projects. So they're not truly grants because they're projects that the state has an interest in. So it's almost as if they're paying us for work that they would need to have done anyway. And then, of course, we have some actual state grants to the tune of just shy of $2.1 million. and about $5.5 million in federal grants. And a few smaller sources there. You have interest coming in at about $5.7 million. One thing I'd like to kind of throw a little red flag up on, Interest is that there are two factors to consider there, one, of course, being the interest rate, but the other being the size of the reserves. Now, of course, there's more in reserves than just cash, but your cash balance is also a factor in the amount of interest revenue that you receive. And so as we spend down our reserves, we're lowering that cash balance. That's going to be a shrinking revenue source for us in the future, potentially.

Let me ask you, before you leave this, SPLOST and TSPLOST, they're both 1%. These numbers, I think, are gross of the city portions, right? So that's the total of the 1% that we receive, and then we disperse portions of that back out to the cities, right? This is not reduced for the city's portion. Oh, correct. Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

And it seems like they'd be the same. Is the difference that maybe the state withholds a little more on TSPLOST than they do on SPLOST? I wonder why they're not the same. Some exemptions. Yes, sir.

Yeah, they don't have exactly the same base. Very similar, but not precisely the same. Thank you. And then kind of that last wedge before you get back to taxes are your transfers. And so this would be not truly inflows into the county, but inflows into the individual funds. So in a few slides, you're going to see that same piece of the pie as an expense for the county. All right, here are the various uses. As you can see, general fund is looking at about just shy of $191 million with a 7% increase. Kind of the funds to pay attention to, aside from general fund, which will always be on that list, is your ARPA, which is now exhausted. Transportation, CATS again, is going down, again, that same rate. grant-funded capital project. So it's a reduction in the expenditures for the project as well as the grant reimbursements for those expenditures. Group Medical, which is funded by the other funds of the county, sees an increase in expenditures as well as revenues and for the same reasons. If you go down, you see an increase in expenditures of approximately 19.5%. But again, a large portion of this is due to the admin of the T-SPLOST fund. Almost 15% of that 19.5% is attributable to T-SPLOST. These are the other governmental funds coming online. The one to pay attention to here, I think, is the date fund. It is down significantly, but the reason that that is an item to pay attention to and not unmitigated good news is the fact that this funding to the accountability courts, while it is not now coming out of date, it is now coming out of the general fund. And so that's not really a true reduction. That's just a shifting of sources. Here are the 27 uses, personnel being the largest single item by far. If you look at the $258 million there, 140 of that is public safety to include not just the Sheriff's Department, but marshals and probation and various other functions within the general fund associated with public safety. Judicial would come in at about 26.2. Everything else at about 51.3. And the group insurance fund, which we discussed a few slides ago, accounts for roughly $40 million of that. We have capital in there. Again, this is countywide, so this would include more than just the general fund, obviously, at about $104 million. Outside governments and agencies account for a little under $57 million. The largest of those, again to the chairman's point earlier, would be attributable to the city portions of SPLOST and TSPLOST. There's some subsidies to the library, to COED or the Development Authority, and some other outside agencies. Airport has some funding built in from SPLOST 2018, so not the current SPLOST, but the prior one. and then a variety of smaller outside agencies and uses for about $1.7 million. Debt service, which is a variety of factors, the single largest, of course, being the parks bond, comes in at about $8.2 million. really wide dividing line between the next two wedges is actually its own wedge, that being depreciation on our enterprise fund coming in at $600,000. It's a non-cash item. It doesn't really fit cleanly anywhere else, which is why it has its own category. But it's small enough that it's really just a line. And then our allocated costs, which would be utilities and similar expenses that the county incurs and then allocates to the various departments, comes in at about 15 and a half. And again, we see those transfers at 19.1. So while they do figure on both sides of the income statement, so to speak, and they factor significantly in individual funds for the county as a whole, they wash out.

If you don't mind, back up on that. I was looking at group insurance. Where does the employee's contribution to the group insurance fund come in? I know this is on the use side. Is that one of the sources? Yes, sir. So as we and all the employees contribute, that counts in the source side?

Yes, sir. That would be a revenue to the group insurance fund. OK. And that funding level. I know we have an 80-20 target, but it's been hovering more like 86-14. Let's see here. I think.

There we go.

All right. So our proposed sources, again, this would be the total sources. And I want to present this slide just to kind of show the difference between what the county's taking in from external sources and what the county's planning on spending, if you will. So this budget, including everything that we talked about in the previous slides, also includes a use of reserves of about 13.5%. which is that slightly exploded wedge that you see coming out of the top left there. And so what's remaining is the portion of the budget that the county is covering with current inflows. And that exploded wedge, if you will, is the portion we're taking out of the piggy bank. Here are the changes in the fund balances. Again, calling your attention to general fund at the top there. In the prior year, we were looking at a budget calling for about $9.2 million in the use of reserves. The current budget is more of a $5.1 million use of reserves. This is bringing us close to our 90-day reserve in terms of targeted fund balance. It's about a $4.0 million decrease in the amount of fund balance used. And as we'll see in a few slides, it takes us from about 112 days of fund reserves to about 97. And again, remember, as we go forward in time and inflation and all that, it's not just how much money comes out of the reserves. It's how much a day of general fund operation costs. as you move from one year to the next and you adjust the cost of that general day of general fund, that days of reserve drops incrementally even without the dollars being spent immediately. The fire fund, we're going from an $800,000 use to a $1.6 million almost budgeted surplus. That surplus is necessary because, again, that 15% reserve is required for their accreditation standards. And so while we were coming in at close to 15% in the prior year, as we increase the budget in fire, That day of a fire gets more expensive, and we come in at under that 15% at that point. So this should take us, if all goes according to plan, over 16% reserves, which gives us just a little bit of margin for error on the fire fund. Parks and Rec is using approximately $875,000 of fund balance, largely to relieve some pressure on the general fund. And so while this does help the general fund, it is still a use of reserves in the grand scheme. And I apologize. Parks and Rec is actually using about $1.2 million. $875,000 is the change in the amount that it's using. I practiced that earlier and made the same mistake. Our other governmental funds are using about $1.5 million. The conference center is using about $376 million. EMS is using $1.6 million. And it, along with parks, is using those reserves to sort of relieve pressure on the general fund. But again, it does still represent a use of reserves from the county-wide perspective. And so while it does help general fund in FY27, its ability to help general fund in future years may not be there. Debt service, we're looking at about $100,000 surplus versus $60,000 use in the prior year. Debt service has very predictable expenditures and revenues. It's about 99%. property taxes, and its only expenses is servicing an amortization schedule. And so that's just as predictable as it gets. And so I really don't see any need to worry in the case of debt service. We're using about $2.5 million of impact fees, a significant portion of that being for the fire fund, which I'll cover in a little more detail in just a little bit. SPLOST is using about $10.7 million of reserves. That's not particularly concerning because a significant portion of that is using the residual of the 2018 SPLOST, which we need to spend down. That can only be used on those projects. So as we complete that project, it sort of dies a natural death, as all SPLOST funds do. The TSPLOST will see an increase of about $8 million, which, again, is natural for SPLOST-type funds at the beginning of their life cycle. And so that's kind of what we want to see for that particular fund.

And those capital funds really just have to do with the timing of the projects.

Yes, sir.

Money comes in pretty steady, but the projects may be higher one year or less another year just through the logistics of getting the projects delivered.

Right. And just for cash flow purposes, it's sort of prudent to – give those collections a little bit of head start. And so at the very beginning, which is where TSFLOST is, you would expect to see collections outpace expenditures for maybe a year and then kind of reach parity. And then at the last year and in subsequent years, you spend out the balance of that fund. Here are the changes in the smaller funds. And of course, the same ones I want to draw your attention to here, E911 and DATE, these two funds are approximately ready to exhaust their fund balance. So in future years, these decreases in fund balance that you see here for maybe 28 and certainly 29 and beyond, you're going to see those decreases in the general fund, all else being equal. It's going to serve as a drain on the general fund. Here's your countywide budget summary looking at the sources, uses, and changes in fund balance by fund with other governmental funds in the aggregate. Your projected fund balance is going to go in total from 132.5 to a little over 119. And again, if you'll pay attention to the flags on the side, General fund is decreasing. We're approaching that 90-day target set by the commission board. Excuse me. Fire fund is improving to roughly 16.9%, which is probably a safer zone for them to live in than the right on 15% margin. DATE and E911 are depleting their fund balance. And group insurance is increasing a little bit. But we're hoping. But in the process, we're eliminating those surprise true ups to the other departments. Here's a kind of a numerical overview of general fund. You can see of the $185 million in revenue, roughly 108 of that is coming from property taxes, about 46 of it from other taxes, 20 from license fees, and then balance from a variety of other sources. Your uses are the largest being sheriff, followed by the BOC services, meaning largely the things you see in this building, those directly under the board's control, 35 and 1 half being the courts, your transfers out coming in at $18.1 million. And just to kind of call your attention a little bit there to those transfers, you've got $390,000 of transfers coming into general fund from Parks and Rec Fire for services to those funds from the general fund, as well as $7,000 from the accommodations tax. That $390,000 inflow is offset by an $18.2 million outflow in terms of Interfund activities. So General Fund is a net $17.8 million donor to the other funds of the county. After transfers, we have outside agencies, and you can see the detail there. And that leaves us with roughly $191 million of uses, with a net change in fund balance of about $5.1 million. We're looking for $56 million fund balance at the end of the current FY26 fiscal year. meaning our 9-30-27 fund balance will be projected at about $50.8 million. With a cost per day of just under $523,000, that leaves us 97 days of fund balance remaining. And again, that would be 97 days of FY27 expenditures. When we move into FY28, we'll adjust that number based on the new cost of a day at that time.

That does build us a challenge for 2028 right there, because we'll have little, if any, fund balance that we're comfortable using in that budget. So if we use none and budget to use none, then that's a $5 million hole we have to fill right there, just out of the gate.

Yes, sir. And while it sounds like semantics, a little bit of the same thing. I always said here my concern is not really where we're ending FY27. It's where we're going to be starting FY28. Because $97, excuse me, 97 days is a very healthy fund balance. That's about where you want to be. You just want to make sure that we don't set ourselves up going into 28 to continue a downward trend that we don't want to be on.

One other thing, getting down into the details, down at the bottom right, the bottom number of the BOC services is other county services. And 5.9 million, it's the second largest number in that table. I know it's probably a lot of small things. I wonder if you can help just provide us with a breakdown of the 5.9. Yes, sir. I can. Very bottom right-hand number. If I'm a taxpayer, I'm going to say, wait a minute. I want to know what's in that five point. And I want to know. So let us know when you get a chance.

Yes, sir. There are, just based on the way that the county is organized from a general ledger standpoint, it's a very large number of small dollar departments. So I can put a little detail in there maybe as a separate slide. I was afraid it would get too crowded if I tried to include everything.

I totally get you can't put everything on these slides.

Here are the inflows for general fund. Again, graphically, just to kind of give you an idea of relative size. Taxes, property taxes coming in at $108 million is, of course, your largest. Your other taxes coming in at $46. You can see your breakdown over there. Kind of your two largest other taxes are the TAV, which is the non-property tax that you pay on a vehicle when you purchase it. So vehicles purchased now are subject to the title ad valorem tax. Vehicles that were purchased prior to that tax coming into play are still subject to the regular ad valorem tax. So anytime you look at taxes on vehicles, the question is, when was the vehicle purchased? following the insurance premium tax. We have intangibles, franchise taxes, and then a basket of much smaller taxes. License permits fees come in at about 18.8, and again, this is for the general fund specifically. There's a breakdown in that large yellowed-in area there on those, the largest single item being tax commissions at about $7 million, landfill charges following that, and building inspections, and then your smaller items from there. fines and forfeitures coming in, interest coming in at about $4.1 million, which is the return on our cash on hand and again I'll just repeat that same reminder about that declining balance so that's a thought for future years more than the current year but just as we're going forward in time that's one to bear in mind and then transfers going out as we talked about before along with miscellaneous revenues coming in at about 1.7 Again, that same graph, again, just with the use of reserves being exploded there. So you can see this piece here, without that, is what general fund is living on within its means, this being what it's living on beyond its means. Here are the general fund uses. Again, sheriff, BOC services, that sort of same breakdown the chairman asked about a minute ago. Courts, our transfers, outside agencies, the tax commissioner, elections coroner, and economic development. And of course, as you get to the end here, the wages get small enough that they look almost like lines. But these are sort of the ones to pay attention to. And again, I think this one significantly not necessarily because it's the largest, but it's just kind of the easiest one to maybe take your eye off the ball with. Here are the general fund uses. Personnel being the largest, almost 2 thirds of the general fund. Public safety coming in. at about 63 million, judicial at a little over 26, all others coming in at 30. Your operating costs coming in at about 35.7. That would be your consumable, small tools, equipment, things of that nature, just day-to-day operations. Utilities. Well, utilities are going to show up in your allocated costs over here. uh... funding for outside agencies that sort of extra wide dividing line there is your capital expenditures uh... your debt service here which would be payments on your uh... leases uh... software contracts that sort of thing as opposed to actual There would be no bonded debt in that number. And then finally, your transfers. And again, looking over here, E911, I'd like to kind of call your attention to that one a little bit. It's currently $790,000. But as we covered a few slides ago, it's currently using its fund balance to keep that number at that level. that number unless we obtain some additional funding for that fund, which I know there have been several bills lately that have made it to but not across the finish line to do that. But assuming those don't change, We're currently looking at about 9.5% of the general fund being accounted for by transfers to other funds. As we go forward into future years, that's going to climb above 10%. So I think that's one where we need to be careful to keep an eye on. This is, if you will, just the progress that the general fund has made in the budget process. As you see us going through here, we had a 26 budget coming in at about 178.5 and an initial request in 27, including the changes that we would have made, of about 199.4. Over the course of the budget process, we cut about $1.2 million in personnel, around three in operating, almost 3.4 in capital, some of which were not cuts. Now, they were transfers from the general fund into SPLOST, but reductions to the general fund of about 3.4 million, various other changes, which we'll go over in a little more detail, of about 882,000, for a total reduction there of about $8.5 million. So our revised request comes in at about 191, which is about $12 million. greater than the revised 26 budget, but about $8.5 million less than the initial request. So you can see, based on that $20 million initial gap, it breaks out at about 12 and 1 half on one side and 8 and 1 half on the other. Here are the budget cuts attributable to personnel. You can see it's a net cut. We had a couple of increases to start with. This is the COLA coming in general fund at about 1.6. And this would be the COLA attributable to actual general fund employees. Now in a few other cases, you're going to see where general funds COLA maybe cost a little more. That's because when we look at it in total, the total cost of the COLA, would include not just this number, but also the amount of increase in those funds that take a transfer from general funds. So EMS, I'm sorry, E911, for example. While the increase for those employees would be in that number you're looking at, it would not be in this number. The group insurance there, that $1. $1.0 million that you're looking at there. That is a net number of the budget increase that we thought we needed to start out the year, less the savings that we're hoping to derive from the health plan changes that we covered a couple of meetings ago. You see about $1.8 million in cuts to sheriff's positions. We had a little over $100,000 that was moved from sheriff to IT. So that represents a decrease to the sheriff, but an increase to IT. So no effect to the county, well, even the general fund as a whole, but an effect on the two departments individually. We had cuts to public works and various other smaller cuts to a variety of BOC departments. Almost 300,000 in general administration, a little over 300,000 in elections, half a million in courts. The animal shelter cut, just shy of a quarter million. a little over $200,000. And we had a few cost corrections that we had to make to a few positions for workers' comp computations and that sort of thing. It came, again, to a little over $1.2 million in personnel changes. We had a variety of operating cuts. Some of these are going to show up again in FY28, such as the JMS integration for the sheriff. We had some recycling cuts. Our GIS department cut some imagery flights. So we won't get the same level of data as we usually do, but it's going to save us a little over $100,000. We cut our website overhaul, some reductions in professional services. for engineering and a variety of operating expenses were cut countywide.

Yeah, this was really a process of going back to the departments and saying, can you give a little more? Can you give a little more? And I really appreciate every department head digging deep and making some cuts. Some of these are kind of painful. You know, one I've heard about is training for election board members who You know really need to get up on the law changes in the law each year But they're gonna pass that this year because it's tight and that's kind of a level that we're having to get to To squeeze these individually small, but collectively significant savings.

Yes, sir. I've got no mr. Morton emailed out to the various department heads Three or four times. Can you can you find a little more? Can you find just a little more and and You know, they kept finding. It was a little smaller each time, but we ultimately cut about $3 million out of operating. You know, you see a little bit of that appearing in other areas. But again, after your capital charges, for example, we moved about $1.6 million in expenditures out of the sheriff and into SPLOST. and about 1.1 for the animal shelter. And a variety of others were just straight cuts. And then we had a few other changes, as you see here, including some reductions in transfers. And again, the total comes up to about $8.5 million in total cuts across the entire general fund. I just want to put this up as the half-life computation, just to sort of... show my math, if you will, here. If we're looking at an ending balance at 26 of approximately $56 million, and we've got requests of about 190.8. That yields the cost per day that we discussed earlier of almost $523,000 a day. That makes a 90-day reserve just over $47 million. So the difference between where we think we'll be and what we want to have is about $8.9 million, half of which would be 4.47.

How much are we planning to use?

A little over five.

So we're a little over where we wanted to be.

Yes, sir. We're about 30 hours of general fund more than we wanted to spend. This shows where we are in terms of the running balance in general fund. The last hard number here is 139 days. We're looking to be at somewhere around 112 for 26. This is a projected number. And then this projection on that projection puts us at about 97 days. Best practice is typically looked at at about 90. So 97's not a bad place to be in, but you don't want to be at 97 and continue downward. Here's the fire fund. There's a little less going on in the fire fund in terms of the number of revenues. They're largely either property taxes or intergovernmental funds derived from property taxes. So there's very little else going on in that fund. Revenue-wise, a few miscellaneous fees and some interest, but to the tune of about $64.4 million in revenue, about $63 million, a little under $63 million in requested expenditures. As you can see, the vast majority of which is personnel. Our change in fund balance is going to come in at about 1 and 1 half, yields a projected fund balance of 10.6, with a cost per day of 172,224. That puts us at about 62 days of fund balance. And that equates to a little under 17%, 16.5%, 16.9% of fund balance, which is, again, above the accreditation minimum with a little bit of margin for error, but probably still fairly close. This is, again, that same graph for fire. You can see we kind of are looking to be at somewhere around 56. This 63 is your last hard number, 56 being a projection on the current year. And then, again, coming up to about 62 days, somewhere around 16.9% for the end of FY27. Just looking at a little bit of an overview of our various SPLOST funds. As we discussed earlier, SPLOST was using about 10.8 in fund balance. The bulk of that is this 10.75 here that you see in 2018. We have about $59.7 million of SPLOST 24 projects. And then the city portion projected revenues there would be roughly $20.7 million, yielding a total budget of about $91.1 million. As we move through, you're going to see SPLOST 18 broken down as follows. The only project that will have funding remaining at the end of FY27 on this budget would be the airport. which has some budgeted airport improvements there consisting largely of some runway expansion to the tune of about $2.6 million. So this would represent the balance remaining of the 2018 SPLOST. SPLOST 24 would look here at about 150.3. That being, again, looking at the referendum as a whole now, this would not be the annual SPLOST configuring that we would do. It's the same thing for 28. It's just that it's received all its revenue, and it would be theoretically in its last year at F-27, so there wouldn't be a difference. But here you're looking at the entire referendum going forward. That $59.6 million would be the current year request. with revenues anticipated to come in at about $25 million for various payments from other entities, including the state of Georgia. Here's sort of your SPLOST projects in total. Just a broad summary. Your TSPLOST funds are coming in. We've got about $39.5 million in improvements. Just over 26 would be due to the cities for a total budget of about $65.5 million. We're looking to spend. That amount next year, our total TSPLOS budget referendum-wide was about $275.5 million. With what we've spent this year, what we're planning to spend next year coming to about 41, and we're looking for some outside revenues, including some grants such as LMIG coming into the fund, that would leave us at about 238.8 at the end of FY27. These are the impact fees. As you can see here, we've got about $5.8 million coming out to fire and parks and rec with a projected balance of about 7.6 at the end of the year. The impact fee projects are some improvements to various fire stations. Yellow Creek Park and Woodworth Park, both coming in at about $2.2 a piece. The fire fund. Expenditures are representative largely of SPLOST-type projects, which are coming in a little faster than we have the money coming in to fund them. So there may be something here we would want to look at in FY27 between impact and SPLOST 2024, depending just on how the year goes. But that $1.3 million would be the kind of ambiguous piece of that in terms of the funding. The key dates on the budget process here, obviously today we're doing the initial presentation. Next meeting, which will be September 15, would be the second budget presentation. We'll have an open public hearing that night, that evening at 6 o'clock, with adoption scheduled for October 6 at 6 PM. I'll be happy to take any questions you may have.

I've asked mine as we went through. Any other questions on?

Have you all cut any take-home vehicles? I'm sorry? Have you all cut any take-home vehicles?

We have cut take-home vehicles. I'm sorry, I was having trouble hearing you, but that was the question.

Yes. Yeah. What's that? How many did we cut? Did we cut training? We've cut some training.

Training's been pretty well massacred.

Good information, Chuck. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

It's amazing, really. We set the bar. I don't know if it was high or low, but it was tough. It was a tough threshold to find an additional percent of COLA just to get that to 2%, which really, I wish it could be more. It's bare minimum, though, at 2%. And it took a lot to find that increment.

Yes, nobody wants to talk to me now. Yeah, I can only.

Your number's on, you know, it's blocked. You're call blocked.

I'm call blocked.

So thank you, and thanks to everybody else who really pitched in to get us through. We kind of bet on the come when we set the millage rate. We knew it wasn't enough to cover the COLA and everything else that was already in the budget, and it meant finding that much cut to fund that other 1% COLA, and it was a lot. Thank you. Yes, sir.

And do the changes, real quick, Mr. Chairman, I'm sorry. The changes to the health care plan, are y'all still factoring in the Opioid Free America savings into that? Or did y'all take that out?

We have not changed the anticipated plan savings on that. So that would still be in there. Now, those numbers are approximate, so I would be hesitant to put a very precise number on that particular slice of those changes. But we have not adjusted the anticipated savings.

That's a great point. My point is I don't think there's going to be any anticipated savings.

Well, from that one part of it. And I share Commissioner Gagel's skepticism. You and I talked about it the other day. I know you do, too, to at least some degree.

Well, with any of these changes of that nature, you would expect them to be kind of on a ramp, meaning as time goes by, you would not see an even level of savings. It would start small and grow if it were to work as intended.

I think Commissioner Cagle and I think that one's probably going to start at zero and not grow from there. But To your point, some of the others are sort of back-end loaded, like a change to increase the out-of-pocket max. Doesn't affect first quarter at all. Second quarter, very little. Third quarter, some. Fourth quarter is where you'll see that, and that actually will be in the next fiscal year. So we're really probably not going to get even the three-fourths proportional. So we're... We've still got some risk in the health care plan. Needless to say, though, you've shored it up. This budget shores it up a lot from where it was last year. Still, it'll be a very pleasant surprise if we can manage even within our new significantly increased health care fund.

Yes, sir. And I think that's a very good point. The health care plan's on a calendar year, so there'll be no changes at October 1, regardless of what happens.

Right. Well, just to touch on that, and I don't know how you gentlemen feel, but me personally, I don't think it's a good idea to pay Opioid Free America over $100,000 for something that they can't prove that they're doing. I mean, nowhere in Georgia have they been successful in converting any doctors. So I mean, there's still a cost associated with that.

I don't want to spend the $100,000. You know, when I heard, I think, $4 or $5 per participant, and I thought, oh, well, OK, that's not much. But that was per month. So it's actually, it's $4 or $5 per month makes it $50, $60 per participant per year. It does add up to $100,000. I'm not seeing how that translates into savings at equal or greater than $100,000.

Nor am I. Yep.

Anyway, we haven't committed to that, I presume, right? No, sir. The assumptions are included in the budget, but we've not committed to make that.

We've included the assumptions in the budget, but you'll have a separate presentation, I believe, at the next forum.

OK. We'll look forward to that. All right, other questions? Thank you very much. Very thorough. And as I said, I'll say it again this evening. Well, we don't have this presentation this evening, but I'll try to remember to remind anybody that's interested can look at this online. OK, that brings us to a walkthrough of our agenda for this evening. A proclamation for First Lieutenant Tyler, how do you say it, Finn? Finn? This is coming out of Commissioner Cagle's efforts to recognize veterans who have been wounded or even killed in the line of duty and have them or their families here for our pledge. This family can't be here this evening, so we're just going to present this as a proclamation. Is that acceptable? Okay. And we'll have a regular, we'll have a fire chaplain in place, I believe, for that. Okay. We've got a couple of announcements, including the Patriots Day coming up September 11th. And then we've got, under commission business, something Christy pointed out we needed to do about our audit committee. We've completed the appointments to the audit committee, but we didn't really, we didn't specify anything how the terms would stagger. So if you remember, that audit committee is made up of the chairman of this board, another commissioner. The other commissioner will serve one-year terms, but they are renewable. We discussed as a matter of practice to let it be our vice chair. So that one kind of If that's the pattern we continue to follow, that one takes care of itself. But exactly what are the terms? Do they start January 1st? So Chrissy has proposed that those terms would run September 1st, today, through August 31st of next year, and that the two citizens would need to be staggered. One would be appointed to a two-year term. One would be to a one-year initial term. Those can be extended as well. So if they continue to serve, that sort of takes care of itself. Her proposal is that we adopt that September 1 through August 31 term of office, so to speak, for the citizen appointee, and that we make the first one we appointed, Mark Fernandez, be the initial two-year term, and Louis Klein, the second one we appointed, be initially a one-year term. So if that's agreeable, we can vote on that, and that'll just clarify that. The other county official appointee, Help us understand what you meant by that. You say Todd Hayes will serve a one-year term on the committee while in office.

Well, Jeff had pointed out that we had initially was thinking two years, but it is just one year. So it really would be a partial to keep it in line with that end of the year because it could cross over a new election, even though this time we know it's not.

So you would anticipate that being a calendar year term?

Right.

So maybe we need to specify. We would make that.

So like Commissioner Cagle's and then also, you know, his would end, even though it was just a partial year, if he's okay with that.

Just to keep it your one chance there, and then it would rotate to Whether be then that would start a full year and then so in addition to what you've got here we probably need to specify that the Other elected county officials term would be the calendar year Okay

Yes, I made a note to myself there that it kind of left that one non-sense.

Okay. Any comments or questions on that one? Okay. Then, of course, we'll have minutes. We don't have any public hearings. We do have some planning and zoning stuff. Margaret, a couple of zoning cases and then some annexations.

Yep.

And then the super ag, we've got that on the agenda.

The first case that will be on the agenda this evening is the Thompson Farm property in District 4. The Planning Commission, it's a rezoning of 110 acres off of Kellogg Creek and Thompson Farm Lane from AG to R20 for a conservation subdivision. And there's a very long list of conditions. But the summary of those is 149 age-restricted single-family units. with a minimum of 1,500 square feet per home. There's a mandatory HOA that takes care of the, regulating the age restriction, as well as some other requirements. There's a deceleration lane, as well as a left turn lane that will be constructed at Kellogg Creek Road. A dam rehabilitation plan, because there's several dams on the property, but the biggest one is in need of some work. A trail connection to our countywide trail plan. And the list continues but those are those are the highlights the Planning Commission voted five to three to recommend approval with conditions and they added a couple they added more specifications to the deceleration lane and They wanted to make sure that the home is far enough from the sidewalk on the street that a good-sized vehicle can be parked out front. Because that's an ongoing problem we have when we have smaller lots, is that the houses tend to move as close as they can to the road. But then you have somebody who has a decent-sized truck. Not a Ford, of course, but a decent-sized truck. And they're hanging over the sidewalk, and the sidewalk is useless. So those are the two conditions that the Planning Commission added. The only other thing that I do want to draw your attention to is The condition that the Planning Commission added at the bottom, I know it's in very small print, I apologize. They were trying to enhance the deceleration lane because there's a lot of vehicle traffic on Kellogg Creek because it's kind of a an alternate route. If there's clogs on any traffic on Bells Ferry or Highway 92, people use Kellogg Creek to get really close to the 75 interchange. They made it a condition, and there was some discussion in the meeting and confusion about the taper, the length of the taper. So the applicant wanted me to make sure that you understand that, unfortunately, the way the condition is currently written, they can't accommodate the 45-foot taper on the road frontage that they have. They can only do a 40-foot taper. So I just want to clarify that. There was some confusion in the public hearing, and that kind of got a little bit messed up. But that's all I have for this case. If you have any questions or more details that you want me to go into, I don't want to use up all the extra time that we have.

So you're saying the way that's written, that would be a 195-foot complete? The two are separate, the way that's written now?

Yes. The challenge, though, is that the applicant can only accommodate 190 feet. Within their frontage. Right. Now, that's a deceleration lane for 40 miles an hour per GDOT standard. The road is actually only... Signed for a 35 mile an hour speed It is above and beyond what the county requirements are so That was just that was a citizen request from the community

Of course, Commissioner Ragsdale is not here now. We hopefully can hear him over the phone and look to him to give us some leadership as the district representative on this. I think he is in favor in general of this.

Any other questions or concerns now?

All right. Thank you.

All right. And the second reasoning case that will be before you for a decision is Parks Huff for Steve Smeltz. This project is near the East Cherokee and State Route 20 intersection in Macedonia. It's in District 1. It's a rezoning of 4.2 acres from R40 to General Commercial. They're proposing some retail space, multi-tenant retail space, and a restaurant. Initially, they were requesting two variances, but they withdrew the parking space one at the public hearing. So they're down to only one concurrent variance, which is actually to reduce the zoning buffer along a part of the southern and western property lines. It's actually an area that's up against what will be GDOT right away as the road is widened in this section. So the Planning Commission voted 9-0 to recommend approval with one condition. The dumpsters, they wanted to see those dumpsters be moved to the eastern boundary of this project site, closer to the cemetery side of the property. And then they also recommended approval of the buffer variance that I just mentioned. I'm going to just zoom forward to the site plan. This is what the site plan looks like. And that area that I've highlighted with the purple line, that's where the buffer variance has been requested.

Questions, concerns, comments about this one now?

This is the one we got the email about, isn't it?

Yes.

Is that the only people objecting that we know of?

We had two individuals who sent emails. I believe there were three or four that actually got up and spoke at the public hearing with their concerns.

OK. All right. We have a couple of annexations. Lawground and Canton.

Good afternoon. The first annexation is from the city of Ball Ground. The applicant is Scott and Evelyn Calhoun. The zoning change is proposed from AG to CCR, which is city center residential. It's just one parcel, 125 Roy Haynes Drive. The parcel is one acre. There's no proposed change in development. This is an existing single family home. The future development map indicates this is neighborhood living. The public hearing will be held on October 8th and the City Council decision on November 12th. Here's the parcel that is proposed for annexation. This is actually a good thing. It helps us address an existing island. This is the residential structure that's currently there. Again, no proposed development. Currently zoned AG. neighborhood living, and will be rezoned to city center residential. The day before, we didn't really have many comments for staff other than it is within the growth boundary agreement with Fall Ground.

I wouldn't expect us to have any objection. Anybody have any concerns here?

OK. Good. Thank you. I mean, we can contest it for fun, right? You know, we have enough fun here. I would rather not.

This is actually a good thing, because it just is.

I'm having all the fun I want to have so far this year.

The other annexation is from the city of Canton. The applicant is Peer Ridge Land Investments, looking at a zoning change from R40 to PD mixed use. It includes four parcels. One parcel is already within the city of Canton. The total acres are 62.17. The proposed development is for 215 residential units. Future development map indicates suburban living and corridor and nodes and suburban development for the city. The public hearing will be held on September 3rd, but the city council decision anticipated October 1st. I think we're all familiar with this property.

Yes, this has been the subject of a previous annexation proposal and zoning request to this board. which was turned down in a split vote, and now a second attempt to go through the annexation process.

Yes, sir, and this site plan is what we received. There are two pods indicated on the proposed site plan, and just to go through this so you all can have a quick snapshot of what is proposed for both pods, this parcel up here off of Reservoir Drive is the parcel that is currently within the city of Canton already. Pod 1, the larger portion that you see here, will have 204 single-family detached homes on 61.5 acres. The setbacks will be 20 foot for the front, 5 for the side, and 15 for the rear. Anticipated to be two stories with max height of 25 feet. 176 will be single family homes on 55.16 acres, and 28 single family homes are proposed for this area, again, already within the city of Canton. Pod two, the pink area indicated on the site plan, is proposed by the developer to be donated to the Charlie Perkinson Community Center. There is a proposed 11 single family homes, anticipated 19,510 square feet. of residential units above retail. So this proposed structure here. And there also are proposed two three-story mixed-use building totaling 29,265 square feet. It will be broken up into 9,755 square feet for potential office and neighborhood serving commercial space and 19,510 square feet of residential uses above the office uses. The traffic study was submitted with the application and was part of the original 2024 submission for the original site plan. In this, the developer did indicate commitments and proffered conditions. And staff had the following comments. Again, this is within the growth boundary area. Density for pod one is 3.3 dwelling units per acre. The proposed density for pod two includes calculations for 11 single family homes and 19,000 square foot of residential units with a minimum of three units per acre and a maximum of five and a half. We're looking at this from the small area plan, of course, so seeking additional information to make sure that this is what the community's vision is. There is a pending development of an old Shoal Creek Road proposed for 199 units across from the subject properties. There is concern about the addition of traffic and units into State Route 140 the applicant has also requested a conditional use permit this is for the mixed built use buildings associated with pod 2 and there also are variances to reduce the perimeter buffers against counties own property from 50 foot to 20 and to eliminate the 50 foot buffer along the frontage of Pea Ridge Road There are also, the city of Canton has, within their UDC, a two entrance requirement. So they're applying for a variance to only do one boulevard. The boulevard will be located up near Reservoir Drive. And then the other variance has to do with the boulevard entrance as well. Transportation. The Boulevard entrance, there's concern with the second entrance off Pea Ridge Road. This is what a lot of the concern is with. This is between lots 55 and 56. And because this is indicated within pod two in pink, there's concern about this proposed development only having one access point here off of Reservoir Drive.

So real quick, just so I understand, if it's denied, if denied the Boulevard entrance, the second entrance off Pea Ridge Road will need to be coordinated with the T-Splice intersection. Why do we have to let them do that?

I don't think that boulevard entrances are a fan of the fire department. I think they're hard to maneuver. And we're not sure. We don't have a lot of information with this. And if sometimes boulevard entrances are planted with trees and things too, which can make it really challenging, for fire and emergency services vehicles to get there. So this is one of our big concerns with the proposed development. And then, as I just indicated, the other portion follows within pod two, which puts it more on the ownership of the Charlie Ferguson Center, so we're a little concerned on accessibility to 215 units and only having one access point.

It looked to me like they were showing a second entrance from the back, so to speak.

This is a cul-de-sac here. So they're not showing. Yes, sir. And this is pod two. But my understanding is.

That doesn't go through?

No, sir. And again, my understanding is that this is being placed with the Charlie Ferguson Community Center. So one of our comments was that this should be completed out. so that it doesn't impose a hardship on the community center. But it's, yes sir, it's this huge loop, and then it comes up, and then this is the only access point, and it's going to be a boulevard. So there's some concerns with this.

So what it looks like going through the pink, though, is that not a road that goes out to Pea Ridge Road? That's what it looks like.

Maybe. I don't feel comfortable commenting.

What is the area that's going to be donated? The pink, seven acres?

Yes, sir.

No, I don't think that was a planned road, Chairman. Maybe an anticipated road, but not a planned road.

I see. So everything in the pink would be expected to be developed by the Charlie Ferguson Center?

That's the way we anticipated it to be. Okay.

I see.

Well, we could just, like, can't in fire worry about it. They're hands down better than charity anyway. You got saws, don't you, Chief? Get through those trees. How many were we going to give them? Do you all remember?

Not this many. Okay. I think that was, of the ones who voted against when it was here, I think it was mainly on the density. And this is actually an even higher density. I think what they're trying to do is to put in some affordable housing, which is part of the initiative coming out of the Pea Ridge plan. And not all a bad thing. Not everybody likes it. But to do that, they need more total units to make it so that they can reach a... affordable level.

One thing we want to keep in mind, too, as she mentioned, there's another large annexation coming across the road, and that's a great opportunity for us to make an intersection here with an entrance to this development, the one across the street, and improve both Both of those there. And that could be a city, county, T-SPLOS, state project there to really fix a bad intersection. So we really need that to happen.

I think we should assume that there will be access. Otherwise, it's not even part of the Pea Ridge community. It's cut off. I don't like the looks of that, and I don't see the folks in Pea Ridge liking it. But I drafted a little note here that said, we would request city and developer participation with GDOT and the county to improve the intersection of Pea Ridge Road and Balletta Drive at Highway 140.

Yes, sir. That sounds fantastic. And the transportation comment also looked at one of the concerns, as I mentioned a minute ago, that pink portion. We suggested that the developer install the second entrance between lots 65 and 66 and connect to Pea Ridge Road. Yes. And then just to circle back, the vision for some of our objectives as we were finishing this small area plan with the community was was to address these transportation challenges as well with all the stakeholders you all mentioned. And then the other comment that was made, the cul-de-sac that comes towards the end near the Ralph Brunch property, we're just a little concerned with, with safety and road concerns, not knowing, again, what the future of that property is, but just something to keep on the radar as well. And again, fire and emergency services, what's going on with the Boulevard entrance? There's a need for a secondary entrance, a non-gated access per fire code, and it needs to be realigned. Just looking at those things again. And then, again, the alignment of the road to Pea Ridge, as well, and connecting it to Reinhart College Parkway. So I definitely think this opens up an opportunity for us to further discuss some of the transportation challenges in this area.

Mr. Long, do you mind bringing that back up one more time? The cycling? Yes, sir. So I don't know that the community, from the conversations I've had with them, care if you have access to it. Because the lots that are for sale, all the way around that one road, they're all going to be in the $400,000 price point. And just speaking candidly, nobody up there who's living on Social Security can afford that. They're more interested in the affordable housing aspects that they're talking small houses, cottages, and the $200,000 range going on this side. If they don't have a road out there, could we get those cars off 140?

If you don't have a second entrance on that side, then most of the traffic will have to go out on. All the traffic will have to go out on the other one. I'll accept this little bit that's in the pink.

So I guess my question is, do we really want to encourage them to put another entrance into what's already a bad neighborhood? I get what y'all are saying with a partnership between county and GDOT and city and everything else.

Only if it could be, that whole area could be improved, you know, where you could have a, red light or a roundabout there at that area. But yeah, it really wouldn't help any, as you said, to have a second entrance there if it's not going to have a good access to 140.

I agree. And it would just... I mean, what is it, 196 lots? I mean, that's almost 2,000 cars a day using GDOT numbers that would be dumping out on 140s.

Well, a lot of them would use the other side, but maybe half. Who knows? And you might even get some cut-through traffic, too.

Yeah. I know there's safety concerns for the cut-through traffic now on the rest of Pea Ridge. What's the next road up? between Pea Ridge. It's the cut through between Pea Ridge and the First Baptist Church. Amos. Oh, yeah.

Well, it's, I can't remember the name of it. It's Pea Ridge as a circle. There's a cut through from 140 that cuts halfway into Pea Ridge. Yeah.

Yeah. Is that Amos?

I know Amos comes off the back and goes to the church. There's another one, but I don't know what the name is.

You know, here's the other challenge. This is going to be presented to city council Thursday.

It's called Cross Street. That's what it is.

Cross Street.

Yeah.

My comment was this is going to be presented to city council on Thursday. Using a hand deliverer.

Really, you know, we have the other development.

Which is 178 houses, I believe. Yeah.

And I'm not quite as worried about the traffic impact there, but it's significant, too. Of course, all the traffic will access 140 there, but it will mostly be right turning traffic to exit the neighborhood and enter 140, left turning traffic coming off. This is twice as bad because this would be mostly left turning traffic coming on. But in either case, that intersection needs to be improved. So I kind of see this as an opportunity to get that done. And maybe the way we word it is we'd like to see that done. And it certainly has to be done if this is going to have access to 140. Yeah, so the right way to capture that. And we've hinted at it in several places already in the drafted comments.

Well, would y'all be OK with us hinting to, why don't y'all go ahead and encourage them to go out on the bypass? Or the, I'm sorry, what's the? Reservoir drive. Reservoir drive, instead of dumping more traffic on 140. OK. I see what you're saying, but even if half the people left, I mean, that's still putting another 1,000 cars there. The people in the 178 houses on the other side, that's another 1,700 cars a day. Traffic's already backed up. That's my side of town. It's already backed up to almost Callahan's golf course in the mornings.

So maybe the way to say it is if there is access to Pea Ridge Road and therefore to Highway 140, then we want this. Yes.

And then, of course, fire has to get. They were able to handle it.

Yeah. Well, it's four lane now compared to, I mean, that section of it is compared to two lane for 140. Right.

It makes sense to me to phrase it somehow and try to capture the other comments that are surrounding this same point to say that if there is access from the neighborhood to Pea Ridge Road and therefore to Highway 140, then we would request city and developer participation along with the county and GDOT in the improvement of the intersection there of Pea Ridge and Balletta Drive with Highway 140. we've made that same request with regard to the proposed annexation across the highway.

All right.

Enough on that? Yes, sir. All right. Good. OK. So that brings us to Super Ag.

Why is there chuckles when the name's said?

It sounds so cool. I'm looking at a draft, but we've had a meeting about it, and I think some changes have already been made since the draft I've seen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners. I know time is fleeting, so I'll be very efficient with this. And we need to, of course, go into more detail tonight. We can do that. Back on August 18th, you conducted a public hearing. On this ordinance, we've received some comments on it or some feedback on it, of course. This will be a new Article 28 in the zoning ordinance. And the goal here, obviously, is to have a standalone code all-inclusive development and zoning code in Article 28, someone could complete a project with this section and be able to move forward expeditiously. So the initial draft, back on 818, we presented... Mr. Day, real quick.

Yes, sir. What draft number is this? I'm sorry? Which version of the draft is this that you're reading right now? 42, 43?

Probably, yes.

Y'all have done great.

Thank you. Appreciate that. I would argue that while there's been some tweaking along the way that have generated more drafts, I think that the core really has remained very much intact. I don't think that the intent or the basic requirements have really changed a whole lot, although there's obviously been some things that have had to be figured out. The fire department is something I'm gonna get to in just a second, the fire regulations. And the fire department is here today as well. I don't want to put them on the spot, but I did talk to the chief beforehand. If he or our in-house counsel would like to come up here and mention anything, they're welcome to join me. But I'm just going to push forward. So back on 818, I kind of have in that column up there what we presented to you. And really, at this time, kind of going through each area, You know, the AG and the R80 are still the same. It's still a permitted use in those zones. At the time, we were looking at District 1 only. We've actually moved that into really kind of where we were before, which was rural places and country estates. Just to give you an idea of what we're talking about, this kind of traditional green, Kelly green color here is rural places. This lighter pale green is country estates. And so you can see that in both, of course, District 1, but also as Districts 2 and 3 include these areas where the ordinance would be in play. The total lots has remained the same per access at 25. The lot width is the same. The max coverage was something taken out before the last meeting. The open space, or actually the max area disturbed is a better way to put it, is still at 25%. One thing that we did add in the admin variance section, though, was the ability, if someone wanted to clear more than the 25% for pasture or agricultural purposes. We built in the ability for an administrative variance on that to increase that clearing. The front yard setback is still the same. The side and rear yards are the same. The access easement is still at 50 width, and the road width is still at 18 feet. We talked about the map. So one thing that we did clarify And we added kind of a little bit of a family tree situation here. But just bear with me a second. So one thing that came to light was that if you had a large piece of property and you wanted to subdivide it out and build a 25 lot project, what would happen with the original tract. And we always used to call that the parent tract. And originally contemplated, we really didn't have the ability for the parent tract to then subdivide further with the way that the ordinance had been drafted. So the idea behind it is you might have 1,000 acres and you've divided off a couple hundred acres and are pursuing a super ag project, what we've kind of clarified is that new division to create the super ag project is now your parent tract. And so within the super ag project area, you would create your 25 lots. But then the remaining 800 acres would still be available to divide later into further subdivisions. Because if you didn't do that, you would be left with 800 acres that could no longer theoretically be subdivided. And so that's kind of the idea with the grandparent tract. So that might have to sink in a second. So it took me a minute, too. So we can talk more about that. This ordinance exempts projects from the tree ordinance. We talked about that last time. We talked about the private infrastructure, private streets. We did add the allowance if somebody wanted to follow the code and build public infrastructure that they would then dedicate to Cherokee County for acceptance. That's always possible. That's always been allowed. So we just made it clear that that's still possible. One area that we went kind of back and forth on was the two-foot versus the four-foot shoulder. When we started this, we had the 60-foot wide easement and the 20-foot wide road. Those are fairly standard. Then we went to the 50-foot wide easement and the 18-foot wide road, and so with the two-foot shoulder, You know, I think the concern was there might be some issues with the larger vehicles that are trying to get around or maneuver. If you had that big four-foot shoulder, you know, established shoulder, that's going to provide a little bit more give for those vehicles, you know, meeting each other or using that road. But that may be something that you all have to kind of decide ultimately policy-wise what you want to approve. For the fire protection in Section 28.5G, it really all boiled down to NFPA 1142, which now I'm going to sound like I know what I'm talking about. I want to be careful here, which provides some alternatives for fire protection within rural areas. One thing in particular that came to light was the use of the fire tender, the vehicle that has water on it that the fire department can bring in to supplement what they need on scene at the time of a fire and so it was kind of decided and we actually included some language to this effect that the use of to maintain the service level supporting the county's iso 22y classification the fire department will evaluate its response to structure fires and non-hydrogen areas and when necessary deploy tenders and or engines to ensure adequate water supply and suppression and will provide the board of commissioners an annual report identifying instances requiring resources and noting any gaps in service so essentially It's going to be a learning experience. And frankly, we're going to learn probably quite a bit about the entire ordinance when we start to see projects that might prompt us to come back to you and suggest amendments to further refine and fine tune this ordinance. But essentially, the fire department is going to be monitoring where these go, the use of the tenders to supplement them, There's also a carve out in here for if somebody's already got a water line out in front of their project that could support a hydrant, go ahead and run a hydrant at least to that entrance on the same side of the road to provide that where the public and private meet. The public ends and the private begins to provide that. And ultimately, the developer still has the ability to elect to provide water hydrants. There's also other additional features in the code, 1142, as I mentioned, like cisterns and dry hydrants and things like that if they wanted to. But essentially, the minimum requirement is going to be the use of tenders to serve these. The stormwater requirements have remained intact. Essentially, it's exactly the same as far as working with the topography using low-impact features. There is no water quality requirement, so you're just purely looking at quantity to be able to retain that water and deal with that. The covenants and restrictions are the same. On the admin variance side, we did pare that down some, and on the dimensional requirements, we're saying that the planning and zoning director would be able to approve administrative variances up to 10%. And also, as I mentioned earlier, if there was a request for an agricultural allowance on the property for a further clearing, the director would be able to review and approve those. We've also baked into that the ability for someone, if they have a project that doesn't quite fit with the code, They can come directly to you to review that and for you to evaluate and make a decision based on the intent of the ordinance. It really becomes kind of a policy decision on a project. If you want to see it move forward, maybe it doesn't exactly fit. We can't approve it because perhaps it doesn't exactly fit. At our level, we wouldn't have the authority. But then we can bring it to you and you can decide if the design meets the intent. And then finally, we've also got the standard appeals process in there for any reason somebody wanted to appeal. We've got the ability for them to appeal it directly to you. And of course, that would be with a public hearing for that. And that's pretty much it in a nutshell.

Are you suggesting that we are ready to vote on this? I mean, that you're ready for us to vote on this?

I mean, this is as it stands today. I'm always going to, unless people start throwing stuff at me, I'm always going to say more time is good to keep working on it. But if it were adopted today and implemented tomorrow, then it would work. I mean, we could do it.

Mr. Chairman, that is my intention to bring it up for vote this afternoon. I'm happy with it. All right. the way it is, and we do have people ready to go.

I have two suggestions, I guess, and I will of the board. One would be, We've said that they can't have more than 25 homes per access point, I think is the way it was phrased. Yes, sir. And we heard from the Sewells, who, of course, have altogether in excess of 1,000 acres that they would like to develop in this manner over a long period of time. it might make more sense in their situation and maybe another one like it to say instead of that, maximum 25 lots served off any road that does not fully meet county standards. Because I think the issue is we don't want to have more than 25 homes served off of a gravel road or any other substandard road. But they might do that. They might have a full paved county maintained road up to some point and then drop it to a gravel road to serve the last few very large lots on that street. It could be more than 25 altogether. Any thoughts on that? I'm good with that. You're driving this ship, Commissioner Cagle, so you tell me, I guess. Okay, the second one I know you're going to object to, and I need to hear from the others on that, and that is that I think we have removed the language that was proposed at one time to say, If you're within 1,000 feet of a fire hydrant-capable water line, then you've got to extend that to your entrance and put a hydrant there. That's been removed in this current draft.

Not to interrupt, but I do believe it's been replaced with, if there is a water line already in front of your property, then you have to put a fire hydrant in. And to me, I feel like that's a very fair compromise.

Well, I'd say at least we need that. If you're close, and I don't know what close is, 1,000 feet seems to me close enough. So I would argue that we should add back that requirement. If you're within 1,000 feet, you've got to run the line to your entrance.

Mr. Chairman, I strongly argue against that because that's still another $100,000 that somebody's going to have to come out of their pocket with. Yeah.

So it comes down. Other thoughts? Well, I was thinking the same way. And first, appreciate all the work y'all have done on this. This is a big document. But you know, when I started looking at it, and I advocated for it to be countywide, so thank you for that. But when I started looking at my area, I've got an area that's currently developed with a standard R40 subdivision that this AG5 could be put in right next door to it. And then if they've allowed to do this, particularly with fire protection, you've got a subdivision where fire protection is available right next door, and yet it doesn't have fire protection. And so to me, that's a concern when you've got a developed R40 there, and then you're allowing this in that same area. So I guess in a nutshell, I'd like to see us put that back in there. If it's close, if it's within 1,000 feet, and your distinction now is if it's within their road frontage.

Yeah, so if they've already got a water line, they have to put a fire hydrant in.

In their development.

Well, at the end of the development.

Yeah, I understand. But I think the distinction now, that water line has to be on their road frontage.

No, it can be on the other side of the road, and they're still going to have to put it in.

What if it's next door?

Well, they could put a water line in right there, or a fire hydrant in right there, and then avoid the cost of the potentially 1,000 feet.

Yeah. Yeah. I'd like for us to think about that. Again, I tried to look at a real situation. And it's out in Sioux Valley. You've got a standard R-40 subdivision with fire protection. And you're able to put this in right next door to it. You could have it developed all around it. You could have an island there of unprotected people. And when you lose a home to fire, or heaven forbid, a person to fire, that doesn't look good.

Now, bear in mind, my proposal still doesn't mean you have to run the fire line up into the neighborhood. No, no.

I'm with you on that. I hear what Commissioner Cagle's saying.

But at a minimum, it would give those fire trucks a place right at the entrance of the neighborhood where they could refill. So they could shuttle in and out from that point, a close-by point.

So if there's something we could... Whether it's 1,000 feet, if it's adjacent parcels, where it's at, what could we do on that? 500 feet. I could live with that.

Better than nothing. So I mean, I think the houses out there now aren't going to be any worse off than the ones that are already there now. Am I not wrong? They're going to be the same fire category. Well, if they don't have fire. Come up, please.

Thank y'all for letting me come up, Chairman. No, you're not wrong at all. But I would say if we know we already have those areas, those unhydrated homes, we want to minimize the additional ones. So if we know we have that problem now, I wouldn't want to add to it, is what I would say.

Well, I think this thing's also designed to where if, and I've had in my discussions with the chief, If we start getting to where this is a danger, there's no reason why we can't go back and add it in later. But for now, I'd like to see us leave it off. Let's make this thing as affordable and as easy as possible to get these bigger lots.

I mean, adding it later, of course, won't help for the ones that get built in the meantime. And I've had people come to me and I mean, we've got neighborhoods, traditional neighborhoods, built years ago before there was any requirement. R-40 type neighborhoods, even some smaller ones, that don't have fire protection. And we've had a notorious fire or two in those. And it certainly handicaps fire response on those. And after that, we tend to hear from the neighborhood, you know, what the heck kind of podunk county are you guys running here that you don't have fire protection? Absolutely. How in the world did you let this get done? Absolutely.

So, you know, and as I've said before, just don't call me. Okay.

You know, hydrants are the gold standard. I mean, we've made no bones about that the entire time. Hydrants for us in fire protection is the gold standard. You know, we've relied pretty heavily on legal and even the state fire marshal, you know, to weigh in on this. So we do have some flexibility there with NFPA 1142 standards. where we can get comfortable with the tender response. And that's the kind of thing that we're really going to take a hard look at and try to get comfortable with that type of fire protection with this ordinance. But it just depends on where it is. And I got Chief Collette in the room here. She's our ISO expert. For us, all along, it's been three things. Number one is the safety of the citizens. And number two is the safety of the firefighters that we're asking to crawl down the hallways when these houses are on fire. And then third is that protection of our countywide ISO classification. So that's really been our focus. And if I could ask, I don't think I've seen the version that you guys are discussing. Because I think the last one I saw had the 1,000 feet in there, and it had So a question I had with that was, if a developer decided to bring a fire or they decided to run water into the development, would the way the last version I saw, would that require them to put a hydrant at the entrance?

Well, no. That's only if there's a six or eight inch water line out at the main road. They would have to put one at the entrance. But if they're choosing to bring two inch water lines or four inch water lines, something that's then no. It's my understanding that it would not. And just so we're clear, so there's no secret about it. We put that 1,000 foot in there, that's going to cost my kids $100,000. And that I'm not OK with. Because that's what it will take me to develop a family compound on my property. Because there is fire water within 1,000 feet. And I don't want to dump that on my kids. I don't want to dump that on your kids. How close is it? Do you have an estimate? Well, the way that thing reads is they would have to bring it within 1,000 feet. So I don't know, 800 to 1,000, just guessing.

I'd suggest that the 1,000 is not magic to me. I'm just saying, if it's close, if you're almost there, you should have to do it. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean 1,000? I kind of like the sound of that. I threw out 500. That's awful close now. But anything, in my view, would be better than no requirement whatsoever.

Yeah, and I wasn't sure. I think our last discussion, we didn't have a parameter established, I think, so when that was in there. But I will say, any clear-cut parameter would make it easier to make these judgment calls.

The way it stands now, I would have to pay out of my pocket on my kid's behalf to add a fire hydrant to that. the intersection of Cagle Drive and Seminolson Road. Anything y'all change on top of that, I'll have to run fire water down Cagle Drive.

What? I don't think I was proposing that. I thought we were going to put a fire hydrant on the road where the development starts. So you would put a fire hydrant on Sam Nelson.

Or Cagle Drive. So my property starts a little bit ways down Cagle Drive.

Oh, OK. Yeah. That's not the entrance to your property? Or is it technically?

I don't own all the way up to Sam Nelson.

OK. Yeah.

How far is that?

800, 1,000 feet.

Well, then you're more than 1,000 feet from where the property starts. So they have water on. There's fire water on Sam Nelson.

Yeah, there's a fire hydrant on Sam Nelson, not too far. But again, I do think unless you just don't want to do it, we leave it where if there's not a fire hydrant for your development, there's already fire water there. The developer has to put a fire hydrant in. And if we need to go back and tweak this thing in the future, we can.

Chief Harper, you got any thoughts on that situation? Sometimes it helps when we have a situation, an actual proposal to look at the details of what it's going to take. But I don't know.

Well, we will agree to disagree on that, Chief. Thanks for your input.

But again, in your particular situation, if we did 500 foot, that would not apply to you.

I guess if we didn't get out of it, but it's still going to cost somebody $50,000 extra. In some other situation.

Yeah. But you know what I was thinking? If you're developing 25 lots, how much is that per lot?

Two grand?

Two grand. So not significant. That's where I was going.

Well, what's your thoughts, Richard?

I think 1,000 feet is a considerable investment on the part of the developer. and trying our best not to hamstring the developer as much as possible. I mean, if somebody like if they got one that's 500 feet from you, still whoever develops is going to have to pay the extra anyway. I would rather go with this, and if we need to tweak it, tweak it. Even at $500, does that make any difference to you? Yeah. Even at $500, I think.

Well, this isn't just to benefit the developers. This is also to benefit the families, the people who want to have family compounds. It's putting undue expense on them. who aren't selling off lots.

So you're only going to have, what, three, four lots?

Yeah.

Three. In my personal case.

And from our perspective, we're just looking at it purely from a fire protection standpoint. What that would do is that would give us the ability to fill up our trucks. And it would be a tender operation at that point, and that would be a close hydrant for them to fill up their trucks in the event.

I guess with another 500 feet, because if you're only talking about running at 500 feet, You're only going to have to haul it another 500 feet, because there's going to be a fire hydrant at the end of the existing line now, right? So why make somebody spend $50,000 to get it 500 feet closer? Sorry, that came out wrong. All respect to the chief, there's certain jobs y'all just can't get to. I mean, houses, correct?

You know, I mean, of course there's been cases yet where that's the case. We want to minimize those for absolute sure. I mean, that's not something I can accept as a fire chief is we're just going to write a property off. I can't accept that.

So if we're looking at a number of lots, I mean, maybe that's something we need to look at. If you only have three lots. I think that's a great idea. Good.

I mean, I get it for three lots is not as bad as 25.

I just say no. But if you've got 25 lots, you may want to look at the number of lots being your driver To determine.

And if so, what would that number be, do you guess?

If we get over 500 feet, I'm uncomfortable.

Well, what about the number? I thought you were saying if there's a certain number of lots. Well, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, but that'd still be your driver. the number of lots. How many lots? You've got 25 lots. I mean, if you only got three lots, then I'd say, for example.

So no at three, yes at 25. Well, I think it would have to be 10 in the minimum, just because I know of one case where there's a family that they're You know them. They're dividing their property up 10 times. 10 going once? 10 and how many feet? OK, 500 feet. If it's within 500 feet or more than 10 lots, then I can live with that. Yeah, going once. I can do that. Is that good with you, Chief?

That's going to be up to you guys, ultimately. Our goal is to minimize the situations where we don't have adequate water. I get it at three.

I mean, that actually makes perfect sense. Tens, I might have said five, but you know.

I think, like you said, this is a good starting point. And if in a year from now we need to look at it, we can. But I think that's a good starting point.

I agree with that. I mean, I think it's just, let's just keep an eye on it and let's see. I like the fact that we've got, you know, Chief Collette's going to review with, Chief Arp, they're going to sit down and do an annual review. Let's keep an eye on the number of homes that are what we consider unhydrated, which is beyond 1,000 feet from a hydrant. And we just want to make sure it doesn't adversely affect our ISO rating. I mean, that's something we really have to keep an eye on. And we'll provide that report to you annually.

To your point, if we go back and review it every year, especially since we don't know what the tipping point for that ISO rating is,

We know we have approximately 4,400 homes in the county that are considered unhydrated. Last time we were graded on our ISO classification, we had that number of homes. We had one staff tender. And so that's where we gained our 2-2-Y. We barely gained the 2-2-Y. So we're right there on that fringe of dropping back to a three county wide. And that's not what we want. That would be not good. And so that's why we really want to keep an eye on how this thing develops. So where are we?

Anything less than 10?

I think we're saying, well, 10 or less.

Up to 10.

11 or more.

Kicks in at 500 foot. If we're in 500 feet, you've got to go ahead.

So 11 or more.

Yeah.

Then 500 feet. 10 or less.

And that's going to be on a new line or an existing line, correct? If the developer decides to run water, and it will support a hydrant.

Well, it depends. So is he running two-inch water line?

Well, right. And it wouldn't.

I wouldn't think about it. We don't want to make a developer run eight-inch water line if he doesn't have to.

But if they decide to run it?

That's the stuff that's almost $100 a foot. So I'll worry about that. But if it's within 500 feet of an existing eight-inch water line, then in more than 11 or more lots, then they would have to run it to their insurance. Yeah.

Or if I could suggest, if it would support a hydrant, even if it wasn't 1,000 gallons a minute, just something that we could use to fill our trucks up.

Well, what's the minimum of that? I mean. What size? What size pot?

You might get that off a four inch, I would think.

OK. Well, I'm OK if the developer does like to put a orange water line in, then we can require them to put a hydrant in, if you all think that's enough water. But I want to make sure that there's no more iron mill delays, that kind of stuff either, where there's questions about neighborhoods not having 1,000 gallons per minute when there's not 1,000 gallons per minute on the outside. That's very important to me from the development standpoint of this as well.

That will vary by, basically, elevation, how high, how much pressure.

800. 800. Yeah. That should be sufficient.

Well, I think you said 500, right? 500. 500 gallons is.

I think that would give us enough to fill our trucks up, at least.

500 gallons is not a minute. You can do 500 gallons on four inch. So if I'm understanding this right, if the developer elects to supply four inch or larger water, they have to provide at least a fire hydrant? Is that it? On a four inch line or bigger? That would be ideal for us. OK. Absolutely. And that's in addition to the other requirement? Well, so the way I understand the other one is if there's already an 8-inch line within 500 feet and they're doing more than 11 lots, then they would be required to extend that 8-inch line, that 500 feet, to the front. This is something different where if they're only doing a 4-inch line for drinking water, then we make them add a 5-inch line.

It's called low pressure for lack of a better word. Is that right?

I'm sorry. Are they the same fire hydrants, 500 to 1,000 gallons? Are they different size fire hydrants?

I don't think so.

No. Okay. So basically if a developer comes in and tells us we don't want to do wells, we're going to put a four-inch water line in, then we stick a stipulation in there of where they have to – Now add a fire hydrant. Right.

And are you saying that is in lieu of the other thing we talked about or in addition to it?

No, in addition to the other thing we talked about. So if there's an eight inch line now within 500 feet, they've got to extend it if it's more than 11 lots. This is just that the developer decides, hey, case in point, it's Salacoa. He's wanting to run a four inch water line. In this situation, he would be required to stick fire hydrants on it.

OK, I think we're there. Thank you. Hard fought compromise. Nobody's thrilled with it, but that's the way it works. I didn't throw my phone, so we're good. Thank you for that. And we don't have to put Cory in the middle of this over the phone tonight. Can you imagine how horrible that would be? Jenny, you're holding the pen on this, right? So you follow what we're proposing on this. So it's a kind of a two-fold condition. If you're within 500 feet of a fire hydrant-capable line, and you're building 11 or more homes, you've got to extend it to your entrance. Or, separate from that, If you choose to put in four inch or larger water line anyway, then you gotta put a fire hydrant at least at the entrance.

Okay.

What's that?

We could put six in there. I don't know anybody that's gonna do, I mean, six costs more than eight. It's just, yeah, but we could put six inch there. So if it's within a six inch or an eight inch line, Six inches or larger. They'll be required to put a fire hydrant. All right.

Thank you for that.

That's easier anyway, right? It sounds easier. Six inches and up. Yeah. Okay.

With that change, I think we're good. Anybody else have other issues with this? No. All right. Cool. And what about the, was there any pushback on the thing about, You could have more than 25 lots as long as you're serving it by a fully county spec road.

I'm OK with that.

I think that's good. OK. OK. You got that one too, Jenny?

Because I would still keep the five acre average, right? Oh, yeah. Still got to have a five acre average. That's a win.

Yeah. Yeah.

How many reals do we end up with? This one might be real real because we're going to finish it tonight.

This is number 44, right?

Okay. I think we're done. We need to move on because we've got to take a quick break and then get back. Then we've got, you know, what if we just, is there anything on here we really need to talk about now?

Under consent, the only thing that I want to point out on here is that item 11.5 is a resolution to waive the alcohol license residency requirement for Pancage Jane doing business as Quick Trip Food Mart for a convenience store and gas station. That person lives in Forsyth County, so that's kind of generic there. But following that, item 11-6 is to consider resolution to waive the alcohol license distance requirement for that same person for a convenience store and gas station with alcohol sales. That is located at 8769 Hickory Flat Highway. which is the intersection with Sugar Pike Road. The marshal's office measured that. It requires to be 300 feet from residential use. This one is measured 243 feet from residential use and is requesting a waiver of 57 feet as measured by the marshal's office. I just want to note that this location has held an alcohol license from 2003 to 2025 under its previous owner. So that's why it's been placed on there. It changed ownership. And since it's got a new ownership, it's requesting the same, being treated the same as the previous owner.

You know, I kind of see that as a grandfathered situation. What do you think? It's your neighborhood.

I think I'd be all right.

OK. Well, we've got till evening to think about it. But at least we've been forewarned. Thank you for that.

Costs still the same on the chiller repair and rental? Is that still basically the same?

Yes, so what you have before you is just you ratifying the $35,000 cost to rent the temporary chiller at the Justice Center while the other one is being repaired. If it goes beyond the 30 days, it's an additional $22,000 per month or prorated equivalent to that amount. That's the same. We will be submitting all that cleanup and all that to our insurance company.

I don't see anything we can't cover later.

Sounds good. All right. So we're going to have an executive session, albeit brief. Is there a motion to adjourn to executive session?

I make a motion to adjourn to executive session to discuss property acquisition, personnel matters, and pending or threatened litigation.

Motion by Commissioner Carter to adjourn to executive session. Is there a second? Second. Second by Commissioner Weatherby. All in favor of that motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, nay. The motion carries unanimously in this case with Commissioner Cagle having left the room. So it's 3-0 with one abstention. All right. Thank you. We'll be back at 6 o'clock.