Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Good morning everyone and welcome. Uh, this, the regular July one meeting of the next head board of commissioners is hereby call to order. If you will please first join me in a few moments of silence. And now, as you're able, if you'll please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Before we begin our work this morning, I want to recognize in the audience former Mayor Bob Mueller is with us this morning and former Commissioner Webb Fuller is also with us this morning. And Susie. I'm sorry. And former Commissioner, you snuck in on me. Former Commissioner Susie Walters is also here. Welcome to all of you. Always glad to have you at our meetings. The next item on our agenda is the adoption of the agenda. We have a modification which will be to move the 25 year recognition for Roberta Thuman to the August five meeting. So a motion to approve the amended agenda would be in order.

Second.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. That brings us to recognitions and we'll begin with our annual introduction of lifeguards and Chad.

Hey, good morning, everybody. It's my privilege to be here again this summer. It's my 26th year working for NICS Ocean Rescue and lifeguarding on the beaches here. I have our staff here. We went through two training sessions, one in May and one in June, to be fully upstaffed by June 20th. Without further ado, we'll bring these guys up to the microphone and introduce themselves here one at a time. And yeah, thank you for your time and thank you for your support of the organization. Thank you. Hello, everybody.

My name is Ryer Gilbertson. Hey, Mr. Garman. This is my year four at Nags Head. And originally, I'm from Arizona.

Great state.

Hey, y'all. My name is Jacob Gilbo. I'm from Montreal, Canada, and this is my sixth summer with Nags Head.

Hello. I'm Michael. This is my sixth year. I'm from Maryland.

Hi. My name is Jacob Bateman. I come from Plymouth, North Carolina, and this is my first year.

Hello, my name is Anthony Furtado. I'm from South Florida and this is my first year.

Hello, I'm Christopher Kelly. I'm originally from Northern Virginia and this is also my first year.

I'm Lachlan Kerr. I'm from Australia and this is my first year.

Hi, I'm Bryce Luncher, I'm from Arlington, Virginia, and this is my first year.

Good morning, Mitchell Jackson, first year, from Florida.

Good morning, my name is Vinnie Yetzer, this is my first year lifeguarding, and I'm from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Hello, my name is Caleb Hooper, I'm from Wanchese, this is my fourth year with Nags Head Ocean Rescue.

Hello, my name is Kendall Castle. I'm from Raleigh, North Carolina, and this is my third summer here. Hello, my name is Sophie Vinkuski. I'm from Manio, North Carolina, and this is my fourth year here. Hi, I'm Rosie. I'm from Munchville, Canada, and this is going to be my fourth summer working for NACZ at Ocean Western.

Good morning. My name is Evan Hayes. I'm from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and this is my first year with NAGSAID.

Hi, I'm Justine. I'm from Montreal, Canada, and this is my first year with NAGSAID Ocean Rescue. Good morning. My name is Mila. I'm from Quebec as well, and this is my first year with NAGSAID Ocean Rescue.

Good morning. I'm from Quebec, Canada. My name is Victor, and this is going to be my second year with NAGSAID Ocean Rescue.

Good morning. My name is Mason Lins. I'm from Currituck, North Carolina, and this is my fourth year with Nags Head Ocean Rescue.

Good morning. My name is Ronnie. It's my second year with Nags Head Ocean Rescue, and I'm from Montreal, Canada.

Hi. My name is Noah VanDam from Richmond, Virginia. This is my third season with Nags Head Ocean Rescue.

Hi, my name is Taya Nabel Patterson. I'm also from Quebec, Canada, and this is my first year.

Hi, I'm Luke Lepage. I'm from Keahok, North Carolina, and this is my fourth year with Naxal Ocean Rescue.

Hi, I'm Justine. I'm from Montreal, and this is my second year with Naxal Ocean Rescue. Hi, I'm Ariane, and this is my second year working with NAGCET Ocean Rescue, and I'm from Canada as well.

Hi, my name's Florence.

I'm from Quebec, and it's my first year working for NAGCET. Hi, my name is Rosalie. I'm from Quebec, and this is my first year working as an ocean lifeguard.

Hello, my name is Joe Bateman, and this is my first year working for NAGCET Ocean Rescue. I'm from Plymouth, North Carolina.

Hey y'all, my name is Jesse Bateman. I'm from Plymouth, North Carolina, and this is my first year at Nags Head Ocean Rescue.

Hey, my name is Corbin Ault. I'm from Waynesville, North Carolina. This is my first year as well.

Hello, I'm Jesse Hall. This is my second year with Nags Head Ocean Rescue. I'm from Murphy, North Carolina.

Good morning, I'm Kenneth Little, and I'm from San Diego, California, and this is my first year at Ocean Rescue.

My name is Coleman Flynn.

I've worked for the town for nine years.

Hey there, I'm Andy Simerson.

This is my 10th year with Nags Head Ocean Rescue and I live up in KDH.

Good morning, my name is Sean Kenny. I was born and raised in Nags Head. This is my 16th year.

you guys again appreciate the town and your commitment to the organization and your support

Good. Well, welcome and bienvenue to all of you, the first years, those who are returning from near and far away. We appreciate what you do. Out there, you're the face of the public on the beach for the town for the summer. And your job is challenging, and we appreciate that. And we wish you a safe, healthy, happy summer. Thank you.

Thanks, John. I'll add a little bit. Out of a little plug, we have our local competition series, our final event tonight is in KDH. We've got a tight race competition, so anybody in the public who wants to come out and see what these guys do, we're doing all the rescue race events there tonight, and it should be a fun, good show. tonight so seven o'clock ocean bay kdh for for that tonight all right um i'm gonna get all you guys start with sean you'll file out the door and if i can get everybody to meet out front on the ramp we'll do a little staff photo out front with everybody before we head out okay all right thank you guys again thank you

Thanks for coming. 15.

Something stronger than 15. Please.

Yeah.

To get younger. Have fun.

Bye. Have a great day. Seven years to get younger. Mr. Coleman.

Hey, Mr. Coleman.

Great, so we will continue with introduction of a new employee, Nancy.

Good morning, Mr. Mayor and Commissioners. I'd like to introduce Matt Hanasek. Matt comes to us with over 10 years of experience in water and wastewater. He worked in the water distribution for Kill Level He worked in water distribution for Currituck County and with Dare County at the Skyco Water Plant. He later transferred to Dare County's Water and Waste Water Plant in Stumpy Point. Matt lives in Man's Harbor with his wife, Morgan. They have two children, Ethan, 20, and Abigail, 13. He enjoys golfing, bowling, and fishing in his spare time, and we're glad to have him.

That brings us now to public comment, and I'll turn this over to Mr. Leidy.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. At this time, the Board of Commissioners welcomes members of the public to provide comment on matters of interest or concern to the public. This is not an opportunity for dialogue, and the board rarely responds to public comment. But for anyone who wishes to address the board, this is your chance to do so. If you'll please go to the podium and start by telling us your name and where you live, and then I will let you know when your five minutes is just about up.

Good morning, Mayor and Commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I would like to, my name's Susie Walters. That said, 415 Raceview Court. I would like to thank the town manager, Andy Garman, and staff, and the board for working with the community to support our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly. The ordinance proposed today addresses these rights and responsibilities of all parties with regard to safety and mutual respect. As always, communication is the key between those gathering and those protecting our community. I commend everyone involved. I have one comment regarding the definition of spontaneous demonstration in section 4.51. It states, spontaneous demonstration means a demonstration that arises in immediate response to a recent unforeseen event that was not planned or organized in advance of the event and that was not promoted or publicly advertised prior to the occurrence of the demonstration. I find the last part of this definition to be ambiguous and problematic. The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretty were unforeseen and shocked the nation. There was no local organized event. However, several gathered regarding the issue, largely because people communicate via social media. Attempting to regulate speech on social media is not possible by any one person or entity. I hope you'll look at this definition and consider placing a period at the end of the word event to avoid subjectivity and potential conflicts. Thank you for your dedication to preserve our citizens' rights while also serving and protecting our community.

Thank you, Ms. Wolters.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Skip Saunders. I live in Kitty Hawk, for whatever worth that has in this room. I moved here in 1975 to Nags Head explicitly to surf. And so here I am. I'm still here. What I have to say to the board and to everyone in this room, you do not need me to know this. and we all know what's going on in our country right now. The very reason that you're visiting your ordinances regarding public demonstration has to do with something else. I don't want anyone to forget that. When I was about 11 or 12 years old, I asked my father, who was a career naval officer, There were a lot of things going on, civil rights protests and all kinds of upheaval, social upheaval at that time. And he was a career naval officer. I asked him, how do you support the president or why do you or why not are you not supporting the president? He was being quiet. And he said, well, Skip, as an officer, the officer corps in the military in the US takes an oath to support the office of the president. We do not take an oath to support a person. And that was the moment that I actually started to understand the nuance in politics and the things that were based on our Constitution. And so I'm here to do one thing, and that's to remind all of us that we need to defend the Constitution. I've served on public boards in Dare County, on Board of Elections, and on the Board of Education. I've taken the same oath that you've taken four times. That oath meant something to me. I have direct line of ancestors who lifted muskets and fought British, the Battle of Camden, the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, and a 14-year-old fourth-grade grandfather who served from age 14 to 18 in the Western Montgomery County Militia in Maryland. And I'm not gonna let those people down. So I'm here to remind you that you took an oath To our Constitution and the rights that it affords us both in law and our natural rights and How important those are because no matter what government would come in the future in this country We're gonna have to invent something that's going to be just like it. And so I'm really concerned keep people in our community are fearful of their government and They're fearful to express their opinions. And I've never seen anything like this in my life in the US. And local government is where everything starts. I'm a deep believer in that, and I love our community. That includes Nags Head, all the towns in our county. I love living here. I have many friends in this room right now. And I hope that you all, when you have your moment, that you'll remember the Constitution and you'll stand up for it. Because there's a lot of fear out there that people are folding up. And we can't do that, we have to take a stand. So that's basically all I have to say and I hope you understand why I wanted to come out and say something like this. These ordinance that you're discussing, the things that you're discussing and that you're revisiting continues the enlightened tradition in Dare County and in our towns of looking over what we're actually doing and trying so hard to make it fair and safe for everybody involved. And I applaud that. You all are doing a great job. And I think it's a credit to the streak of fairness and everything that runs through our county that we all are trying to do the best we can. We try to look at what people's concerns are and we try to answer them. So I just want you to remember the reason that you're revisiting those ordinances. And we wouldn't be dithering over ordinances right now if we had a different person in the White House. And we had a different government in the White House. And we had less people who would accept this. But I don't want anybody to be confused that I will continue to stand up. And I'm not going to back down. And I hope many of you are with us. OK, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr. Saunders.

Good morning, Mayor, Commissioners, Mr. Garman, Mr. Lighting, and members of the town staff. My name is Randy Cartwright. I've been a resident of Nags Head for 19 years and a resident of the Outer Banks for 52 years. I first came before this board in February because I believe the town could better balance the protection of public safety with the First Amendment rights of peaceful demonstrators. Over the past months, I've had the opportunity to work with Mr. Goldman through many emails, proposed revisions, and discussions. I want to thank him, Mr. Lighty, the town staff, and the board for the respect and consideration shown throughout that process. The process itself has been a success. One of the most significant improvements in that demonstrations are now recognized as fundamentally different from ordinary crowd gatherings. Rather than being regulated under the town's crowd gathering provisions, demonstrations now have their own permitting and notification system designed specifically for First Amendment activities. Other important improvements include explicit recognition of spontaneous demonstrations, recognition of good faith attendance estimates, stronger emphasis on First Amendment protections, and many clarifications that should make the ordinance easier for both citizens and law enforcement to understand and apply. My personal preference has always been for an ordinance more like Chapel Hill's because I believe simplicity promotes both understanding and voluntary compliance. While this ordinance remains more detailed than I would have preferred, I believe the work over the past five months has reflected a sincere effort to balance public safety with the constitutional rights provided by the First Amendment. I continue to have several concerns with several provisions, including participant liability and the 10-foot setback where no sidewalk exists, but I will not spend time on those this morning. Instead, I want to mention two substantive revisions that were added to the ordinance yesterday afternoon and that I have not had an adequate opportunity to discuss. The first removes the proposed language providing that an organizer would not be deemed in violation solely because actual attendance exceeded a good faith attendance estimate. Throughout this process, we have recognized that attendance estimates are just that, good faith estimates. I respectfully ask the board to consider whether that protection should remain in the ordinance. The second narrows the spontaneous demonstration provision by requiring that a spontaneous demonstration arise without advanced coordination or notice to potential participants. I am concerned that this language may unintentionally limit the very type of spontaneous demonstration the ordinance is intended to protect. because people ordinarily learn about spontaneous demonstrations through communication with one another. I appreciate Susie Walter's comments, and I agree with her proposed revisions wholly. The freedoms of speech and peaceful assembly are among our nation's oldest and most cherished constitutional traditions. They deserve ordinances that protect public safety while respecting those constitutional rights. I hope the collaborative process we have experienced over the past five months will serve as a model for other communities facing this same challenge. Finally, this process has demonstrated something that is every bit as important as the ordinance itself. It has shown that citizens and local government can work together respectfully, listen to one another, and produce better public policy than either could have produced alone. I think that is something everyone involved can be proud of. I appreciate the opportunity to comment this morning, and I look forward to listening to the board's discussion later today. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cartwright.

Anybody else? Mr. Muller? All right. Well, at this time, we will conclude the public comment session.

Thank you very much. Thank you to all of our speakers this morning. The next item on our agenda is the consent agenda which you have before you with 12 items and a motion would be in order.

So moved.

I have a motion to approve, is there a second?

Second.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. That brings us to reports and recommendations from the planning board and the planning director and Kelly.

Good morning, mayor and commissioners. Thank you so much. I will run through this report pretty quickly, and as always, if you have any questions, just let me know. The planning board met on June 16th and unanimously recommended approval of a proposed text amendment related to water-dependent recreational uses being allowed within commercial mixed-use developments. There was some conversation regarding concerns such as parking, traffic circulation, equipment storage, fueling, and compatibility with a shopping center in general, but it was agreed that that would all be better addressed through the special use permit process and not as part of the text amendment process. Looking ahead to the July planning board meeting, the planning board is expected to discuss a proposed amendment related to cottage court requirements. And I don't know if you recall, but the last time we talked about cottage courts, we created a graduated scale for the size of the cottage court, stories, architectural design, et cetera. So it would be not a change to that, but some flexibility in that. So that's what they will hear at their upcoming meeting. As far as the Board of Adjustment goes, We did not have a meeting in June, but we do have one coming up on July 9th, and that's going to be an appeal from an administrative decision that I made regarding a property on Pelican Street. And so that will be going out to our Board of Adjustment members on Friday in advance of our Thursday meeting. for the Decentralized Wastewater Management Plan and the Septic Health Advisory Committee. Staff continues to make progress with all of their initiatives that we have going on. We have updated some educational materials, as you know, the flyer. We've also redesigned an older septic magnet that we had, which hopefully we'll have ready for you at our next meeting. And we continue outreach through the Dowdy Park Farmers Market. And that has been really beneficial thus far. We just received our funding offer for the 0% interest DWI loan. So those targeted letters will start going out probably early next week. estuarine shoreline management plan. We have our deputy planning director, Joe Costello, giving a more detailed update on that following this conversation. So I won't go into that. Dowdy Park and our Art and Culture Committee. Summer programming at Dowdy Park has exceeded expectations tremendously. Paige continues to report that our May and June numbers have been like July. So a lot of participation. Fitness classes continue to draw tremendous participation. Family fun programs have all been well attended. The farmer's market remains very strong. And our summer concert series has gotten off to a great start. We have a concert tonight, which is Soul One. And that's going to be at Dowdy Park. I did... I've mentioned this previously, but I wanted to kind of highlight and... give thanks to a couple of community members so kate jones connected us with a grant opportunity with the safe monarch program to help native pollinators be planted within the town kate pointed that out to us and then we collaborated with rachel veal with north carolina aquariums she helped us get the grant it's a two thousand dollar grant they're currently growing those native plants over in manio now And come fall, we will have an event where we plant those. And this time next year, we should have a thriving pollinator garden out at Dowdy Park. So wanted to recognize those people and mention that. And that's all I have, unless you have questions for me.

No questions. Thank you.

Thanks, Kelly.

Thanks, Kelly.

that brings us now to an update on the estuarine shoreline management plan and joe

Hello, good morning, Mayor and Commissioners. I'm going to give a brief update on the estuarine shoreline management plan progress. I'm going to start south to north. I'm going to skip the Harvey site because I'm going to talk more about that. The southernmost point that we're doing a project or looking to start is the Catfish Farms living shoreline. uh water quality testing and sav mapping has has begun so we're beginning that preliminary data collection process and then skipping rv for now up to soundside road we have an initial stakeholder meeting scheduled for tuesday july 7th property owners have been notified and look forward to that And then at the Villa Dunes drive site, that's not grant funded anymore, but just Monday night, there was a initial stakeholder meeting to get preliminary feedback on a new path forward. So now to sort of delve more into the Harvey site I thought it would be helpful to sort of look at where we had begun with the design and that is for you this was sort of the initial design before we had any sort of real engagement with with the public or with the user groups and you can see there's sort of a series of offshore breakwaters and, you know, sort of north of the gazebo and then there in between the Harvey Sound access and the gazebo. That was what was presented and proposed. But once we talked with the users, they really said, you know, that little, those two sort of skinny accesses that you kind of see drawn in the sort of Trivial Pursuit piece shape, and then that rectangle shape wasn't really you know, advantageous for users. And they requested that those offshore breakwaters between the two were removed, especially for people who are learning to to do water sports. You know, those were real hazards. And so, you know, this is a markup that basically shows that input may be extending that Marseille tighter to the shoreline further, which which here is now a more concrete drawing. And this is actually where we landed. So you can kind of see that SIL was even further reduced based on more feedback. And so what you have here is at the Harvey site, the most southern portion is a re-nourished beach. CAMEL won't let you do that unless you've historically had a sandy beach there. And so the Google imagery suggests that there was going back. So we'll see if they allow us to do that. But proposing that new sort of access that was built as part of the boardwalk process to the harvey access would be a re-nourished sandy beach then there would be some marsh sills that are about nine feet wide and two feet tall there that kind of wrap behind the gazebo and then there's some offshore when i say offshore they're at right at about the two foot contour so they're really um in a place that you know Most, I would say, voters wouldn't want to be unless you're like a skip or something. So we tried to be conscientious about how people are using the site and to design to provide protection to the city and the shoreline, but also support public use And here is sort of the side profile of the offshore breakwaters as well as the sill. And I don't know if you can see, but if you look zoom in, but it might get worse. You see that MHW mean high water line. So most of this will be underwater. This whole structure will sort of be sticking out. You know, if this kind of goes across, it'll look more, you know, just sort of like the top and then the sills were are even thinner and so this is kind of the artistic graphic showing that hopefully how the site functions where we've sort of respected the public access area that we're promoting people to use and get to the sound and not trample through the marsh in and around the boardwalk and provide a soft entry in some sandy beach there, then some interior sills that protect further erosion back behind the boardwalk of that marshland, and then the larger offshore, again offshore, the two-foot contour there protecting the SAV and the marsh behind it. So I just thought that would be helpful to go over. And then where we're at with this project right now, we've received back and forth comments from DCM. We've submitted our permit application. They needed additional wetlands surveying. So we resubmitted that. Now they've requested a couple sort of additional changes to the plan set. going back and forth with them. And then we are looking to get a conservation easement recorded in working with NCLWF. That's our grant source. They require a conservation easement of a 50 foot buffer from that mean high water land inward, just to ensure that that marsh is protected. That's sort of what they're investing in. and the town has been sort of working with the tourism board and NCLWF to make sure that the tourism board's interests are captured in that easement, so that process is ongoing. And I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Questions? Andy, do you want to add anything to that?

Yeah, I'd like to talk a little bit about the easement process. Obviously, this is something that we've been working on with the tourism board. They've got some pretty specific interests in wanting to maintain certain rights to use the property, and there was some concern about what the easement would do. Going back to the initial beginning of this project, we had communicated with Lee Nettles and Diane Bognoch about the easement. We got a letter of support from them recognizing that we would need a conservation easement to be able to use the Land and Water Fund grant funds. That was acknowledged in the beginning of the process. The easement is a requirement of the Land and Water Fund. It's not something the town is doing outside of that. We don't have an interest in doing that other than meeting the grant requirement. In good faith, I think Joe and Amy started working with the staff of the Land and Water Fund to explore how to get the easement process completed. They engaged Robert Hobbs with Hornthal Riley, Allison Malin, John's partner. He has a lot of experience drafting easement, especially with Land and Water Fund. They were working towards getting a draft document that they could then present to the tourism board for their approval. Obviously, any easement that is recorded on this property would have to be approved by the owners of the property, being the tourism board and the town of Nags Head. At some point, I think communication got a little crossed up. I think that they thought perhaps we were further along than we were. I think they became concerned about what we were doing. Since then, we've communicated on how we're going about trying to settle the easement document itself. I asked their attorney, Jay Wheelis, to take over the process of engaging Land and Water Fund staff on determining what language both parties would accept. They have much more specific things they want to see in the easement than I'd say the town does. And so that's where it stands now. I think Jay Wheelis has communicated with the Land and Water Fund staff several times, as I think Megan Bond has reported out, and maybe you could speak to that. But what I've heard is that there's optimism that they're gonna be able to get something that everyone will accept, and then the project can move forward. And so all these things are happening simultaneously. design, the permit application, the easement all in in advance of hoping to get this thing out to bid and underway sometime this offseason. So that's our goal. You know, this is something that was part of our Estuarine Shoreline plan from the beginning. This was a pilot site and we wanted to work together with the tourism board to come up with a way to protect this valuable asset in Nags Head. It's public property, it's co-owned and it would be a perfect demonstration project for the public to see and hopefully it would accomplish the goal of protecting the assets that they've invested there and also providing an educational tool for the public. We're hopeful that we can work together and get all this done. I don't know if John could maybe weigh in a little bit on what the process is to actually record an easement and then also some of the communications that you're aware of between perhaps Robert and Jay.

uh yes mr um mr garman the um you know one of the conditions of receiving the grant will be placing the affected property under a conservation easement on terms that are satisfactory to the land and water fund and i know that staff and robert hobbs have been working on a version of that i think um i'm looking at an email that um Robert had written earlier in which he said that he's reviewed the initial proposal and he believes having worked with the Land and Water Fund and its predecessor for a long time, he knows if you vary too far from their template without adequate justification, it's probably not going to be approved. He's tried to stick to their form as much as possible and he's tried to develop something along those lines. I think he was working on something at the same time that Mr. Wheelis was working on a similar document for the tourism authority. I don't know that either of those two lawyers were aware that the other was working on something at the same time. Robert has done a comparison of the two. I don't know that there is anything that's insurmountable, but I believe the idea is to come up with a conservation easement that is likely to be approved so that the grant can be provided. But no easement is going to be effective unless it's signed by all the property owners or the owners of the properties that are going to be affected by the conservation easement. So I think that's still something that's in process. I can't give you any estimate as to when that will be completed. There's just a lot of moving parts to getting that completed, but that's basically what I know about it.

Before I call on Commissioner Vaughn and her role as the designated member of the Visitor's Bureau, I do have a question because we're talking primarily about the easement that the Visitor's Bureau would sign. There's one project and two pieces of property. Will there be two potentially different easements?

I would expect the easements to be the same. I would expect there to be one. I can't say there'll be one easement on two properties, but that's a possibility. But there could be one easement in identical terms on each property.

That could happen as well. Thank you for clearing that up. Commissioner Vaughan, do you want to add?

I can report from the last meeting in the Visitor's Bureau that it does seem, I think you used the term optimistic, Mr. Wheelers reported that he was in contact several times with the Land and Water Fund and that they were making progress. They had several very specific concerns. Perpetuity was one of them and I think they felt really positive about being able to figure that out, it's not gonna go away, but they can do what they want moving forward, but there was four or five other uses that they were specifically interested in that are not part of the template, this is my understanding of it anyway, but Mr. Wheelis did report in June that they were making good progress and that he had taken over the discussions regarding the easement, so they should, you know, they're working on it and should be able to come up with something that everybody can, you know, be satisfied with.

All right, so now board members, any questions of any of the parties? To Joe, to the attorney, any questions? Commissioner Harrison?

The re-nourishment of the sand on this side, is that new in this project or have I just missed that?

that's that's been a pretty constant it's shifted a little bit in that based on the new wetlands survey i want to say instead of 280 linear feet it's like 250 so there's been small adjustments but the idea has has been consistent i think from the consultant's perspective there's you know, just concern on whether or not it will will get through camera permitting. But it does sort of meet that initial criteria of was there historically a Sandy Beach there in the Google imagery and historical imagery does back that up. Okay.

Could I just say a few more things? I'm sorry. Sure. We have been contacted recently by several users of the site with concerns about the design and what it does to recreational use. As Joe mentioned, we had some engagement with those folks a few months ago and talked through some iterations of the design and came up with the design that Joe showed earlier. We've scheduled a meeting with some of those folks tomorrow. And we plan to show them the design changes that we made and hopefully get some additional input if they're still concerned. We're not quite sure they're aware of the final design changes. And so what we're hoping is that once they see this, they'll have more comfort with it. But obviously, our goal is not to impede recreational use of the site. And so once we have that meeting, you know, sort of report back on what we find out and see what we need to do. But we continue to be engaged with folks and want to come up with something that's useful for protecting the shoreline, but also preserving what people are trying to do out there. So thank you.

Yeah, I think I sure hope it all works out because I know there's been a lot of work on both sides that, you know, trying to get this thing done. But I think, you know, I want to thank staff for working so hard with the public once again because I think the new design is really nice and I think it will really work out for everybody looks a lot more recreational friendly than did when it first started so I appreciate all the work on that.

Thank you yes, the commissioner labor. Just to echo what Commissioner Sanders said, I appreciate all the staff's hard work. Definitely a lot of work has gone into this, but after hearing from Town Manager Garment and Commissioner Vaughn and our town attorney, it sounds like that we are on the way to seeing this come to pass. So I appreciate all the work.

Great. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Joe, Andy, John. That brings us next to item G, old business, tabled from previous meetings. This will be a discussion of the crowd gathering activities and group demonstrations. I believe the manager and the attorney are going to frame this discussion for us before we begin.

Do our best. So you heard a public comment from several folks about the process we've been through. I just want to say I do appreciate the input that we've received and sort of the back and forth. I think it's really been collaborative and respectful and certainly insightful you know you've got folks that are sort of the users of of the ordinance and when you have that they have a different perspective on things and they can sort of drill down on on the little things that we may not have thought about and that that's been evident in the process and so i've appreciated a lot of the comments it's sort of helped me think about it And so I do think it's been valuable, and I just wanted to say that. But really what we're looking at today, what we've got here are two sort of parallel efforts. One would be looking at our group demonstrations ordinance, and those are the conversations I've been having primarily with Randy Cartwright. and we've got some changes there. We've also been discussing our crowd gathering ordinance with the staff, the members of the Dare County Tourism Board, And in May, Mayor Cahoon, Commissioner Vaughn, myself met with Lee Nettles and Diane Bognoch and also the Chairman of the Tourism Board, Dennis Robinson, and sort of went over some concerns about the crowd gathering permit process and the ordinance that sort of resulted out of the Rod and Custom Festival permit process. And so one of the things that we suggested in that meeting is that they provide us with some suggested changes to the ordinance that they would like to see to hopefully resolve some of their concerns. And so they did provide some comments to us and I've put those in the packet. And so that's a separate piece that involves the crowd gathering ordinance. It's really separate from the group demonstrations ordinance. So I'll just quickly talk about group demonstrations ordinance and a lot of this is in your packet but as mr cartwright stated you know a lot of this we were looking at trying to define what a spontaneous demonstration was and accounting for that in our ordinance and you know we it's a very difficult thing to manage like i mean the The idea that you're gonna have public wanna come out and speak and exercise their First Amendment rights and how we're gonna react to these situations, it creates a lot of anxiety. You can write an ordinance, but how you're gonna deal with these situations effectively is extremely complicated. And so we need to think about this ordinance carefully. We need to come up with language that we feel like is going to sort of, I would say, err on the rights of speech, but still provide the things the town needs to protect public safety. And so, I feel like we've come up with a good balance here, but the spontaneous demonstration, that is something we're trying to acknowledge with the ordinance You know, it's really difficult to define what is a spontaneous demonstration, in my opinion. And I think one of the comments we received in the beginning in public comment was about, you know, the publicly advertised or promoted piece. That's sort of what staff had come up with to state what is sort of the line between what's a spontaneous and not a spontaneous demonstration. And I think that the comment we received was that we wouldn't to keep that piece in there, but I'm not sure of another way to make that distinction. That's one thing I'll point out initially, but beyond that, we're trying to acknowledge that there will be potentially the need to have a spontaneous demonstration due to unforeseen events. We've written something into the ordinance that deals with that. We've stated in the ordinance that we're gonna try to be mindful of that line and be accommodating. I think in most situations, When there is a demonstration, the last thing we want to do is revoke a permit or tell people to disperse. That's a very difficult situation to be in. So I think having something in the ordinance that acknowledges spontaneous demonstration helps us deal with that. The other big piece that we've come up with is previously for groups of 30 or less that weren't required to get any permits from the town for a demonstration. And if 30 or more had to get a permit, we've come up with an interim tier that says between 30 and 100, we would ask for a notification, 48 hours, but you wouldn't have to provide, or you wouldn't have to receive a permit from the town. We just want the notification. And we feel like that would cover a lot of what we see in recent months where folks are gathering and protesting, but it's not really large groups. And so it provides another layer of protection for the town to get some sort of notification and to get the ability to react and have staff potentially available to monitor the situation. But it's not as comprehensive or lengthy as a permit. So I feel like that is sort of a good middle ground provides another layer of protecting speech, but also giving us what we need. Beyond that, there's some other nuanced things we've put into this ordinance as we as was acknowledged in the beginning. You know, there's a piece about the That's something I think we need to talk a little bit more about, and I'll ask John to weigh in on that in a minute. We've come up with some different criteria for how far folks could be from the right-of-way, from the edge of the pavement, and we went back and forth on this quite a bit, but I think what we settled on, at least from a staff standpoint, is sort of mirroring some of the rules we've been dealing with with DOT when you're, I go back to when we construct the sidewalk. Typically on 158, they're asking us to set back the sidewalk 10 feet from the edge of pavement when there's no curb. and that's to provide an adequate clear space. And then if there's a curve, it's typically had to be four feet. I know David's looking at me right now. It's had to be four feet from the edge of pavement if there's a curve. And so using sort of that standard, that's sort of how they define what's a safe separation from the roadway for pedestrians on the sidewalk. And so we've tried to mirror that in this ordinance when we're talking about 158 or 64 being on more of a high speed roadway. And then for the other town streets that are posted at 35 or less, having a smaller separation of four feet. And one of the concerns brought up was we didn't want the requirement to push people onto private property and effectively eliminate the ability to have a demonstration. and given the right-of-way widths of our higher speed roadways, which are pretty significant, we feel like this is a good compromise that addresses that concern. Let's see. We had a provision in here about separation from commercial establishments and financial institutions. It was a 100-foot separation requirement. we've talked about reducing that to 50 feet and also putting an exception in that if you're on a public sidewalk which is i guess considered a traditional public forum that you would always be allowed to demonstrate in those areas as long as you didn't block access to a driveway or entrance so that's that's another piece we added to the ordinance there is a section that we added on the permit itself and Previously, for a large event, you had to get a crowd gathering permit under the section dealing with crowd gathering permits. As the board knows, some of the language in there requires a lot more information. And in this situation, what we've done is we've created a separate permit for the group demonstration that really only requires the information necessary to deal with that particular activity. And I think it's more streamlined and more clear for someone who's trying to read the ordinance and understand what the requirements are. So that's another change that's part of this. Finally, there's a new section that we included regarding the revocation and appeal of permits. I think actually Mr. Cartwright had suggested some language which we largely adopted. into this draft, although I think John has some comments on this particular piece as well. And so, that's essentially an overview of what we've done to the ordinance. As mentioned, John provided us with some additional comments late last week, and then provided a draft to me, and I think I've forwarded that to or the commissioners, or at least whenever, if you get the board. And I also forwarded it to Mr. Cartwright so he could see it. And I can bring that up on the screen real quick if, John, you'd like to go over some of that, just one second.

so i guess the first piece that john had noted was about the good faith attendance estimates and on the screen here are some of the suggestions so maybe you could go over that now yeah if i may uh mr mayor uh commissioners mr garman uh the you know just as some background we talked about this uh when we embarked on this process of revising the town's ordinances to allow for um a more clear and cohesive group demonstrations type of ordinance. The town's not required to have such an ordinance, but without an ordinance you have no ability to provide any advance controls or regulations and you're left with having to deal with public assemblies and any public safety or disruptive effects from those that might occur. after the toothpaste is out of the tube. And so the idea here is to try to impose some regulations and controls that would allow the town to be more confident in its ability to properly manage and address what might happen in a demonstration or a large gathering of folks. I'll also say this. It's a bit unusual for the town to get an opportunity to collaborate in developing this kind of ordinance with folks who are gonna be engaged in activities that will be subject to that ordinance. That's a great thing. It's great to have that kind of collaboration and partnership, but you have to develop the ordinance with the idea in mind that you'll need to have controls and regulations in place for groups that don't want to collaborate with the town and don't want to collaborate or cooperate with law enforcement. And so taking that sort of pessimistic worst case scenario approach is how we try to develop these kinds of ordinances. With that in mind, I think what the town has gotten to at this point is a very workable ordinance that is It contains less controls and less restrictions than would be permissible under the First Amendment and First Amendment jurisprudence from our courts. One thing I think that's very important to keep in mind, and that is we're guided in large part by the case law that has been developed in this area. There's a case from our circuit court of appeals for the federal circuit. involving the city of Charleston in which there was a small group exception of 75 people that was upheld in that case. I think in drafting this and in thinking about the kinds of things that have been upheld, I think it's important to keep in mind that Nags Head is not Charleston. We don't have the same kind of law enforcement department. We don't have the same size. We don't have the same kind of population. We don't have the same kinds of locations where these kinds of demonstrations can be Essentially, most of these demonstrations would be held in an area adjacent to the bypass, it seems to me. And that creates its own public safety concerns, I believe. You have that. You have a town with a year-round population that's very small and that mushrooms in the tourist season. I think those factors all are worth thinking about as we think about the types of provisions that we have in the ordinance. With all that in mind, the things that I've provided to sort of tweak the latest version of the ordinance, first dealing with the good faith estimates, I think it is important to to provide that the applicant will provide an estimate that must be provided in good faith. We know that they can't always give you the exact number. That's going to be very difficult. But I think it's also incumbent on the organizer to act in good faith and to provide that estimate in good faith. And I don't think we should create a presumption that any estimate that's given is provided in good faith because some folks may not be acting in good faith. And so I'm not saying that about anybody who has been operating or engaging in assemblies under this ordinance or under the recent ordinance this past year, but we have to be prepared for what might happen down the road. That's why we revised paragraph C as reflected there. Spontaneous demonstrations, again, I know that there's been a lot of discussion about this provision. Our position is you don't have to have a spontaneous demonstration provision explicitly contained in the ordinance, but you have to allow for a small group exception. Um, and something that may arise without advanced notification, but here it's, it's actually codified in the ordinance, which I think is fine, but we've simply, you know, clarify the definition of what is a spontaneous demonstration. And I think again, you know, Ms. uh, commissioner Walters had a very good point. You know, the, the kinds of things we're talking about are those things that I think arise without anyone anticipating them happening in advance. I can absolutely foresee a situation where there's a number of people who all at the same time are interested in and motivated by a recent event to go and assemble without any advanced coordination, any advanced planning, and that needs to be permitted, you know, in some fashion. But at the same time, I think, you know, if we don't make it clear that it has to be something that's done without any advanced organizational planning, it's pretty easy to provide some simple advanced planning on organization without giving the town notice of an assembly that might fall within the notice provisions. And so, or even into the, uh, one, the, the, the, the large crowd gathering. So I just think that, uh, tightening that definition is, is important. Um, and I think I had one other or maybe two other provisions. Yeah. Oh, the appeal process. So it is important that since the town has a permitting process for what I'm going to call large groups, groups of 100 people or more, it's important that you have an appeal process so that if someone applies for a permit and they're denied, they have the ability to challenge that. And I think there's an internal appeals process that can be managed. But at the same time, as currently written, the ordinance would allow for the event to go forward during the pendency of the appeal, in my view, is If you allow that, the appeal becomes moot. You really need to not allow the matter to go forward pending the appeal. Otherwise, there's no point in the appeal. Similarly, where a permit has been revoked during an ongoing demonstration, I think it is important that that law enforcement be allowed to and expected to take necessary steps to preserve public safety and welfare that may but may not always allow them to allow expressive activity to continue to the greatest extent possible. So I don't think it's a good policy to guarantee that in the ordinance. So that's why I've stricken that last phrase there just at the very end of section 4-57.

One of the things that John and I talked about with this section is that unlike the crowd gathering ordinance where the appeal comes to the Board of Commissioners, this refers to the appeal being handled by the staff. And it only applies to a permit, and the permit is for groups of 100 or more, and that that requires a 15-day notice. So John's point is that because it's an appeal to staff, it's most likely that we would have the time to adjudicate that matter before the date of the event. And so I think that's... should help with that concern is that we would make every effort to have the appeal and render a decision before the actual date of the event.

Thank you.

I agree with that. Those are my comments. I'll be glad to answer any questions, though,

elaborated on anything you would like and I did I did want to I didn't go over the crowd-gathering piece yet and so what if the board wants me to cover that now or wait I think it seems to me it would be productive to have this conversation at two parts and so why don't we

rather than introduce that part at this point, let's deal with this, the spontaneous demonstration part first. And then go from there. So, commissioners, I'll start, start at this end, I'll start here. Commissioner Vaughn, do you have any thoughts about the language?

Well, I have a question, and it's, you know, following up on John's comments recently about the, and about comments made by the public, while I understand the changes regarding the spontaneous demonstration and the need to, I think we have, there's a difference between this section where you just made a change regarding how they're handled and then the definition itself. And I think you made the comment that somebody was asking to delete the definition or to change the definition. I'm thinking that the gray area here is the idea of how much promotion's been done. You know that last sentence. I think Ms. Walters recommended that we just stop before that. And I guess maybe I think that would be worth us talking about. I'm not advocating either way, but that does get into a pretty subjective situation in the definition. That if we say it's not spontaneous, if somebody went on Facebook and said I'm out here, you know, protesting or whatever, exercising their right to free speech, is that, does that make it, you know, no longer a spontaneous demonstration? So I sort of have that question and comment.

And I pulled the definition up on the screen, and that is, that's separate from the change that John had suggested. Right. The definition is up further in the ordinance, but, you know, I think what Ms. Walters said She asked that a period be added after the word event. And so deleting that section about that was not promoted or publicly advertised prior to the occurrence of the demonstration. And so then I guess we just have to figure out how would we draw the line between what's a spontaneous demonstration and what's not. It's worthy of talking about, but...

you know that's kind of what we had come up with to be able to do that so yeah oh i understand can anybody weigh in on what we're thinking about like time wise you know there's a difference between obviously taking out ads and promoting something for a long period of time and again a group text message or a you know social media goes off i don't know if there was what anybody was thinking with regards to that.

Yeah I mean how do you see it I mean they have to have something they're going to put something out with at least 24 to 48 hours and nobody's going to be there so I mean it's

don't know or maybe even less i mean the way the definition is now any um public advertising or especially for a demonstration because i i would assume that not every single person there knows everyone's phone number so they might be using facebook or social media communication because they're not right so i mean i also understand that if somebody's you know going at this for days or weeks in advance it's no longer a spontaneous demonstration so i don't know how to

Well, in my mind, arising in immediate response to an event is something, in my mind, that happens the same day. If it happens the next day after an event, that's not a spontaneous event. That spontaneous event is one that activates people to, get up from their seats and essentially charge to the public plaza, which in their case means also getting in your car and driving somewhere, but because we're not configured that way, but it is an immediate sort of visceral response to something that happened. And if it's any longer than that, then it would suggest that there's some planning to it. And I would not, in this definition, in that context of something that happened immediately, where people are on the move and begin to chatter among themselves about where they're going and what they're doing, I would not rate that as public advertising or planning or promotion. I would not rate that chatter as promotion or advertising. You are in the course of the event at that point. And I don't know if there's a way to clarify that. I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but I was sitting here thinking that You know, if you said immediate response to a recent or unforeseen event, semicolon, and everything after that goes together, it wasn't planned or organized in advance, was not promoted or advertised. all of that is one phrase it's one you know it wasn't promoted wasn't i mean none however you want to say that it wasn't planned promoted advertised in advance that's one phrase together that sort of defines what is spontaneous kind of helps define spontaneous commissioner lambert the only

Like in listening to that, that makes sense to me on its face, but then I'm like, well, when I think about any of the demonstrations, I don't think there's one that happened the same day, probably. I mean, Mr. Cartwright might be able to speak to that, but I just can't believe that any of those did them the same day. So then that would mean by definition, none of them can be spontaneous. or would be considered spontaneous. And I worry, I mean, a day's planning, if something happens today, and if they're not marching out there today, it's not spontaneous. That feels a little curb. Like, what if they want to go out two days later? I'd still consider that. But that's times, they get a time to notify the town.

They get a time to notify the town. That's true. I mean, you know.

Well, if it's going to be a demonstration, you're going to have to have some time to... get everybody together or you're gonna be out there with two or three people. It's not really gonna be a demonstration. I mean, go around the circle a little bit.

Yeah, it's hardly.

These are all great points. And to follow up on what the mayor was saying, I think you can parse this provision into several components. The definition is a demonstration that arises in immediate response to a recent or unforeseen event, okay, those are all three different criteria, that it must not have been planned or organized in advance of the event, and it was not promoted or publicly advertised prior to the occurrence of the demonstration. So you have all those criteria that must be met in order to fall within this exception to the notice requirement, right? So this is not an exception to the permitting requirements, an exception to the notice requirement, unless there's going to be more than 100 people reasonably anticipated to be present. So, you know, I see, I see the possibility for a number of things to fall within this, one of which is you have an individual or a small group of individuals, three people gathered somewhere who are, who are, you know, by themselves demonstrating something. They have, I mean, they just went out or something happens to them and people see it on social media and people decide to go and protest what's just happened right then and there. That's spontaneous. I mean, in my view, even if you get in the car and drive out there, it's still spontaneous because it wasn't, It was in response to a recent or unforeseen event. It wasn't planned or organized, and it wasn't promoted. It just happens organically. So that is the kind of thing that I think falls within that, as well as the idea that I'm sitting at home and I'm watching something on the news and I see something that happens that was not necessarily that day, but it was recent, and it was unforeseen, and I decide I want to go out and I want to make my voice heard about that particular matter, and I show up and there's several other people doing the same thing. Again, that's a spontaneous demonstration in my view. Those aren't the only things, but I think there's a variety of things that fall within this. I don't think this is too restrictive. I think it's just more about defining what is going to be exempted from any advanced notice requirement or permanent requirement. That's why I think this works well the way it's drafted now.

Can we define immediate as the day of?

No. That's a tough one. That's a tough one.

Say less than 48 hours? So it's under, I mean, there's a window we're trying to fill here that's before they have to actually do the.

Well, all it is is a notification requirement even still. Yeah. It's not a permanent. So it's. I think that's what I'm understanding John to say, so it's not as if it's kicking in some big heavy duty requirement, just like give us a heads up if you think you're gonna have. If you have time to post it on Facebook, you have time to give us a call.

Yeah, or send us an email.

Because that process is pretty simple now, right?

it's designed to be you know 48 hours and just i mean i don't know if we would create a form or accept an email but it's just just give us a location it does solve the i mean not solve but there's the safety concern is making sure that our police are aware that this is going on and it's to keep the demonstrators safe so right and also it's only we're only talking about more if it's less than 30 people who come out of their house spontaneously

then it doesn't even apply to them because they can come anyways. Like, you don't have to give notice for less, 30 or less.

You can just go out of your home and... Yeah, there's no requirement for notice or permit.

Right. So it's really only if it was more than 30 people who spontaneously came out of their homes in response to an immediate... And I think that's, you have to provide for that because I do think that's conceivable, but I think it's not going to be the common event, but I think it's conceivable.

But I mean, so then at that point, if it's more than 30, less than 100... You have to notify us 48 hours ahead of time, time, place, location, who's the organizer. I guess if something happens and you don't have 48 hours, something happens, you want to go out tomorrow and do it. I would imagine best practice would be to just provide the same notice that you would have provided if you had 48 hours. We'll do our best. Yeah. I mean, I think that's kind of what it says.

Yeah, OK. I mean, I think our staff definitely needs notice.

I mean, you know, it's like, you know, what what you're trying to, I guess, control is somebody wants to plan a big event. And you know, it's going to bring a lot of people, it's going to require a lot of resources and then they don't apply for a permit. And then they try to use the spontaneous definition as a way to say they didn't need to do anything. And that's what we're trying to make sure that doesn't happen.

Yeah.

And we think this prevents that. Yes. Okay.

I think so to the best of our ability. Yeah. And, and again, to, to John's point, you know, people like Randy and others are going to do their best. They're going to make their best effort. I mean, they're, they're not going out there to make themselves and their friends and put themselves in an unsafe situation or do any of these other things that are unreasonable. The thing is that that's not everybody. And we don't, we don't, um, you know, we just don't know. I mean, it's all laws. are for unreasonable people. I mean, the only reason we have laws is because some people will not apply their common sense. And so that's why we have to have this. And I think John's point is well taken, that you have to be thinking about the unreasonable people as you read this. Think about what they may do. they still have free speech rights, even if they're unreasonable. But again, we have to have the opportunity to make that a safe situation.

Yeah. It's our responsibility to make it safe. It is. To make it a safe situation. I think the fact that we reference response to a recent and unforeseen event is pretty clear too. So you just can't go out there and decide, you know, everybody knew this was coming, now we're gonna say this was spontaneous. So that's pretty specific. And I think we would assume that everybody would use good judgment in deciding whether this is, you know, if it was yesterday something happened and people went out today, we're gonna say, okay, that's immediate. That's why I think 24 hours or something that tight is probably difficult.

but you're going to have somebody who is going to be out there protesting an event later than the standard, and they're going to reference something within the timeframe. They're gonna say, I'm not out here protesting that event. I'm out here protesting what this commentator said six hours ago about that event. That's why I'm here. You can't foresee every circumstance.

Up on the screen, we talked about the definition of spontaneous demonstration. And then this is the section that defines the rules. And these are the changes that John made. Now, if you look at the first change, John has added without advanced coordination or notice of potential participants. I think that really just aligns with the definition because the definition currently has that kind of language. And then the only other change John suggested is remove this last sentence. I think what it implies in the sentences before that is that you shall make a good faith effort to notify us as soon as practicable. What that implies is that we're going to be accommodating And so do we need to say it in the next sentence that we're gonna be accommodating? And so I think that was John's point is that while the town, I'm sure the town will try to be accommodating, that it's a matter of removing too much of our authority to deal with the situations that we may not want.

Yeah, and I think on that point, I mean, I believe the town has a legal obligation to not violate the rights of folks who engage in a demonstration, a spontaneous demonstration pursuant to this ordinance. There are some things that law enforcement can do if matters get out of hand, but absent that, there's very little that can be done. And so I think all that sentence, that sentence I think imposes a duty that goes beyond the town's legal duty, but the town has a legal duty as it is to essentially allow this kind of thing subject to controls necessary for public safety if public safety gets implicated by the activity.

Just to circle back, from a broader view of where we started, last year we had an ordinance that required a permit for any number of people, and it said 72 hours, and it was a permit that you had to receive. Now we have an ordinance that says 30 or less, no permit, up to 100, just notification 48 hours, and then a permit above 100. A lot of the standards have been modified. I feel like we have tried to come up with something that recognizes all those things and then the spontaneous demonstration piece is brand new.

I mean, the process has demonstrated reasonableness. If you put that in there, if you put a reasonable effort, an unreasonable person is going to come in and argue that your determination was not reasonable. It gives you something to argue about in terms of a measure. And if you leave it out, it's being reasonable.

As does good faith. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

So what is the board's pleasure on these revisions? It sounds like we're basically leaving it as the markup.

Well, one person I don't know who commented about the line about the organizers shall not be deemed in violation of this article solely because actual attendance exceeds estimated attendance. I don't know if that was Randy or Susie who brought that up. who was randy yeah are we gonna um what what the violation if some if the attendance is more than we plan or than the organizer planned are we holding that one person in violation and what does that violation entail i think the the violation is if they if they provide an estimate

that's not provided in good faith. That's where the violation occurs. So as long as the, where an estimate's required, as long as the applicant provides an estimate that they provide in good faith based on information reasonably available to them at the time the notice or application is submitted, they're gonna be fine. It's only when the town, and I think it's incumbent on the town if it's gonna take some kind of enforcement action to demonstrate that the estimate was not provided in good faith. But the way this last sentence reads, I just, eh, I feel like that imposes a further restriction than the town should impose on itself. I think it's true. Just because the estimate exceeds or the number of attendees exceeds the estimate doesn't mean it wasn't provided in good faith so long as the estimate was provided in good faith based upon information reasonably available to the organizer at the time.

and the burden would be on the town. That's correct.

I'm assuming this is sort of an extreme situation where someone tells us there's going to be 50 people and they do all this promotion and there's 500 people. As opposed to someone who organizes an event and says there's going to be 40 and there's 60.

My biggest concern is the first sentence here where I think that could be construed to mean whatever estimate is provided by the organizer is deemed to be in good faith and i don't think we should have that presumption incorporated into the into the ordinance okay so the violation would just be to shut the event down because there's too many people that there were more it could be but that wouldn't i i i imagine the chief is going to say that they wouldn't necessarily shut something down just because they feel that They were not told the right number. I think they would first look to see if they had trouble managing the situation before they took that action. I'm going to ask the Chief a question if I may.

Sure. The consequence you're saying would just be careful examination of the next permit?

Could be, could also be, you know, some, well, I think it's gonna depend on what happens when there are more people that show up than were estimated to be there. And again, in some ways, I imagine the chief, the law enforcement's position may be, As long as it's not creating a problem, we're not going to do anything about it. It's only when a problem is created. But that was my question. You just answered. I mean, talk to us a little bit about the process that you'll have to go through when you find a demonstration either that you weren't anticipating or that you're aware of, but it seems to be different than you anticipated.

I try to prepare for everything that goes on. Public safety is my number one concern. besides the fact that spontaneous and stuff we've seen where people advertise months weeks in advance and then if somebody is advertising and there's where you only have to have a notification between 30 and 100 if they are expecting in good faith 75 people No problems. If they're expecting 75 and 150 show up, I'm not going out there to just start shutting it down because more people could start showing up just riding by and seeing the event and want to see what's going on. But if that same person is advertising and there are 6,000 comments that were coming, what can we bring? That's a whole different ballgame. Now, does that mean I'm still going to go out there and just shut it down right then and there? Absolutely not. I've got to figure out how much staff I have on hand. Can I do it? Is it going to cause more of an issue if we try to shut it down than if we deal with it after the fact? Anything can be dealt with after the fact that they've been in a violation. We could still issue a citation or go get a warrant or anything if something has been violated criminally after the fact instead of causing more of a disturbance seen right then and there on the side of the road. The First Amendment is a very thin line. We can make national news in a split second with the First Amendment. And also what people have to understand with the First Amendment is just because somebody has a different view from you doesn't mean that their rights get violated when somebody comes out there as long as they're not doing anything insightful, creating retaliation, or... So forth, because they've got the right to be there just as much as the original people, especially in a public place. So by no means would we just go shut something down because they have 102 people. I'm not counting them. I've got better things to do than sit there and count 102 people to see if they went over. Now, if they're expecting there's 2,000 out there, we're going to probably reach out to the organizer, just see what's going on, monitor it. Anytime that we know of an event, I mean, we have two people that hold... protest regularly they meet with us they fill out the permits we sit down with them for after actions they ask if we have any suggestions we give them suggestions we talk it out and we have a very good working relationship with this group So they're always looking to see what can be done better. Any suggestions, parking becomes a big issue with everything, but that doesn't mean we're going out there because when people park on other lots, that's not for us to tow. That will be up to the business owner or the property owner there to tow. Now, what we have done in the past is go out there and let the protesters know that, hey, they don't want you parking here. they might tow your vehicle. Now, they don't have choice, kind words for us during these incidents, because they think it's us. But we're there as a matter of the property owner, etc. We're not looking for any conflict, confrontation or anything. I'm just trying to make sure that the people that are protesting or are safe, the motor and public is safe. And then there's going to be no other incidents going on that's going to create problems for the for the department.

Right.

Hopefully that answered your question.

Yes, sir. Thank you very much.

And if I may, just very briefly, I appreciate the fact that we have a chief who thinks this way, but it's also you are framing what you do in the context of, one, responding to the constitutional rights that the people have, and two, public safety, which is your responsibility. Any chief would be responsible for those two things. I mean, whether it's you as a very reasonable person or whether it's anybody else, those responsibilities reside in the chief of police. So, okay.

So you would not be making, you would not be on the spot ever making a decision about what was done in good faith or not. I mean, I hear you to say that too, like these things could be addressed after the event.

That's my intention. I mean, you're not going to go out there and say, if we have kind of protesters show up and everybody is just have disabused and we've had this recently, we can't make those people leave because they're in a public space as well. Um, just because they have that different view doesn't mean that you can't be here. Um, so if I don't want to, do anything right then and there if they are there in each other trying to grab signs that's that's a violation that can entice or incite violence if you're sitting there using vulgar language specifically addressed at someone that could incite violence and then we have a disorderly conduct violation that we could remove that person if a large group shows up we would monitor to see if we would try to separate them Now, our ordinance has in place that if two people apply at the same time, then it gives the chief of police the authority to regulate time and place equally to each group. I hope we don't ever get into that because that would be hard. That would be basically a nightmare. But if other people come up and we see that it's going to get to a point that we could have issues, I'm going to ask the other people, can we separate? Y'all go to the other side of the street. But as far as doing something right then and there, it's going to have to be some sort of, I mean, pretty good violation to go on where somebody's getting ready to fight or you can tell that people, I mean, you can tell, you can read people and know when something's getting ready to happen. But we also have to be very, very cautious when we're dealing with the First Amendment. I don't want to be on the news.

Thank you. Very good. And I'll just add to that. The town has experienced and has seen situations where groups come and they try to provoke action that's unlawful. And that's their mission. That's their raison d'etre. And we have to be prepared through this kind of an ordinance to address those kinds of things. That's why I think these regulations are important. But I think it's all about regulation on the front end and good sense and good judgment in regulation and enforcing the ordinance on the other. Thank you.

I think this gives us a pretty good framework for that.

let me ask the board because it's not a public hearing, you know, ask John. I see that Randy would like to add something. Is the board amenable to that? Okay. Randy.

Thank you for that. I recognize the privilege. Okay. As you know, I'm usually up here preparing remarks. I'm not very good on my feet, but I have to be right now, so excuse me if I say some wrong things. But this whole process has been a complete process, and we've looked, and it's like the spontaneous demonstration section was a safety valve. For small demonstrations, we're not having any notice for 30 or others. From 30 to 100, we're having notification, which is wonderful. In one of our earlier conversations, I said, this is the model that I want. I want us to be able to call up and say, we're going to do this. And then for, in our experience, now this is also specific to a town the size of Nags Head. These regulations wouldn't work in Charleston because 30 or 75 would be nothing. But for our town, it works. And once we get to 100, then the process that's been going on has been fine. There are generally larger demonstrations that are organized in advance, a lot of times in connection with national demonstrations, and there's plenty of time for the organizer. In fact, I think we're going 15 days and you make a decision in 72 hours. Well, most of the time I think they're talking to you six weeks in advance. And so the only thing that left was when we had a situation like when ICE killed two people within two weeks. And people said, we have to do something and we can't wait for two weeks. That was where the spontaneous demonstration, it's a safety valve that fits in with all of this. I feel I'm afraid that the combination of the restrictions on both the good faith estimates combined with the extra language on the spontaneous demonstration might unintentionally prevent these spontaneous demonstrations that we're trying to protect. Back to Susie's, and I think there's one other issue, it's like, what is spontaneous? I don't think spontaneous is the same day. I think spontaneous, I mean, if you think about the way things work, I mean, we're talking three or four days at least from the time something happens to things really get roller. And I don't think you can just say it's got to be that day or the next day because if it happens that afternoon, you've got to have time to get people together who want to do something about it. And that brings me to the point about notification. I'm afraid that this is overly broad. It's like in the definition, I think the problem is Spontaneous demonstration means a demonstration that arises in immediate response to a recent or unforeseen event that was not planned or organized in advance of the event. And Susie said that's where we should put the period. And I think for a definition that's perfect because the rest of it is what makes it not work, that was not promoted or publicly advertised prior to the occurrence of, it doesn't say the event, it says the demonstration. So that means between the time we have an event happen and a demonstration, we can't promote that we're gonna be out there demonstrating? I don't think that works. We're not gonna just spontaneously have 100 people show up here. People receive notice from talking to people, Facebook or whatever it is. I think that that makes the definition clearer if you do what she recommended and put the period there. And then deal with the results of it and the rest of it. As far as the good faith estimates, it was mentioned that people like me, you don't have problems with. People like me follow rules. I'm a rule breaker, if you want to know the truth about it, for other people I'm associated with. And these people look at these rules, and it just really puts a restriction on them. When you say, oh, I might get in trouble because I went over this estimate. And that's my feeling why they have to be guaranteed that if it's a good faith estimate, they won't have anything to worry about. As far as trying to decide what spontaneous is, I mean, it's difficult. But my main, the period of time between an event and a demonstration, I just don't see how you can restrict promotion of the demonstration. Because if it's truly a spontaneous event, we don't have 15 days to wait and try to get a permit.

So Randy, you're saying that you need time to gather people together for a spontaneous event.

Yes. It's going to take, I mean, if something happens today, it's probably not going to happen for a couple of days. Tomorrow is the earliest. And somehow, you know, there are groups out there that we let people know what we're doing. And people that feel the same way, but they don't know where to go. And that's part of our freedom, is the freedom to assemble. And the communication to get that freedom to assemble is also guaranteed.

So, but you would also have time to notify, if you have time to notify people to come together, then you would have time to notify the police, just the notification of what you're doing.

Well, isn't that still in the spontaneous demonstration that we would notify? it shall make good faith effort to notify the police chief or the designee as soon as possible. So yeah, so that short cuts the 48 hour for small groups, more than 15 day application for a large group. But it gives a notification.

Is it just the numbers that you're, because it's under 100, it would, just a notification is fine for under 100. Are you saying that you want spontaneous to be more than 100, an exception for more than 100?

Well, in the 30 to 100, as it's proposed, we would have to give 48-hour notice. Well, with the spontaneous exception, we just would notify you as soon as possible. We may want to be out there the next day. And if it happened today, we want to be out there, and it may be a big enough deal that it's gonna be more than 30 people. And it may be a big enough event that we're gonna have more than 100. spontaneously yes and spontaneously meaning three to four days possibly but my biggest I just don't like the idea that between the time of the event and a demonstration there's language in there says it can't be promoted that makes it not spontaneous It's like if somebody has planned an event and an event happens, another event happens, yes, that's a pre-planned event. It doesn't have anything to do with that. But in a situation when it's a truly spontaneous event, we need a safety valve and we don't need to be restricting whether people can promote it with other people. And that's my difficulty with the language that was added.

Because, like you say, you have to tell them a place to go and a time to be there. Yes. So you have to give them some sort of notification.

That language is so broad that it sounds like if I get on Facebook and say, are you mad about this happening? Show up at Dowdy Park. Then that's not a spontaneous event.

What if we said less than seven days? spontaneous.

But then you have time to get a 48 hour permit. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, but it's almost like what I'm hearing is that there are no spontaneous events. that all of the events, that the events are being planned.

To some degree, yeah.

To some degree, they're being planned, which means there's the opportunity for notification.

Right. So Mr. Cartwright, do you, if you say something happens and you want to have a spontaneous event, but it's going to take you three days to plan and you know it could go over 100, do you have a problem, is it, do you not want to have to do a permit then and you'd prefer to be able to do it under the notice?

I'm trying to figure out what the, it seems like. I think the two areas that the spontaneous exception cover are when you want to be out there with a crowd greater than 30 people, less than 100, but you don't have 48 hours. That's the first one. And the second one is when you've got a really big crowd, over 100, that would normally take you a 15-day in advance permit. You can't do that.

So the concern's twofold, is you might want to have a semi-spontaneous demonstration that could be over 100, and it's just not possible with the 15-day permit. Is that? Say it again. The concern is if you do want to have over 100, the 15 day is also restricting?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Okay. That's separate.

But our concern has to be the response, you know, what kind of. For safety. Right. Safety response we're able to, you know.

Right.

Obviously, I think we all hope it, in a way, we hope it doesn't happen, but we, in a town this size, as you were saying, we have to. We have to be poised to respond to something that large, and doing so with no information would be really difficult. Right, Chief?

Yeah, I mean, I just think. I look at spontaneous. Spontaneous is an impulse. If the power went out today, the Dominion Power cut the power out to the whole Outer Banks, and everybody gets mad and wants to go out there and yell on the side of the street, and they start Facebooking everybody, that's spontaneous. If Nags Head had a soccer team and we won the World Cup, everybody goes out there to celebrate, that's spontaneous. But when I get out there, I can be like, man, we're out here celebrating. Or we're out here protesting the Dominion cutting the power off. Come join us. That's still spontaneous because I'm right then and there. When I advertise to meet me in three or four days, that's not spontaneous.

That's not a spontaneous event.

Right.

I'm afraid that it would negate our ordinance if we said you had three or four days. I mean, people could say that event was spontaneous when it was planned. But I want to allow for spontaneous events because I do perceive that there are things.

I mean, ever since we started working this, we've never restricted spontaneous events. Demonstrations, protests, whatever you want to call them. Now, we've never had them like we have them today. But to me, spontaneous being an impulse is if I decide to go out there right now and start doing it, and I start texting my friends I'm out here, that's spontaneous. If I tell you, you know, someday let's go out there at Dowdy Park and stand on the side of the road with signs, that's not spontaneous. If I've got time to get some people together, I've got time to send an email or make a phone call to somebody know what's going on. Public safety is my number one. I mean, if something is going on, I've always looked at any event in town that we don't pull from our duty So if something is going on and there are 200 people out there that did not want to let us know and say they have counter-protesters, they have something else, an issue to come up, and I've got my duty crew working wrecks, working larcenies, working domestics, guess what they're doing? They're gonna have to sit there and deal with themselves until we clear up. Well, these events, I personally am out there. I bring two or three extra officers out and When I have to tell them the day before, I might not have nobody out there. But when we know in advance, the group that we meet with, they put 700 people on their demonstration permit. They had 70. But because they were expecting it, I knew in advance and we sat down and met with them over this. I had three officers come out there along with myself. So we're, we're not sitting in the middle of them. We're sitting in parking lots watching to make sure nobody's riding by throwing bottles at them to make sure that nobody's doing anything. And if we see violations, we deal with it. I can't have my duty crew taken away from the rest of the town to go sit and monitor an event. If we know of a smaller one, and they call up and say, Hey, we might have 30 people out there or might have 15 people now will I tell my duty crew to monitor it if something happens? you know, call me and let me know. That's something that they can ride by on normal patrols. But when you start getting into large numbers, that's what I worry with that it doesn't take but an instant for somebody to change their air conditioner radio to look down and then they I mean, people can't drive down here anyway, then they run off the road. So we have to look at it as a whole. And if we have a large crowd on the side of the bypass, that's going to cause a distraction no matter what view you have, because you're going to want human natures to look to see what's going on. Even with things at the event site, where we're down there directing traffic, people look to see what's going on. So I try to be prepared for everything.

Thank you. Any immediate questions for the Chief or anybody else here? I want to make a suggestion, if I may, and that would be that we take a five-minute recess, that we then come back and talk about the other part of the ordinance that we need to deal with, let our subconscious minds chew on this a little bit, and then circle back to this and maybe be prepared to make a motion at that point, or to to do whatever it is the board's pleasure. So I'm going to call for the board to be in a five to 10 minute recess. The board's returned from its break. Are we still of a mind to go to the other part of the language we need to deal with and then circle back? Okay. Then Andy, remind us of what we're looking at in this other little piece of the language. This is section 413.

I think we were gonna talk about, well, let me, um, let me go through this real quick. And so, as I mentioned in the beginning of the presentation, we did have a meeting with the, uh, tourism board representatives, uh, talk about the crowd gathering permit process. And, uh, we asked them to send us some suggestions for alleviating their concerns regarding, uh, the ordinance. And so they sent those to us and essentially what is reflected in what you received in your packet is what they provided. And in, in the first section, section four dash two, uh, as you can see, their biggest concern was, um, the fact that the ordinance says nobody can advertise an event until a permit is received or issued. And so, um, in a, practical sense that never happens. You know, most of their events are large and they're planned a year ahead of time. And most of the permits aren't issued until, you know, 30 days ahead of the event or something like that. So it's really never been enforced to be honest with you. Um, and I'm not sure the legality or the practicality of being able to enforce that. And so we don't necessarily have an issue with removing that language. In the second piece, section 4-7, they talk about, it talks about review of the application and they were sort of concerned about, it said that any deviation from the terms and conditions of the permit or misstatement of fact shall be grounds for immediate revocation at any time by the town manager. I think that that just gave them a little bit of heartburn that it forced us to revoke the permit and remove our discretion there to make a decision based on the circumstances. So we don't have a problem with this language where they just change shall to may and then remove the word at any time. It seems to make sense. Um, the biggest piece they, they provided to us was the idea that we would create a new step in the process, essentially a conditional approval for events at the event site. And right now we have a crowd gathering permit we issue and it's based on tiers and the, the really large events they have to apply for the permit 90 days in advance of the event. But the ordinance says they can apply for the permit up to a year in advance of an event. And so we would say, well, why do the conditional approval when you can apply for a permit up to a year in advance of an event? And I think the counterpoint they would make is, well, they don't necessarily have all the detailed information at that time, a year in advance. And some people organizing an event don't want to go through the trouble of organizing the entire event not knowing whether they could even receive a permit. So the conditional approval gives them some reassurance that they're sort of on the right track. And I think that's the notion for suggesting this step in the process. So they provided us language essentially as an A and B. And C, we added the section in D, which basically says that this conditional approval is not your permit. and it doesn't give you anything, really. I mean, it gives you something that, okay, well, you're on the right track, but you still have to apply for a permit, you still have to go through the whole process, there's no guarantees, it doesn't vest you with anything, and so essentially you're acknowledging that it's not your permit, and they would have to sign a disclaimer. I think there's still some concern that this sort of sets us up a little bit, that giving them a conditional approval gives them a false sense of security. Is that the right way to go with this? I think that's what's gonna be discussed today. And I think there's some other ways to deal with this, and we can talk about that. But I'll just pause there right now and let the board talk about it.

So if the concern is about the amount of work that they have to do before they know whether they can do the event, they still have to provide a lot of information under this conditional framework. I guess I would circle back and say, why not just do the permit application and everybody acknowledge what's not complete yet and that has to be provided by a certain date rather than create a separate process?

Well, you essentially just said what I was going to say. I mean, I think I was looking at the ordinance again this morning and there's some things in there, you know, that people may not have, but may not be necessary, you know, to submit completely, you know, a year ahead of time, like for instance, the detailed site plan. So if you're at the event site and you have to provide a detailed site plan, which typically is somebody hand sketches, a drawing that shows tents and vendor locations and you know, traffic flow and all that. Well, do we really need to have that much detailed information? In most cases, they're going to be able to provide a site plan that meets a requirement because there's not a whole lot of specific requirements on how they lay out their site. And the other big thing would be like parking and transportation, you know, If we know it's a certain size event, we kind of have a sense of how much parking is going to be needed offsite. And we can tell them, you know, you're going to need to provide X number of offsite spaces or a shuttle system or transportation. So, you know, could we give them some more time to submit that information? you know, after they submit their application, most likely. And so maybe a step we could take is to go back to tourism board staff and just say, maybe we can work with you on some of these things and modify some of these provisions. So it makes it less cumbersome to submit the application and give them more detail later. And and and I think that That's something we could easily do if the board agrees. And the other thing that's come up in some of these conversations is the board went through a process during the appeal to put conditions on the permit. And we felt like those conditions were warranted based on the circumstances. You know, the ordinance speaks to providing conditions on a permit, but it doesn't provide much detail about that. You know, so from a staff standpoint, I guess there's some question about how far we can go with putting conditions on a permit from an administrative standpoint. And maybe that would be an additional tool that would be useful to staff if we could provide conditions on a permit to to ensure a better outcome. And possibly might result in not having to deny a permit if you can give more conditions that give you more security. And so I think we could go back and look at adding some language in there about putting conditions on permits, how you can do that under what circumstances, and be somewhat specific. And that's where I think I need John's help here. You know, I think it can't be totally arbitrary. I mean, we can't just do anything we want. So the ordinance is gonna have to define that a little bit.

So concerns about safety and whatever we deem would need to be... Like if we were...

dealing with an event that we felt like it needed to have some additional police presence. And similar to the condition the board put on the Rod and Custom Festival, could we put something in the ordinance that gives us the ability to do that instead of, you know, having what happened, and so.

Us being staff, in other words.

Yes, like from an administrative standpoint, instead of having it go to another.

If I may, I think the manager hit sort of the key point there, which is that tool would allow administration to approve something with conditions as opposed to just denying it, and then it coming to the board who would then provide.

those conditions so i think that helps streamline the process and would probably help avoid a lot of frustration from applicants too i think so i would think yes yes agreed commissioner mullen as the real quickly as our representatives uh do you have comments on this i i think of course as long as i agree with john that it would help the applicants as well we'd want to make sure we have a timeline so that we're not hearing about how all this was so last minute. And it certainly is never arbitrary. I've never noticed to do anything arbitrarily. So I think if we can find a way to work it into our ordinance so that there's a mechanism, because right now there's no mechanism except denial and then the appeal process to add conditions. So I would think it would be helpful. Commissioner Lambert, do you have?

I do want to touch on this a little bit. And it's kind of been a recurring theme this morning, where we've talked a lot, safety comes up constantly. And one thing that's kind of been bugging me a little bit lately, and I want to make sure, with all the discussions we've had about public events recently, and then during the quasi-judicial hearing that we had for the custom car-rod show, there was lots of sentiment and comments about being concerned. being more concerned about the business that these events bring to our town. And I think that those are really important, but as a member of the Nags Head Board and our town, our role is to view these events, the events that are being hosted through the lens of the town's responsibility to protect the safety and the welfare of our residents and our visitors. I recently listened to a tourism board meeting from their main meeting, and there was a comment that said that we care about public safety and our citizens or whatever. And when I heard that, that really stuck with me because in many ways it's true and it should be. That's one of our primary responsibilities. And I don't think that we can have a sliding scale for public safety based on what economic impact these events have, because these events bring money to Nags Head, but they also bring money to Kitty Hawk, they bring money to Killable Hills, they bring money throughout Dare County, as we heard at the quasi-judicial hearing from representatives from all over the county. And as a business owner, I certainly appreciate that, and I absolutely recognize how important these events are to our local economy. but we also have to be good stewards to our taxpayers and their dollars and these events, if they incur extra costs with our police to keep them safe, we need to look at what we can do with those and I don't think it should be at the burden of our taxpayers and that's how we keep the balance of having these events safely and repeatedly and i think that we need to really look at that public safety planning process not as obstacles but actually as ways to ensure that these events can continue to go on because they are so important to dare county but for the town the safety has to be of the utmost importance absolutely absolutely thank you appreciate that um while i'm down commissioner harrison

I believe that we should table this. I agree with what Commissioner Lambert said and I think I'm hearing Andy pretty clearly that we have some a little bit more work to do that we could do to make this process easier for the applicant as well as the town.

so i just wanted to clarify like um 4-13 is the section we're talking about potentially yeah just yes just this section right here not taping removing to remove approving without that section okay there's a possibility i mean yes tabling the whole thing well no there's one possibility but also approving the ordinance without that section and letting staff work on the conditional part and cleaning up that process.

Yes, tabling this section or removing it for now and putting it back in. Yes. Okay, yes.

Could we also ask staff to look into what, and I'm sure they probably already would be planning this, but looking at what other municipalities do. I know that Kitty Hawk, Kill the Wolves, they don't have large event sites, but other municipalities that do have large event sites, and how they've been able to partner and work together so that they can have successful, safe events, and how they handle the fees and stuff like that for extra police and whatnot.

So I'd be curious what they do.

Like adding conditions, sorry, like for a police fee or whatnot, like how other towns handle that when they have an event. Who pays for the police? Is it the event organizer? Is it the town, the taxpayers? How does that work? And what other towns do with that?

Because it definitely is my understanding that they want to continue to host as many events as possible. Sure. And that's, as you said, a great thing.

Yeah.

But we need to be looking forward and considering the impact, the overall impact on our town and our citizens.

And that is their concern. Yeah. Anything else that is their, or their criteria, or their criteria versus health, safety, and welfare? Full stop. okay so let's go back then if we're talking about potentially um adopting the ordinance minus section 4-13 let's go back to the language discussion that we've had what is the board's pleasure in terms of either either moving forward the markup or making language changes at this point entire ordinance yeah okay

Well, from what I've heard today, I do believe that the spontaneous definition still allows for groups to communicate amongst themselves about any spontaneous event they're going to have. So we're not precluding them from texting each other or calling each other or talking to their neighbors. I feel like that is a spontaneous way to gather in the street. When it becomes not spontaneous is when it's promoted on Facebook or promoted advertised. I mean, maybe even Facebook, if it's a small group, is still contained and that's not advertised. But if it's very public advertising, I think we're still allowing for people to communicate and have a spontaneous demonstration. So I would like to leave the definition as we have it here now. Still recognizing that that allows people to gather spontaneously and communicate amongst themselves. I'm comfortable with that. And then as far as taking out the language about about not holding the person accountable who who gave the good faith estimate I think taking that language out is fine because we're not adding in the language that we are going to hold them accountable we're just taking it out and our police chief has already said he's very lenient about holding people accountable so I feel like taking that language out is not going to really be harmful to any organizer who in good faith provided an estimate of people and then more people showed up I don't think anybody is going to go to jail for that or anything or or not be able to gather again as long as the we can assume that the estimate was in good faith

Those are my comments.

I'd love to hear your feedback. I agree with Commissioner Harrison. I think this is a really hard one because you want to make sure everyone's happy, especially when we're talking about free speech. But I agree. that it's gonna be hard to get it perfect. But I do agree with your comments and I think that I would support this without 413. And that changes.

All right, thank you. Mr. Sanders.

I can support it as well. I don't know about the good faith part. I think the attorney made a good point about leaving that in. And I mean, you do have the 48 hours if it's promoted. That was a tough one for me. I'm not sure about that one, but.

Are you which one are you talking about?

The definition and the part that said it's not promoted or publicly advertised. I mean, I could leave out publicly advertised, but I think you have to do some sort of promotion. I think you have to at least tell people where you're what time and where you're meeting.

Seems like our two challenges are defining spontaneous because that leaves a lot of room and promotion because it's communication.

I kind of have a little bit of trouble with that definition as well. I mean, you do have the 48 hours. I mean, and you're not like from what I understand from the town manager and from the chief, it's not going to be like a strict enforcement. So there is a little bit of gray area there. So yeah, it's kind of where I'm at. Okay. I mean, I could go and I mean, it's publicly advertised as one thing, but I think it has to be promoted to some point, so.

Which we are allowing for an interpersonal promotion with this definition, I feel like.

Okay. All right. Commissioner Fulton?

I think that we, that this ordinance was, Minus 14, which we've already, I think, pretty much concur on, strikes a really good balance. It's not going to be perfect, but I do think it allows for spontaneous demonstrations. And I think we all understand that there's going to be some communication, but if somebody's got time to really start networking for several days at a time, then there's time to give notification as well to us. I really appreciate Randy's comments and all the people that have been involved and staff working so hard to try to come up with something. John said we don't even have to have this type of ordinance. I'm proud that we do. And I definitely think, as Andy said, that we are erring on the side of freedom of speech whenever possible. But again, we've got to consider being prepared for what might come along and looking after folks and our officers being ready and all the rest. So I'm in favor of the markups.

So as I understand it, then the likely motion is to adopt the ordinance as presented with the modifications minus 413. Then if somebody will make that motion.

I'll make that motion.

Okay, and do I have a second?

Second.

I have a motion to second. Is there any further discussion? There's been a lot of discussion. And there will probably be some more at some point. But I also commend the public, the folks who got involved. There's been a lot of discussion about collaboration this morning, both in this ordinance and in the design of the shoreline, and that's something that I'm very proud that Nags Head does. We're not, as you say, arbitrary. We do things in good order, and I really appreciate that. So having a motion and a second and no further discussion, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. All right, that brings us to new business, and that would be committee reports. And I'm gonna start down here with Commissioner Harrison. And I know you're going to have something for us a little bit later on the agenda.

Yes. So that's not in my committee report. Okay, committee report, we are with Current TV. We are not meeting until a week or so from now, but I know that Roberta has some things in the works, and one of them is a beach nourishment video kind of recapping our project. So that's our next video coming out.

Yeah, very good. Thank you. Commissioner Lambert.

Ms. Wyatt gave an excellent septic health update. We do have our next meeting, I think July 27th, she said, and I'm really excited to hear about our zero interest loans starting to roll out. Yes.

It's a lot of work. All right. Jeanette's Peer Advisory Committee, we did meet. Commissioner Harrison and Commissioner Lambert were both there in attendance. We got a nice tour of the facility, all of the improvements there. And it was actually it was pretty cool experience. It's pretty neat. And there was some there was some additional discussion about education and and some other opportunities and some networking opportunities. And and that's great. That's the that's the benefit of being engaged in that kind of thing. So it looks good. And if you haven't been there to see the new decking and everything, I encourage you to to go take a look. Mr. Sanders.

ambient lighting out there looks amazing too it's really cool yeah it's really nice The DARE Housing Foundation, they're still seeking opportunities for year-round workforce housing, and they're also doing some community outreach and fundraising events, such as Castles for a Cause, which you can find on their website, which is a summer castle building contest, and they have a new contest each week, and so that's raising a little bit of money as well.

Cool, pretty good.

Commissioner Ball?

uh well we covered probably the highlight for us regarding the um visitors bureau which was the discussion about the easement and all that and making good progress on that and um nothing else big to report from that thank you uh that brings us to the town attorney mr leidy anything that's not already in the um closed session

I think I've already provided my information. We got our money's worth today, did we not? So I have nothing else at this time. All right, great.

Thank you very much. And the town manager. So we will have a 2026 beach nourishment update. David? While he's setting up, I will note that several board members did visit the cutterhead dredge. last week and that was a really great experience to see how that how that works and it was really it was really nice because it think it gives you a sense of the scale of the operation not just the boat itself but all of the staff the logistics everything that goes into that is pretty remarkable and it was it was neat to see

I was surfing yesterday and surfing by the little dredge, but looking at the big one, it definitely put it in perspective because you can see it way out there. It doesn't look like much, but when you're on it, it does.

There's so much going on out there. Yeah.

Good morning, Mayor and Commissioners. You're going to have to bear with me here. My computer just decided that it was going to reset. Of course it did. I'm going to have to rely on Katie to go ahead and come with a backup here. Okay. As the mayor had mentioned, a project to this scale is really a collaborative effort between a consulting engineer, the contractor, and town staff, and especially over the past several weeks, we've had a lot of communication taking place as a result of some of the critical areas that they've been working on in this project, especially down in South Nags Head, finishing up that stretch, and then here in the main part of town, just because of the impact and the time of year that we have. It's been a real challenge, but it's been a pleasure working collectively as a group to be able to go ahead and resolve a lot of these issues. Currently, there's been a lot of progress that has been made over the past month when we gave our last update. In the northern section of town, where we start at Bonnet Street Bath House, we have completed all the way down to about Forbes Street. and the the hopper dredge is working that section of town and they've got about another thousand feet or so to go ahead and complete that section before they pull off and they start working south of there at hargrove street which is the next subline connection that they will be working off of Um, as the mayor had mentioned that the board members made a site visit last week to the dredge and that you got a firsthand look at all the moving parts that go into it. Um, unfortunately, um, some of those issues were realized this past weekend when, um, the RS weeks, the hydraulic dredge or their cutter head dredge lost power. And so they were working just south of the outer banks pier. and they had, it took them about 18 to 24 hours to be able to restore power. They still had sand in that sub line so they had to purge that and they've made a decision to go ahead and pull that dredge off and demobilize that part of the operation. So they've been able to go ahead and adapt and the hopper dredge, the RV weeks will then move southward and they will go ahead and continue for the remainder of the project. Uh, even with all that occurring, um, we're still looking at maintaining the schedule. The last schedule that was given was completion on or around July 19th. So that's actually moved up a little bit, um, from, from our last update and you know, that will vary. based upon mechanical issues or weather related issues or whether they have to go refuel. So it is a very fluid and dynamic process. But they've been making some very good progress with the hopper dredge. a daily basis it's anywhere between 700 to a thousand feet of beach that they are nourishing on a daily basis and if they maintain that schedule we anticipate that you know they'll be able to go ahead and finish up mid-july when they do move down to the next sub line which is at hargrove street they will first go in the southerly direction So they will go ahead and finish off and tie into where the cutter head dredge left off at the Islington Street beach access. And then they will go ahead and flip and work northward. That will, lessen the impact, especially around Jeanette's Pier during the Fourth of July holiday by going ahead and maintaining that sequence. So that was a discussion that we had with the contractor that they were able to go ahead and adapt and be able to go ahead and work with us, just noting some of the issues that we've seen in the past, especially working around a lot of the piers. With that, I'll answer any questions that you have. anyone so it doesn't sound like we're going to lose any time because we're losing a dredge like we're still maintaining a pretty good schedule no because the original goal was to work up to the outer banks pier with the cutterhead dredge and they felt just shy of that okay so uh so the the hopper dredge was gonna go ahead and finish off that work. Now they've just got a little extra length to have to go through the pier to be able to tie that in.

All right, thank you, David.

All right, thank you. I'm glad they didn't lose power while we were out there. Just saying, I'm glad they didn't lose power when we were there.

David, you're gonna stay there and give us an update on the multi-use path.

Okay, I can ask. If I can put this off until next month, because I've got some exhibits that I want to show, and with my computer in the current status, I won't be able to go ahead and show that. Absolutely.

No problem.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, David. Thank you, David.

All right. And Andy, you're going to give us an update on the funding offer from DEQ.

sure and amy's going to get up and go over this and kelly mentioned this during her presentation but we did receive the funding offer finally for the zero percent interest loan program for our septic health program and uh amy's been working on this and we need the board to approve something so let her just go over that briefly

I was worried my, oh, my computer did the same thing as his did. So I gave it, I sent it to Katie, so we're good. Sorry about that. Sometimes when I move my computer, it does this. There you go. Yes. So this was not published. And I apologize because I just got this on Monday, like at 3 o'clock. And this is just kind of the last piece that we need to formalize this septic health, the 0% septic health residential loan program, the $500,000 we received from DQ. They just need a resolution from the board to accept the loan. And again, this is the last piece of being able to start moving forward with offering the loan. So what they need is the resolution adopted by the board. And within that resolution, that authorizes both Andy and myself to execute any contractual documents for the town, so you're giving us that authority to do that in this resolution. But yeah, we didn't think we would wanna wait another month to get moving on this. Because it's been a while in the making. So apologies for it not being published, but we think it's a good thing and getting this moving a little bit faster.

All right. Thank you, Amy. And we do appreciate being able to move ahead with this. So, commissioners, any questions of Amy first before we proceed? All right. In that case, a motion to adopt the resolution would be in order.

I'll make that motion.

Okay. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, great. Thank you very much. Very excited about that. That brings us to the Board of Commissioners agenda and Commissioner Harrison.

Okay, so with Current TV, this is a video that was made. It's not one of our regularly scheduled videos. They are always looking for new ideas, and they are willing to, the Current TV staff is willing to make videos basically, you know, as part of our contribution about anything in the town that is interesting and they will air on current TV. And so Roberta knew that these researchers were coming to town to look at our shipwreck that's right out here in the yard. And so she alerted them and Chad came and Casey came and made this video about our shipwreck. So we can I just thought it'd be fun if we could watch these videos from time to time to know what that's happening with the government access channel. Sure.

So roll it, Katie.

No.

While she's trying to figure that out, I will say that we are always looking for ideas. So if you come across anything that you think that the community would like to know about within NAGCED, I know she's working on one now about beach accesses and kind of the life of a beach access. We were working on one about beach nourishment. I think the mayor was interviewed for that one. Is that right? So any ideas that people are willing to share, we'd love to hear them and could possibly get it made into a little video.

Actually, I was interviewed for the beach access. You were? Oh, okay.

You were for that one as well?

Yeah. Okay.

I'm excited to see that. I don't know when those are coming out. I know he was working on production of the beach nourishment one.

Okay.

Just this week.

Okay. Good deal.

Yeah.

Yeah. quite an adventure up and down the coast of North Carolina. Washing up the shore and coming into the beach and being embedded in the beach for a period of time before washing out again. The first archaeology site is what they were supposed to do. They went and recorded it. They took all the dimensions of the different aspects of the wreck and they're going into the historical record and they're searching for clues. There's one particular narrative in relation to a man in the case of the vessel called Francis B. Waters. ... ... ... ... . . . . . The purpose of it is I want to compare that model to the model I'm making now, and that's going to show how much the record is changing over the years. We have the IML, which is graphed as a drill that detects wood density. The density shows us how well the earth was degraded to wood. So if there's a high density, it means the wood is still fairly structurally sound and stable, but the density is kind of low, and the wood is degraded and not structurally sounding anymore. This records a whole series of benefits. I mean, of course, because they're normally the right side up. Because of solar radiation, it's not. Water loss is not being needed by things like marine water, things like ship water. But of course, the challenge here is that it is dry. It is in the sun. It is drying up. And it's a big problem of mine. I would like to see, by the way, I've been working on some things on this one. I've been working on this one.

I've been working on this one.

I've been working on this one. I've been working on this one. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Cool. Not a funding request. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's me. Yeah. Yep.

Very good. Thank you. Anything else?

Not for me.

OK. Commissioner Lambert.

Oh, I'm so sorry. I am. Happy 4th of July to everyone this weekend, especially our EMS and Public Works, police, fire. You guys are all working, so a lot of people can be off. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Absolutely. Commissioner Sanders.

Yeah, that's great. OK. Great.

That brings us to the mayor's agenda, and there was nothing listed in the published agenda, but I did want to say a couple of things. One, I want to add to Commissioner Lambert's wish for a safe and happy 4th on everyone's part. So I want to give a legislative update. We've reported several times on activities of the legislature and the town's efforts to have some policy impact on a couple of things, as well as some appropriations requests that the town had. You're probably aware, if you read the news, that the state finally has presented a budget, a final budget, And I understand that they hope to vote on that today. And so the town had several appropriations requests in. One of those is in the budget, which is $400,000 for our public safety command center. And so that's good news, assuming that budget gets passed and and There is the opportunity for additional Appropriations going forward as the understanding from our consultants in Raleigh that possibly even in August they may come and and adopt some riders to the budget and so there's still hope for our water line replacement and some other things but nonetheless 400 000 is a is a significant win for the for the town We also had a couple of policy wins. One that I'll cite, and that was House Bill 162, which was also voted on by the Senate and is going to the governor for signature. That was the one, that was the bill that would have stripped away our ability to set parking standards. in the town. This was a focus of one of our visits to the legislature. We talked to the bill sponsors. We talked to our Senator Bobby Hannig about this and ultimately with a lot of back and forth between our consultants and the board and the staff there was an amendment to that bill which exempted the CAMA counties. I guess on the basis that the CAMA counties are where the resort communities are, which are very much like ours and have the issues that we described to them. Nonetheless, regardless of how they decided on that, we are exempted from that and we will maintain our parking standards, which is good. There was another bill that we worked on that would have mandated a number of things like accessory dwelling units and others. That bill was modified and we worked on that with a population threshold that we would be exempted from. I'm not sure of the status of that bill. I'm not sure that that one has been voted on yet. But assuming that our amendment stays in place, then we would also. Yesterday, Whitney Christensen, her lobbyist, uh called me she was running between meetings and she said she'd be sending the email later which she did but she wanted to let us know that she'd seen the budget yesterday morning and that her 400 000 was in there and she's very excited about that and so so in a brief call but um she was very complimentary of the town of nags head and our board and our staff you know she said that all of their clients get the same issues flagged for them. But Nags Head rolls up its sleeves and goes to work and believes that the town can have an impact, and it does. And so to the extent that Nags Head has success, it is due in part to the work that they do, but also the work that we do. And this board has been very engaged in this, and so that's great. And it paid off. So I just wanted to pass that on. That brings us to closed sessions, and I think we need to amend this. We were gonna talk about a piece of property, John, as well, I believe, in this. So if you will give us the right reference for that.

That one is, it's subsection A5.

okay so i make a motion that the board enter into closed session to discuss closed session minutes and their deposition pursuant to general statute 143-318.11a1 and to discuss a piece of property which i don't have the address for um but it's adjacent to our parking lot across from the Epstein Beach Access and in accordance with General Statute 143-318.11a5. So I make that motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, board will be in closed session. Okay, the board has returned to open session. Mr. Leidy, will you please report on the closed session?

Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor, the board did approve closed session minutes and took action to open certain ones and to keep others sealed in accordance with the disposition schedule, but no other actions were taken.

Okay, very good. Is there any other business to come for the board? In that case, and we do not need a mid-month meeting, so a motion to adjourn would be in order. So moved. Is there a second?

Second.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you.