Town Council - Regular Meeting

It's a work session of April 28th for the town of Garner. And if you thought it was a beautiful day today, you should have seen it Saturday night when it rained. That made everybody's day. Plants turn green, the flowers popped. Spring is here. We'll start tonight with a a roll call from our dep from our deputy town clerk. Mayor Gupton here. Mayor Pro Tim Dinger here. Council member Vance here. Council member Stallings here. Council member Matthews here. Council member um Singleton. Shock. You forgot my name. Here.

He really is here. Okay. Thank you. Uh that brings us to item B which is adoption of the agenda. And upon scrutiny, there may be an adjustment. Yeah. Uh, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion that we approve the agenda with the following amendment, moving item four under discussion items, development previews to item one under discussion items.

Okay. And there's a motion and a second to uh move item D4 to D1 so that our uh development partners can get their part done uh before some of the staff related items uh may be time effective there. So there is a a motion and a second to move item D1 D4 to D1. Uh is there any discussion? Uh hearing none, I'll ask for a voice vote. All in favor of that amendment, please signify by saying I. I.

Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. That would be more timeeffective. Okay. But before that, we have a couple of fantastic presentations here. Uh item C. And the first one is close to my heart. Building safety month proclamation. And we take building safety for granted, but it starts from the day the plans come in to the inspections, the engineers. Uh, and it's our pleasure to have building safety month and honor it with a proclamation. And I believe that Mr. Jacob Parente from our planning from our inspection department is going to come up and perhaps say a few words and then I'll present the proclamation. Have you got anything you'd like to start out with, sir? Uh yes, sir. Just a couple of quick things. Uh good evening, Mayor Guffton, council members, and town administration. Thank you for allowing me to address those in attendance regarding the upcoming pro proclamation of May as building safety month in Garner. To those I've not yet formally been acquainted with, my name is Jacob Parenti and I oversee field inspections on the east side of Garner as one of two lead building inspectors. Building Safety Month is a time at which we recognize the work that goes into a safe built environment and acknowledge the continued effort that it takes to keep these homes and places of work safe for all who occupy them. When a contractor, developer, or homeowner builds or alters a structure in Garner, they interact with the entire development services department. I would like to take a moment to share an overview of what that typically looks like uh in Garner before we move to the proclamation. Prior to construction, an applicant works with the planning department to determine if their proposed land use lines up with the town's development ordinance in regard to current zoning. Upon determination that a location is

suitable for the land use, development services convenes as a technical review committee to provide commentary that is reflected in the final site plan. Upon site plan approval, the applicant works closely with permitting staff and plan reviewers to acquire their building permits, storm water permits, and other approvals needed to move to the construction phase. At this point, construction begins and field inspectors from planning, engineering, fire, and building inspections work within their disciplines to see that construction is conducted in accordance with their design and state and local codes. As the permits are closed out and the intended use commences, the code compliance and fire inspections divisions um of development services ensure that these properties are maintained in a manner that preserves the standards set by town ordinance and the state fire code. As one of many contributors to Garner's development services team, I want to close with a word of thanks to our elected officials and town administration for their support. It takes a tremendous amount of work to fulfill our mission and we could not do it without talented staff at all levels and training to keep us current. Lastly, I'll just run through a couple of quick numbers from the 2025 development services group. We had 4,761 total permits submitted. Um, we had 3409 permits issued, 1,232 total new residential permits amongst that last number and we completed four 46,573 total inspections. So, we we stayed busy last year. Uh, that's all I got. Thank you.

If you'll stand by while I read this proclamation, it's my pleasure. I'll come present it to you and then we'll have the allimp important photo op before you take this to share with your team.

Uh it's my pleasure to uh read this proclamation about building safety month. Whereas Garner, North Carolina recognizes that our growth and strength rely on the safety and essential roles that our homes, buildings, and infrastructure play in everyday life and during disasters. And whereas our confidence in the resilience of the buildings that make up our community comes from the dedication of vigilant guardians. These include building safety and fire prevention officials, architects, engineers, builders, trades people, design professionals, laborers, plumbers, and others in the construction industry. They work year round to ensure that buildings are constructed safely. And whereas these guardians are devoted members of the International Code Council, a nonprofit organization that unites local, state, territorial, tribal, and federal officials who are experts in the built environment. Their mission is to create and implement highquality codes and standards that protect us in the buildings where we live, learn, work, and play. And whereas modern building codes and standards include protections against hazards like hurricanes, snowstorms, tornadoes, wildland fires, floods, and earthquakes. And where is building safety month sponsored by the IC aims to remind the public about the critical role of our often overlooked protectors of public safety, our code officials. These dedicated professionals ensure that our buildings are safe, sustainable, and affordable, which is essential for our community's prosperity. And whereas building safety month 2026 has the theme built to last, encouraging everyone to engage and raise awareness about building safety on personal, local, and global levels. And whereas every year in honor of

building safety month, people around the world are encouraged to reflect on their commitment to enhancing building safety, resilience, and economic investment in their homes and communities. This month also recognizes the vital services provided by local, state, tribal, territorial, and federal building safety and fire prevention departments in safeguarding lives and property. Whereas I, Mayor Buddy Gupton, mayor of the town of Garner, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim the month of January 2026 as building safety month. Accordingly, I encourage our residents to join us as we participate in building safety month activities. And it's my pleasure to present this to you to share with your team.

Yeah. Everybody any everybody from development services. Now we depend on Mr. Mr. Rick Mer. Would you like to have all these folks in the photo? All right, make them get up there, Rick. Come on, get up.

Be safe on the way. All right. All right. Ready? Take one. And that brings to our second presentation which has to do with economic development at small business week. And I believe that Mr. Groover is going to give us a little background on this if you would before the actual presentation.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Give April the second to join us. I know that the uh proclamation is long, so I promise that I don't have any prepared remarks. Uh we just wanted to thank everyone on council for their support of economic development and small business. It's very important uh here in the town of Garner and working every day doing what we can uh to improve Garner's profile in the economic development and small business community. Um and we have a lot of uh events scheduled next week that we hope you come out to help us celebrate small business week and economic development week. Um so with that I just say thank you for your support. We continue to uh look forward to our work together.

Thank you. And with that, we will read the proclamation. And it says, "Whereas America's progress has been driven by pioneers who think big, take risk, and work hard. And whereas economic development promotes economic well-being and the increase in quality of life by helping to create, retain, and expand jobs that sustain individuals and families, enhance wealth, and provide a stable tax base. And whereas from the storefront shops that anchor Main Street to the high-tech startups that keep America on the cutting edge, small businesses are the backbone of our economy and the cornerstones of our nation's promise. And whereas when we support small business and economic development, jobs are created and local communities preserve their unique culture. And whereas because this country's 36 million small businesses create nearly two out of three jobs in our economy, we cannot resolve ourselves to create jobs and spur economic growth in America without discussing ways to support our entrepreneurs. And whereas the town of Garner supports and joins in its national effort to raise the awareness of the importance of economic development and help America's small businesses do what they do best, grow their business, create jobs, and ensure that our communities remain as vibrant tomorrow as they are today. Now therefore, I, Buddy Gupton, mayor of the town of Garner, do hereby proclaim the week of May 3rd, 2026 as Garner Small Business and Economic Development Week. Thank you. If you'll join up up front for the presentation, Mr. Mercer join us. I have to say, I'm

proud to say built by Not built by not built by notederal government started. And now back to the agenda. Uh, as you noticed, we changed the agenda just a little bit. Uh, item four is development previews, and we'll get to the details of those, but I'd like to take this opportunity, too, to lay a little groundwork uh about the importance of of development and what it does for us, and and also the importance of of these reviews, these previews that we do to make sure we're doing the best that we can. Uh, and I'm go I'm going to go off script here a little bit. Some sometimes Mr. pool gets on my case for getting off script and kind of going haywire here. Uh most of you may or may not know that our local governments are under attack. Town, city, and county governments are now under a financial attack that has been described by some authorities as potentially catastrophic. The town of

Garner has been fortunate, more fortunate than some others, that we've experienced only one of these incidents so far. It cost us at least $177,000 just for the first year and will cost that much or more per year for 10 years or more to come. Operators of residential rental units, for example, apartments have discovered what is called the Blue Ridge loophole. You may have read about this in the paper. They have learned how to keep charging their usual rental rates, but to declare themselves as exempt from local property taxes. But the towns and counties must continue to provide all services such as fire, rescue, police, schools to these developments. Anyway, we've only had one of these and we still sting. We're kind of sensitive to this in this situation. Who wins? Only the operators and developers. Who loses? The remaining taxpayers who pick up the slack. That's the rest of us. What can we do? Fortunately, the North Carolina General Assembly is working hard trying to close the Blue Ridge loophole, and that's good. I hope they're successful. Uh, but by the same token, the North Carolina General Assembly is also laying the groundwork to limit the town's ability to control our own property tax rates. It will be on they're they're planning for it to be on the uh ballot next November as a constitutional amendment. So long story short, what we most what we have to do is start planning to be independent. We have to be very careful and improve our property tax base. Over half of our revenue comes from property tax. And by building more doesn't necessarily mean improve. And that's where these two development previews come in tonight. there. Both of these cases that we're talking about are

excellent examples of how we work together to focus on adding fountains instead of drains. I learned about fountains and drains about 30 years ago from a lady I work with and she pointed out that almost every individual that we encounter is either a fountain or a drain. If they're a fountain, they add energy, they add strength, they add excitement. If they're drains, they take those away from us. her her motto was we need more fountains and less drains. Hang around your fountains, get rid of your drains. I'll leave it up to you. And this carries over to residential development and development in general. People think that every time a new house is built in Garner, the town makes money because it's added to the property tax base. But every home is not a fountain. Our median home value in our little town that's been around here a long time. The average home value according to the tax assessor, $355,000. That sounds, you know, significant. The property tax revenue is easy to do the math. 51 cents per 100. A little over $1,800 a year tax revenue. That That's good. But what we forget, it cost a lot to provide service to every home. Whether it's a a $200,000 home or a million-doll home, the average is about $2,900 a year it cost us to service that home. So, our property tax revenue, if it's built on $1,800 property tax donors, some of those may be closer to drains than they are fountains. To be a fountain home must be valued somewhere around 600 700,000. We don't expect all homes to be that. We're not going to get rid of the homes of lesser value. We're not going to stop adding affordable housing. We're not going to stop adding habitat. We're not going to start adding uh ones that are legitimately exempt from property tax.

But we must find a way to add more buildings, more properties that are fountains. Almost all commercial buildings are fountains. they pay more in property tax than it costs to sustain them. We It's going to be up to us to try to do better to make sure we're laying our own future down in terms of new developments, new buildings that are fountains for our taxpayers instead of drains. And both of these developments we're talking about tonight, they had both come to us with some ideas of some residential and this and that. But as the more we talked, the more we saw that there were opportunities for some commercial mixed in there with them and higher value homes that will continue to be fountains for the taxpayers for years to come. So that's what we're going to hear about tonight. And I'm I'm glad to be introducing our first development preview tonight. Mr. Trezenberg and Aaron Joseph, assistant planning director, are going to help us uh talk about and analyze, get a little more information on the village at Big Branch. And if you guys would step to the podium there, there you go. And the these are folks that listened to us said, "What could we do to make sure that we're adding real value to the property tax, not just more taxes to be served?" Erin, please tell us what you can. Okay, just very briefly, um this uh resoning case is a tier 2 conditional resoning. Um the um request has been previewed to you uh during your March work session on March 31st as a residential mixed uh residential type uh development. It consisted of 226 units um at application submitt. Um the site

is located at 5,000 Auburn Church Road. Um just at Auburn Church Road and East Garner Road, about 57 acres totaling in this project. It's before you this evening because, as I stated, it was previewed to you at your March 31st uh work session as a residential development. The development team took the feedback that they heard that evening and have since revised their uh proposal to reduce the density and the type of residential uses to include industrial uses. And so we thought it that it was prudent with that change to allow the development team to come back before you to preview this uh this con new concept to get early feedback from council if this is the route that you believe may be appropriate for this development. So they they are here tonight. Um the representative representatives from the development team Bagwell Farms as well as Parker Poe the attorney representing the development team would uh speak. And so I'll invite Collier Marsh to the microphone to give you more details. Thank you.

Good evening uh Mr. Mayor and members of council. I am Callier Marsh with Parker Poe at 301 Fagateville Street here on behalf of the applicant and so I have representatives of Saxom Real Estate uh the developer here and then Bolton and Mink the engineering team to answer any questions you may have. Um I appreciate the mayor's introduction. Um it is a good intro into this project. Um while we also appreciate that we've been bumped up to the front of the agenda to get in front of you sooner. I'll note that a large reason why we're coming back to council with such a different version of the project is because our our team at Saxom listened to the council's discussions on other items and the priorities of the town and bells started to ring and light bulbs started to light for them as to other ideas they could have for this project. So you saw us roughly a month ago with the village at big branch. So it's an R8 conditional zoning proposal. Um, and you know, typically when we've brought cases to Garner, we're we're reluctant to shy away from what the future land use map designates and what exactly what the comprehensive plan says. But looking at all the different factors and the things that we heard the town discuss, uh, it encouraged us to take a leap to try something different here. And so that's what we want to present to you as a different way to look at this site um to see if we can get council support to move in that direction. And so hopefully this is an example of why these work session presentations can be so beneficial because it allows us early in the process to really adapt that feedback in a more meaningful way. Um so I'll preview what those changes are. Um I I think you all are familiar with the site and the surrounding area with the corner of East Garner Road and Auburn Church Road. Uh it's three parcels about 55 total acres. um comprehensive planwise, one component that has helped to inform what may be the pivot here, uh we are next to that regional employment activity center. Um as council Dinger did point out when we were talking about trying to have dense residential here in the immediate vicinity of this this site, there's just the quarry there. Um

there aren't those big employment drivers, but if you do go south uh of Garner, East Garner Road, or if you move up north into Raleigh, there are these larger industrial uses. And so when we began to zoom out, it began to give us some different ideas as to what could go here. Um, but when we started, we did try and be as spot-on to the character typology map as possible. It's designated as a neighborhood near the employment center. There was guidance to say you should have denser residential and a mix of residential types. And so that's what we brought to you that last time was single family detached town homes and duplexes all integrated into one area. The idea is to support those employment drivers in the surrounding area. um development change in intensity map uh is an area to strengthen calls for development up to three stories. I don't think that factors too much in today. Um when we look at the zoning in the surrounding area, you can see it's largely residential and it's largely rural residential. We're kind of in a transition zone where development is moving, but it hasn't quite moved um east and north of here and at least in the intensity that we're used to seeing in other areas. But as we zoom out, we see a little bit different picture that again has helped to inform what we want to do here. Um, so the site is now in the bottom right hand corner. And as you look to the page left or to the west, you see a lot of purple. And so that purple is in the light colors. It's Garner's heavy industrial. And then as you go up north, you're in Raleigh, but it's all heavy industrial again. So we've got a little different uses than what we had originally envisioned. as you just zoom out a little bit. Um, notably a lot of that industrial development is just a short trip up Auburn Church Road. So, this ties in, the site ties in a short distance to some existing heavy industrial, some large distribution centers as well as some that are planned and in the works. Um, but you do see to the east to page right again that yellow that residential. Um, what this really tells me is that we're at some form of a transition between those heavy industrial uses and residential uses. a line was drawn, but with undeveloped land, that line may not be perfect. And

I think what we want to present to you tonight is that that line can be reimagined and still be just as consistent with the overall policies of the town. Um, so this is what we came uh to the council with uh back in March. This is that mixed residential neighborhood. Three product types here. Well, three types of products and a lot of variation between them between town homes, single family, detached, and duplexes. We got good feedback from council. Um, especially if this was to stay residential, we didn't really want to see as many town homes. So, we want to ensure that we're pushing the quality up as much as possible. So, we do have an alternate plan. I'm going to show you at the end, but we call that the alternate because it's not the preferred option. That alternate plan would adapt, would stay residential, which matches the comprehensive plans character typology designation and moves us down to a true R4 zoning. Um but what we would prefer to do is this option right here. Um so as I mentioned um the Saxom team was listening to what council said at the last meeting and they do industrial development already. They have a residential team. They've got an industrial team. I'm working with the industrial team and other projects in North Carolina to develop flex industrial. And they heard what you said and said why don't we loop in our industrial guys on this site and see what would work here. And so what we now see on this site, it's rotated uh 90 degrees counterclockwise is on the northern section of the site. We're proposing to incorporate flex industrial here. So what we'd envision here are those these buildings kind of broken up for multi-tenant uses, some of the smaller business uses, um support for the larger distribution, the larger industrial areas, um support for the medical device industry. So kind of broken up for more local or smaller businesses. Um, I've heard I've worked on a couple of these projects lately and what I'm hearing now is that the flex industrial, it's really the new office because with people working from home, you might have a small office component, but you can include your full, your warehouse, your R&D, and all those features into one building. And so, that's really what we're looking at here

is a flex industrial use with multi-tenants. That would be on the northern side. Uh, and then to still have some appropriate transitions, we'd like to keep some residential on the southern southern side of the property. The pink color for the residential isn't meant to mark a specific residential type. At this point, what we want to hear from council is what is the appropriate residential type out of what we've shown in the past. Um, what would you like to see out of those options? It's really just meant to show that developable area where we have residential. We do like the idea of keeping residential with this, especially because Saxum is developing uh the site to the east. That project's already in the works. We want to make sure it's all compatible and it all flows right. and and we think bringing the industrial all the way down to the corner really wouldn't function as we'd hope. One of the cool features about this site that we we think makes this such a good mixeduse project is just the natural abilities to buffer those flex industrial uses. We've got tree preservation in the northeast corner um and we've got buffering along Auburn Church Road and then it it may not show on such a zoomed out plan but there is a lot of separation between the residential and the industrial. we really can effectively buffer these uses but still have the confidence that we think these will be readily leased uh and really be successful industrial. Um so what we're showing here is four flexindustrial buildings. Um the two on the bottom of the page which would be the east side are are larger in scale uh and the two on the right hand side would be smaller. Um I I'll I'll just say that this was done relatively quickly to adapt to feedback. It's likely there's there's going to be have to be some finetuning and some adjustments, but this was based on, you know, as a diligent and a study of the site as we could do given the time periods because we really are eager to move this forward in one form or another. And if we get support to go in this direction, we want to step on the gas and get it going. Um, within the residential itself, we'll maintain adequate open space, amenity area, we'll meet all the tree

preservation requirements. And so, we think this will be a good outcome for the town. And really when we look at how can we drive revenue for the town, we think we can do it on both sides, but especially with that industrial, it really does help with town's ability to provide services for other developments with the revenue generated here. Um, these are uh examples of uh flex industrial that has been developed by Saxum in the past. Um, and then we showed you in the last meeting the representative images of the single family homes, the duplexes, and and I know the town's code's really referring to these as paired homes. I think it's a good way to look at these because the design that would be used for the duplex product type is meant to really look like one large single family home as opposed to the kind of the vertical town homes that are stacked one after another. So, a little different design than um the town has seen with a lot of town home type projects. So, some more representative imagery and then and then back to the town homes which were intended to be unique, but we we took the council's feedback and aren't trying to push for those. Um, as I said, if we've misread what what would be appropriate here, we do have a fallback plan, which would be to adapt to concerns about density to go down to a true R4 to really make things work. It would be um predominantly duplex, but a com combination of duplex and single family units on this site. It would meet the R4 requirements. all the bells and whistles, all the things that we were going to commit to in the prior iteration of the project would remain, but density has dropped a bunch and we're still trying to do everything we can to give the town confidence that we're pushing value up. And so we can do a full cost of services analysis with this residential to give you those asurances. Uh and so this would be the fallback position, but our ask to council is if you give us the support for the mixeduse option, we'd like to push go on that. Um, so finally, just a comparison between the two so you can think about them side by side. Uh, we're we're willing to adapt to council's feedback and do what's right here. Um, we think we have the ability to do more

than what this project was otherwise going to do just based on the good things that we've heard from council. And so our preference would be option one. Um, but we're here to answer any questions and as I said, we've got the full team here to do it. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Mr. Marsh. Uh and to just remind everybody here and the folks at home, uh council is not making a decision. This is not the first public hearing. This this is not the first step. Uh this is a preview. This is the very early intervention to try to get us on the track that we're all satisfied with. We're here to ask questions, learn, and we'll come back to a later meeting for more official action. So, we're here to ask questions. Let's start with Mr. Matthews.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh uh I like this option one uh cuz as you mentioned the commercial side from Raleigh is coming right down to it. So it' be a natural tie in and uh obviously there's a big demand for this product and I appreciate the fact that you all did listen to council and we found out when we can work collectively together council as well as uh the developers we come come up with a good product. And uh but I do like option one. I think the the commercial portion of it would be good and I think it'd be a natural what you uh the renderings you've had of the homes you'll put on that south side there. So, and then those would marry up what's going to be across the road. So, uh I really like option one. I think it would do us well and um um I would support that.

Thank you, Mr. Singleton. Questions, comments?

You've hit the jackpot because I don't like either one of them and I'll explain why. I'm not going to vote for any residential project in Garner unless it's single family homes until the Blue Ridge loophole is closed. It's too much risk. We're going to have other projects come forward and we're going to get screwed. Period. I'm against the warehouses until we do our uh data center moratorum. Not going to take a chance that we're going to approve a project. And as you know, we can't add conditions because it's an arbitrary condition. Anybody can come in and challenge it in court, get that condition removed. There wouldn't be a data center. So I am not going to vote for any this type of projects right now, this project, the next project, the next one after that until we have a mortorium in place and we can study these size buildings and the impact it will have on our community. We've got an issue now with water. These are they're big water users. Got an issue now was in the news last night. These things data centers generate heat and uh that could go here and I'm not going to take that chance. So, I'm not a a favor of either one of these projects because of the implications it could have on our community. Just that one about I'm not going to support it. Either one. It can stay there and just as it is right now.

Thank you, Mr. Stalin. Um, thank you for taking this here to approach. Um, I echo Councilman Singleton's um, comments about option one. So, I won't even rehash that until we get the the data center moratorium thing figured out. I won't be voting for anything industrial as well either. Um, still I I'm trying to wrap my head around option two. Um, I think currently in my opinion that would probably in my opin opinion be the best route to go. Um, we will probably have conversations as we move this process along of what that would look like. Um, but I I do echo Councilman Singleton's remarks around option one. Can I

Mr. Dinger? Let's Let's run through and then we'll come back for questions. So, you mentioned another project nearby. What What's the nature of that project? Flex Industrial working on it in Clayton. It's just about to kick off now. Not like not like adjacent, but nearby Clayton. Um, so I think kind of what's prompting this is sort of this micro macro fiscal transition we're trying to do in the town. I I do echo the data data center concern to council members. So,

uh, if there are deed restrictions or any other type of, you know, something that can be put in place to prevent that, I think that would alleviate a lot of concerns. So, I would I take that um piece of information. Um, a question on option one. What what sort of envision? What's the acreage of that part of the property? Approximately roughly 30 acres. 30 acre. And how many residential units were sort of ballparked in that? 30 acres.

Yeah. 150 to 180 units. and R4 zoning. The R the R4 was substantially less and to be honest, I wasn't going through all those details because I Yeah, because you're I know where you're at kind of at the conceptual level. I think I'm in favor of the option one with the data center concerns.

Um also think that council would have to be very cognizant of how we develop eastward down Garner Road to link up with the other residential there. So we don't we don't want spotty we don't want interstitial residential. This is not what this is. Um, and let's see other questions. Um, do you or do our does our staff have any sort of revenue estimates for this build out of this this product?

We can provide that. I don't know that that staff or our team has had those discussions, but we absolutely can get that to you. So, I think that's another thing that is a a pause button for me is if we're going to make this transition, we have to have a fiscal argument that backs up that decision. So, looking at option two and looking at option one and saying which one is going to net out better for the town. I think we've got enough flex space in the town that we should in short order be able to estimate what that should look like. But I think again this is a big transition we're trying to make and it's it's going to take time but we've got to back it up with actual numbers. So I'm leaning towards option one. I think it is it it shows the receptiveness on the part of the applicant. Um it could potentially fit. I can see the buffering that's in there. It makes sense. I think there just other work we have to do um in in developing that area so there's a cohesive set of neighborhoods balanced with commercial um so I think that's all I've got for now. Thank you.

Okay. How does the project line with the God of four plan? Yeah. So it's interesting the the character typology match we're map we're not going to be a direct fit anymore because it calls for neighborhoods there. But I think when you look at the employment center and you look at other policies I think there will be some support. So, it's not going to be a um option one is not going to be like a slam dunk. This is consistent. I think we're there's going to be a mix, but you're going to start off with the inconsistent with the character typology map and then it'll be our burden, which I'm confident we can do to establish that there are number number of benefits to the town that outweigh that inconsistency.

Got you. And looking at to what's happening to the north of this particular proposed project, what is happening there? What type of development there? Yeah. So it's heavy industrial um and there are some relatively large users going in and you know not to make that portion of like not to shrink the our site too small in the Mac. It keeps going up north with industrial. So there's a lot of large scale developments and I think that's why flex is so appealing here because we think you can get some of those smaller users to support the big ones that are upstream.

Gotcha. Um I'm leaning toward option one with the uh protections of no data centers to be engaged there. Uh but uh appreciate all the adjustments that were made to accommodate what was said earlier by the council and uh that's all I have at this moment. Did you have another comment?

Yeah. Well, I was just going to say that we we'd want to work with the town on the data center concern. Um like we've always been able to successfully prohibit uses. So if there's some unique nuance to u Mr. Singleton, your comment about not having a solid prohibition, we're absolutely open to working with the town to figure out the right solution there because the intent is not to be a data center. it's genuinely to be that flex industrial. Um, so we'll do what we can with the town to give you those asurances. And so as I just asked like to pose the hypothetical, if you had adequate asurances that this would not be a data center, then with that understanding, are we moving in the right direction with option one?

But the concern is is we cannot uh on a residential project uh say it could be tax exempt because it's not in our UDO. So you're adding arbitrary condition and if the project gets sold, the new owner can go to court just like they could with this because we don't even have a definition for data centers in our UDO yet. We've got to get that established. So it's kind of hard to make a condition for something that we don't even have in our UDO. That's the concern. I don't you can make prohibitive uh conditions all we want, but will if it gets project gets sold, will that hold up? And as in talking to attorney Jones about the Blue Ridge, this is very similar. Uh adding a condition that may not be able to be enforced and a new owner can go to court and get it dismissed. That's the concern.

That's I appreciate that clarification. Um I think it would be my burden to draft that to address those concerns. And if you have a voluntarily offered condition from an applicant that's enforceable, we'll work to do that for you. That's that's a reasonable uh suggestion on your So thank you, Mr. Matthew's other questions. Um just my comment um I support my fellow councilman on that data center also I meant to mention again but I'm still good with option one with the with provision on the data center that seems to be good a concern. Anybody else think of any other questions comments?

Yeah I would say it's pretty it's bold to come before us and not align with the comprehensive plan but it's a thoughtful approach the way you've done it and so appreciative of that. um really the responsiveness of the applicant is on the high end and we appreciate that and so you're sort of in the vanguard of uh helping us with this sort of data center issue and these types of issues. So we appreciate that as serving a model as well. Um I have a couple of questions on um we talked a little often about uh housing affordability and affordable housing and in the previous there were a lot of units and we had conversations but I think we want to have continue to have those conversations even with an industrial component as to how you can be good partners with the town and helping us build this long-term uh vision for housing affordability. Um so we'll look forward to those conversations. Um the other issue is the tax exemption issue which I don't think Is that something also similarly that could be worked on in our legal teams to to make sure that that is not going to be a a concern with the residential portion of this property?

Yeah, we we'll work with your your staff to see if there's a way to craft that. That's all, Mr. And I'll just echo that in reference to the tax exemp piece and all of the concerns that we naturally have which you're aware of that if we can some kind of way work with trying to prevent that from happening here. uh it'll give more comfort going possibly going forward with this uh option one which I I see as a natural transition from what's happening to the north with the heavy industrial coming down and taking consideration of the major adjustments that were made based upon the comments that were asked by the council to uh to show that type of flexibility to try to work with us to get what we want and hopefully you understand the concerns

and we'll take those in consideration. Yep. We absolutely do. We appreciate the feedback. has been helpful and it's given well well thank you I think that was 27 minutes well spent a lot of a lot of dialogue a lot of issues covered no decisions to be made here tonight but feedback communication that that's what helps us be successful thank you very much thank you very much for your time

Mr. I'll make a quick comment. Uh what we did tonight, I think the process we're doing this now has been a great idea. I'm glad staff come up with it where it's a preview that the entire board can see. You know, we've had the two one meetings and some people could and could not make it, but this way everybody gets to see the same thing and that feedback is important as we found out from the March meeting to where we're at now. And uh so uh I think it's it's a good deal where council can work well with those coming into our town to make it better for everybody.

Absolutely. Communication, teamwork. Thank you. Uh and that brings us to item 4.2. Uh another development pre preview, not review, preview. And to help us get started is our assistant planning director, uh Erin Joseph. What can you tell us about this one? I think this is the first time council has seen this as as a group.

Yes. Yes. This is the first uh preview for council. Um Erin, that was the correct presentation.

Oh, it was. Oh, okay. I get I get mixed up with it with the names. We called it different uh different names. But yes, so uh this proposal as the first uh preview before you um the applicant is requesting a tier one conditional uh reszoning. So they are um requesting um a a proposal that does not include a sightspecific master plan. It will consist of um a narrow list of permitted uses as well as a list of uh profit zoning conditions. Um this site consists of two parcels uh totaling approximately 77 acres. Uh the site is located at Theington Road near the intersection of Watkins Valley Road and Jones Sausage Road. Uh the applicant is proposing um primarily an industrial use, but I'll let them fill you in as the uh the request has also gone through um changes from the initial submitt. Um the applicant has met with adjacent property owners for a second time. uh they're not required to, but given the feedback from the adjacent um neighborhood, uh the applicant met with the um with the adjacent property owners to give them more information about the product. Um and so I will allow um represent Nate, you will take it. Okay. Um to introduce the product and answer any qu uh proposal and answer any questions for you all. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you for the opportunity to uh update you on the Garner Innovation Project that we

bring forward tonight uh that GEDC has been diligently working on. I want to be sure to recognize um GEDC board members who are in the room tonight. Obviously, Mr. Vance is on the GEDC board and has served for some time. And we also have uh our chairwoman Megan Pumarejo and a board member Robert Duro in attendance. This has been a significant undertaking since this project started in 2023. So you'll recognize the uh cover of the northeast uh gateway small area study uh that we presented in 2024 um which uh with that study we identified this corridor as a vital growth engine for Garner despite several infrastructure and site constraints. Uh I wanted to be sure to highlight all of the work uh that has gone into this project to get us up to this point. Um, so I wanted to showcase the timeline that you can see there on the screen. Just highlighting some of the tasks and community meetings that have taken place as part of this process. Throughout 2025, we further evaluated these findings working with partners like Tony Tate and Associates. We initially proposed a program focused on housing paired with flex use component. In October 2025, we held a first neighborhood meeting to share this vision. While residents were engaged, they expressed a clear and significant concern with the impact of residential traffic on their local road capacity. Shortly after that community meeting, a new opportunity emerged where we were approached by a locallyowned Garner business and another business here in the region evaluating Garner for a future location. Both of these businesses are in desperate need of industrial flex space to expand space that is currently unavailable in Garner and would force them to locate elsewhere. Keeping GEDC's primary mission in mind

to create highquality jobs, attract capital investment and retain our existing companies, we have shifted the project to the Garner Innovation Park. So the slide that you see here in front of you that was one of the scenarios that was presented in the findings from the uh study that we did. Um so just kind of highlighting this that this was one of the original uh options where you can see that there's uh flex use to the north and then housing on the GEDC parcel. This change moved us away from the residential use and focuses entirely on industrial flex space. One of the benefits of this transition is that it helps maintain a healthy balance between the residential and commercial tax base in Garner, ensuring that taxes remain low and the cost of services does not increase. This change is more than just mission aligned. It solves our primary infrastructure hurdle. This industrial program reduces the projected peak hour traffic by 25% compared to the residential model. And because of this reduction, NCOT NC DOT has signaled that they are comfortable um providing the required traffic signal that we would need to access this site. I'll now pass the presentation on over to Greg Sanroider from HM Partners uh who is the applicant and partner with GEDC in this process.

Hey, thank you very much. Good evening everyone. Thank you very much for the opportunity to present this exciting project to you. Uh we are calling this the Garner Innovation Park, a 77 acre uh business park comprised by 16 acres owned by the Garner Economic Development Corporation and the remaining acreage under contract by my firm HM Partners. The black and white zoning map you see in the screen is just the beginning of the story. The Garner Innovation Park will be one of Garner's premier business locations, offering highquality commercial buildings for companies and employers needing space for warehousing, logistics, highv value light manufacturing, biotechnology, and life sciences. What I'll say here this evening is we will agree to an ironclad prohibition on data centers. The Garner Innovation Park is modeled after Beacon Commerce Park, which we developed just down the street on Jones Sausage Road across from Amazon. You may go to the next slide if you would. Thank you. Top quality companies keep moving to the triangle and many want to be in Garner and when companies come to town, they need space quickly and cannot wait for entitlements and construction to be completed before they open for business. So at Beacon Commerce Park, we found our success formula had three parts. Number one, build flexible, highquality institutional-grade buildings. Number two, design these buildings to the latest standards and specifications. And number three, perhaps most importantly, do not wait for a pre-lease. Start construction and have a building ready to go when companies show up. So what I'd like to do for a moment is just highlight three companies who are now at Beacon Commerce Park because of this strategy. The first one shown on the next slide is a company called Alchemy. Alchemy is a US-based pharmaceuticals development and manufacturing company with locations in St. Louis, Charleston, Wilmington, RTP,

and Garner. The next company is Unif. Unifar is a global healthc care services provider that partners with pharma and biotech companies to develop new medicines. Jones Sausage Road is listed as their US headquarters. And next, Green Tech Renewables is a solar panel installation and distribution company with 40 locations nationwide. So, this is our vision for Garner Innovation Park to bring more great companies to Garner. So, how do we do this? We start at the beginning with this resoning. With this resoning, I think we have three essentials, three basics we must address. Number one is access and traffic. Number two, public improvements. And number three, sensitivity to adjacent properties. On this slide before you, uh, for orientation, I40 is along the right side. Joan Sausage Road cuts across the bottom. Uh, the Garner Innovation Park is in blue and you can see the GEDC site is the lower portion of blue and the Hunter Mark subdivision is along the left side. So, first when it gets to access, as Nate mentioned, we will be installing a signal at Jones Sausage Road and Martin Branch, shown in the red circle at the bottom. Kimley Horn is our traffic engineer. Kimley Horn is one of the region's premier traffic engineering firms and works with NC DOT on projects all across the state. Kimley Horn has concluded through three separate studies that a new signal on this existing road network will enable traffic to move efficiently in and out of the project as well as maintain good traffic flow along Jones Sausage Road. Number two, public improvements. As shown on the yellow dotted line, Martin Branch and Therington will be repaved with new asphalt curb and gutter and extended into the project. Water and sewer extensions will also be made. Now, two important notes regarded to these imp related to these improvements. First of

all, they will be made at our sole expense at no cost to GEDC. Traffic signal, road improvement, water and sewer extensions, design, permitting, construction, we will pay for it all. We believe this advances GEDC's mission by making their property marketable and actionable. Whereas today, unfortunately, the property is not marketable because it's not served by utilities and adequate access. Second, on this same map, please look at the small purple lot. The curve in the new Therington Road creates a new and valuable standalone lot. This lot is on our property and we will be donating this lot to GEDC free and clear to use as they wish to further their economic development mission. Next slide, please. So, on this next slide, which is a zoom in of the slide you've just seen, I'd like just to call attention to a few items. The property line is shown in red. Green is the undisturbed buffer and tree safe area. Uh the circles in blue are storm ponds placed along the buffers at the top and the left. The blue areas are for buildings and parking. Note on the left side of this image are very small, hard to see white boxes which we will refer to later. Let's go on to our third item which is sensitivity to adjacent properties. It is essential that this project take into account the viewpoints and the concerns of residents, people who live in Hunter Mark and elsewhere. Their viewpoints are valid and they are legitimate. And in order for this project to be a success, it needs to be sensitive and responsive to people living nearby. And to seek to minimize the disruption this project will cause. We have had conversations with residents, including folks at Hunters Mark, Emily Scott and I, who is the HOA president at Hunters Mark. We know each other very well. We have each other's cell phone numbers. Our plan reflects some of the changes we made in response to our conversation. So, let me go over a few of those if I

could, please. First of all, tree safe. 23% of the site site will be left as undisturbed natural tree safe area. That's about 19 acres. Number two, a multi-use path. We will install a multi-use path 10 ft wide along the entire left side of the project and extend the path to Hay River Street for direct resident access. The path, it's a little hard to see, but it's that small gray line running up and down along the green buffer on the left side. This path will be added to the town's path network. Three, amenity ponds. We will locate our storm ponds along the path and the buffer with enhanced landscaping and outdoor seating. This will create a series of enjoyable water amenities for strollers and bikers and push buildings further away to the right. And fourth, residential buffer. I'd like to spend some time on this. It is important indeed vital to provide adequate buffers between residential and commercial uses. There are 17 homes along the project's left side. As you can see here in a zoom of the z a zoom in on the zoning map we saw on our first slide. We will provide a 65 foot wide undisturbed buffer along the entire length of Hunter's Mark and the pond and the path will be outside that buffer. But let's take a look at this a little more closely if we could. On Hay River Street, the homes along the property line you can see have long lots running down to the creek. The creek is the shared property line. These homes have long lots because their lots include their own buffer along the creek. So these next slides are to show the total combined buffer lengths for each of the 17 homes along this property line. The buffer length for each home is shown in a white box. They are still hard to see even with this zoom in. So allow me just to call them out. Starting at the top of the plan uh as follows. We have 178 feet in length, 158t in length,

113 and 103. Next slide please. 106 123 129 110 125 189 and 189. Next slide please. 179, 103, 104, and 133. So that's the length of the uh combined buffers for all of those 17 homes. And number two, can you please go back a couple slides? I'd like to look now at the ponds. If we go back up. Terrific. Thank you. So the first pond has cross measurements. As you can see, we took kind of top, middle, and bottom middle of either pond. The first pond is 174t to 112 ft. The second pond has a cross measurement of 121 feet and 162 feet as you'll see in a moment when the second pond comes up on the screen as you can see there. And then the third pond on the next slide has a cross-section of 122 ft and 134 ft. So when we add the total buffer length plus the path and the ponds, we believe this total distance provides adequate and proper separation of commercial from residential. So then in summary in our last slide with the Garner Innovation Park, we believe it will be a premier business center for the region's best companies. It'll have improved access with a new signal. It'll have public improvements with new road, water, and sewer and Martin Branch and Therington. There'll be no cost to GEDC to make their property markable. There'll be a free developable lot for GEDC and it's sensitive and responsive to Hunter Mark neighborhood and all residents with 19 acres of tree safe area, a multi-use path, amenity ponds, and buffer separation. With me tonight is uh Jack Roy with Advanced Civil Design and uh uh Nathan Romberg with Kimley Horn. All

three of us would be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Thank Thank you, Mr. Saniter. That's great information. Uh this is the first time the council has seen this all at one time. This is a little bit different because Garner Economic Development Corporation is a close affiliate of the town of Garner but a separate entity. Uh council member Vance not only is a council member here, he's a board member on the GEDC and our attorney has told us that he's welcome to talk about this. We're making no decisions. There's no question of being recused. uh and because he has seen this more than we have uh I'll start with your end Mr. Vance for questions or comments about the project.

Yes, thank you Mr. Mayor and also to the uh to Greg and also to Nate. I just want to say first of all for uh for the public information that for total transparency that as has been mentioned I am on the uh ground economic development corporation board of directors which is involved with this project and uh just to be clear I receive no compensation at all for for my input or activities uh my engagement but I also to say I appreciate the opportunity uh to see this process happen early on as Nate has said earlier I also reemphasized that um we did do a northeast gateway study. This is before Greg was on board with us as part of the team and we looked at how we can develop our property and Greg Greg came into the to the process and we all worked together to make sure that we were uh to do what we could to make sure that the infrastructure and particularly the light was able to be there to work because one of the key components was to ensure that we got the light there and we went through a tremendous process of working with DOT to really uh work with work with us and within their confines to make sure that we're able to get that there to make sure that um that this project would would work. And there's been a lot of work going on with the with the citizens to ensure that we heard their concerns clearly and uh and currently making sure that we're trying to uh take care of traffic concerns that not necessarily a part of this particular endeavor. However, uh we know that there's concern of the residents. We'll make sure that we are doing all we can to take care of situations that are out there right now. Uh but I really don't have any questions. I just want to make that statement and make it clear. That's all.

Thank you very much, Mr. Dinger.

Tier one is a strike one on the project. Um, strike two for me is we went from a plan that in two different alternate scenarios in one had 300 units of affordable housing and the other had 250 and then we're going to give GEDC a lot to do what with? Well, when I this this looks very similar to the previous project, but it's very different. Um, one because of the town's involvement and one the efforts and conversations around affordable housing and leveraging property that the town and its partners have to make that a reality in the town. It's the best opportunity you have when you own the property to develop the property how you want to develop the property. And we wanted to develop the property so that it had affordable housing. And now there's none of it. There's no plan for saying in lie of 300 units or 200 or 250 units of affordable housing you will get this that compensates just so we can do 300 units somewhere else. Uh that is a loss loss and as for GEDC and and swapping land I'm not sure what the tax value of the property is. I was trying to pull it up. It seems to me GDC is in a position of strength to sell the piece of property to the developer. because you need the piece of property that GDC owns to do the project. That sounds like a negotiation for a fair market value sale, not a land swap for something that I don't know what you would do with tucked away in that corner. So, I have at this point no enthusiasm for this project and I don't even have any questions. I just have no enthusiasm.

Okay. Well, this is about communication and getting feelings and it is the first glance. Um, Mr. Stalance, I re reiterate my previous point. Until we get a hold of the data center moratorum situation, I cannot support any industrial. Okay, Mr. Singleton.

Well, I'm not going to support heavy industrial behind a residential neighborhood. Period. I don't care what's going there if we're putting the Taj Mahal there. Period. 65 ft sounds good, but what they've got now is trees that buffer 40 in sounds. Putting the storm water ponds back there does the exact opposite. Puts holes in the ground. So the buffer's gone. 65 feet is from here to about out there other side the bathroom. That is very far. That's not far at all. Uh the concern of the impact of they that the people of Hunters Mark have had to deal with across the street is tremendous. You got addressed at the meeting last week or two weeks ago about the the issues. They can't even get out of the neighborhood in the morning because UPS are backed up. I went one time, it was 41 trucks lined up because they can't get a dedicated left turn. And the issue is that's the shift change with Amazon. And I can't believe we're worried about a residential project causing a light problem when they got hundreds of cars turning right out of there. I'm really the DOT and the traffic and everything. And that's signal Mark Branch just blows my mind. But uh I I'm disappointed. I thought when this was coming up, the town had a project and this was the gateway that the gateway would be much more significant than than what's being talked about. But I'm not going to support any type of heavy industrial zoning backing up to that neighborhood. Uh it's a huge impact. Again, backing the ponds up does the exact opposite. It puts a hole in the ground and takes the trees away that that are sitting there. And so, um I I have no support for this project at all. It's disappointing that we get the land. I was on the council when we accepted that property many years ago, 20 years ago, whatever it was, and um we talked about a housing opponent and just uh it's very disappointing. So, I have no support for this project at all.

Thank you, Mr. Matthews.

Well, I've heard a little bit of everything, I guess, here, but uh uh I know that particular piece of property, we've had issues with trying to get traffic in and out. We've had a potential to do different things, and it's been a nightmare. Now, we've got a chance to go with this on the commercial side. I I like the fact that you guys are meeting with the neighborhoods and you've got that dialogue going and uh but uh I think far as the commercial piece, it'll be a a great opportunity for jobs and if it's anything similar to what you've got right across from Amazon, I've been in those buildings. It's it's a a good piece of work. I think it uh we're not going to satisfy everybody on the board. We all got our own individual things, but uh uh the like I said, this project has been worked on and and far as the commercial piece, I think it's it's an opportunity here and having that stop light there will help the traffic flow because whatever goes in there, there's going to be issues and having that light will make it even better, I'm thinking. So, uh uh it's just my two cents worth, Mr. Mayor. I I I support the project.

Okay. It Hang on just a second. It is a work in progress. Uh, and before we start back over with Mr. Vance for follow-up questions or comments, let's go back to Mr. Sanroyer. Any other observations or comments you've you've got here as part of this dialogue?

I first of all, I do appreciate the forthrightness in the cander. I think that is very helpful. So, thank you for that. There I think there are times when uh when we have that and uh and I think sometimes some people are unwilling to provide uh sufficient cander and when we have sufficient cander that enables us to adjust. So I am grateful to you. Uh number two is I can fully appreciate as a resident of Kerry uh I would not want to have a data center near my home and I can appreciate Garner considering uh not having data centers in its community. Many communities as you know not just in the state but throughout the country are thinking about that. We know about Apex having a moratorum for example. I am uh I am confident that we can have through through the proper uh legal recordations with a prohibition in the zoning and other things we can do. We can have an unappealable excuse me unappealable solid ironclad prohibition on what we all know to be data centers. And we can accomplish that for this site. And so uh I mentioned that number one. Uh number two um in terms of we have GEDC's property. The GEDC property is not needed uh from a uh it may be needed from the council's perspective in terms of being comprehensive but in terms of its own uh in terms of the access of the Jeder property which is the property I have under contract to the north. that Jeder property can be accessed off the existing The Fairington Road and so there isn't uh there isn't any sort of for example the the Jeder property if it can if it's approved it can happen as its own standalone development outside of GEDC's piece. So it isn't as if we need part of GEDC's piece in order to make that a viable property. What we thought about was that it made a lot of

sense for us to partner together given that we would shoulder the expenses to bring the infrastructure there that GEDC and it 13 acres could avail itself of also on the note of affordable housing versus uh the current notion of having more uh flex industrial on the GED site. I can ask Nate Groover if he wanted to comment on that all because we did not have an impact or an influence or a suggestion on any change of use or whatever the change of use should be, excuse me, ever the ultimate use should be on the GED site. That really is we're rather agnostic as to what that is and that's really GEDC's decision.

Yeah. Thank you, Greg. Uh yeah, three three u follow-up points based on the comment. So, um the first one, Mr. Downers, you mentioned, you know, the original uh proposal that we previewed uh did have the housing portion in it and shortly thereafter uh we were made aware of the local businesses here that needed uh an opportunity to expand. So, uh, we brought that before the GEDC board discussed it and it was a unanimous vote in support to pivot from the housing program to the, uh, industrial program based on the core mission of the GEDC, uh, being to, you know, attract, uh, high wage jobs and investment and, uh, improve the tax base. So, being core to the GEDC mission, uh, became front and center again. So obviously with that opportunity presenting itself to us in real time, uh we needed to react to that appropriately and timely. Um so that's where we kind of regrouped and uh looked at the options that were available and landed on this solution. So and then as Greg did mention obviously um with the infrastructure that would be installed at no cost to GEDC, obviously that makes our property more valuable. Uh and then again going back to the light uh that was crucial to get that. So um that was one of the benefits of reducing the program from residential to industrial that NC do uh gave us the thumbs up that they were more comfortable with that program.

Okay. Thank you. And let's go back to just then with Mr. Vance and we'll come through through the alphabetical order again. And on that note, reference to the the transportation piece, is it possible that the transportation expert can come in and talk about that that change and how that impacts the decision-m process relative to the operations of the property? Uh how the how that how that adjustment came in.

Yes. So would I may I would you like to hear from Nathan Romberg with Kimley Horn who's here in the audience to talk about? Well, if if if you're able to do it or I I heard the expert the transportation experts called, but if you're able to explain that piece, that's fine with you as well. Terrific. Thank you.

I'll start with I usually will not refer myself as an expert, but uh hello Nathan Romberg with Kimley Horn. Sure. As uh as Mr. Gver already noted. So when the switch was made and you know when we did the trip generation calculations for the site with the tire site being the flex kind of warehouse industrial uses that dropped the peak hour trips the AM by roughly 33% and the PM by the 25% uh number that he noted. So NC DOT, you know, when we presented that to them, they of course were um in favor of an option that had less traffic during the peak hours on Martin Branch Road, uh their priorities. They want Jones Sausage Road to be able to operate green as as much as possible with how close we are to the interchange with I40. So their main concern is making sure this signal doesn't back up traffic from Martin Branch Road into the interchange. Um, so the the the lower the traffic can be on Martin Branch Road, therefore the less green time it should need. We can keep green time longer on Joan Sausage, helping like minimize that queuing. So that was kind of a way that the use change impacted the conversation with NC DOT. Gotcha. And uh what I heard is that there was a because of the the adjustment the DOT was more amendable to placing a placing a light there to reduce the queueing on the divergent diamond and thereby making it more uh accessible or functionable.

That that's correct. Yes. So initially NCDOT's feedback was we needed to explore further movement restrictions at this intersection. So that would be not allowing a left turn onto Martin Branch or a left turn off of Martin Branch. And so we were kind of faced with that situation initially, but with the land use change, NC DOT has indicated that they're okay with the intersection now as it's proposed by still maintaining both those movements.

Few more questions. and and and because of the close proximity of the of of uh the Martin Martin branch to the divergent diamond that was that was concern which brings all this into question relative to the operations of the light and the queueing at the at the at the divergent diamond. Uh and that and that that particular divergent diamond was brought into place because of the uh Amazon construction and all the traffic that was coming in. So that was something that was not uh a factor of this particular project necessarily, but it did restrict and and made it tight for our land use and how we could get the highest and best use of that property. and DOT in turn is working with us to try to help us get that highest and best use based upon uh what would happen with the adjustments to uh the interchange because of Amazon and all those restrictions there which is make it makes it a very unusual position to be in but it's one in which we're working through that trying to make sure that we're able to get the highest and best use out of the property

that that's right yeah NCDOT understands access to this site is extremely challenging especially once the interchange is reconstructed. But at the end of the day, they've consistently made sure to point out that the interchange is is a priority with the amount of money that was invested there. And they need to make sure that with whatever signal operation is in place, we're not going to be stacking traffic back up into the interchange from Martin Branch Road. Exactly. because to place a light that close to the divergent diamond is not a normal practice and because of operation but in this particular case they're willing to make adjustments based upon how the queueing and everything piles up and but and by making the adjustment from one use to another use reduce that number which makes it functionable that's that's right yeah okay thank you that's all

excellent this is a lot of great information a lot of issues brought up we've spent a little bit more than the 30 minutes we have allocated for this preview you we we'll get another question or comment pretty quickly if we can. But keep in mind this is not a decision making uh thing on the agenda tonight. This is an information gathering. I think we've gathered a lot of information. I think you've gotten a lot of feedback, but we'll certainly have another time for another quick question or comment or two. Mr. Dinger?

Yeah. I mean, I think this is why we have work sessions so we can work through this and talk through this stuff because issues come up that we need to discuss openly as long as it takes to talk about. I think it it it's really important. This project was super important because we're setting a tone and an example of what we want to do as a town when we have ownership or partial ownership or have a partner who it we believe shares our values and to go from real strong emphasis on affordable housing and housing affordability to none is a shock to the system. It's a shock to me to see it. Um, housing affordability I is an essential part of economic development. It's essential for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs need affordable places to live so that they can run their businesses and not have to spend everything on rent and and and mortgages. Uh just people who live in the community need affordable housing so that they can have disposable income to spend in the community and they can give to charity and they can shop at local businesses because they're not spending 50 60% of their income on housing. And large business leaders will tell you that one of their biggest challenges is housing affordability in regions. It is even in in Seattle, Amazon, they set up whole programs to help their their workers find, ironically, we have Amazon across the street, get access to affordable housing. So, I think what it's highlighted is we haven't fully permeated the need and culture and desire and value of housing affordability in the community as an economic tool. It is very attractive to have affordable housing in your community when you're talking to leaders to get them to relocate and say got great housing opportunities here. There's you can you know the people who work your top jobs can work here but

also the people that come in in the night shift and custodial staff and um all the ancillary uh employment that goes along with bringing a business somewhere. People have to have a place to live that's affordable. So I think it's been a good opportunity to see where we need to kind of realign with GEDC on on this issue and also I still have the question of we had 200 some plus affordable units kind of in our hand and what is going to be the offset for that so that we can go do that somewhere else. So I think that's a conversation to be had along with some of the other concerns on just the use itself. So that's my only comment.

Excellent. Mr. Stalin's comment. Um, quick question. Why the tier one approach rather than tier two?

That's a very good question because we're not far along enough on studying the site and understanding it. And so, and it we first need to know that we have the zoning in order to spend the time, the resources really understanding what that layout's going to be. Number one. Number two is that these buildings really could flex a little bit over time. Uh it may sound dimminimous in terms of dimensions, but should these buildings be 180 feet deep or 210 ft deep? That the market's changing. So we want to deliver the right building at the right time. And so it's difficult right now to say what these buildings would be out specifically what will happen. And uh town staff can correct me if I'm wrong, but once the re once if the resoning occurs, then we would have to come back for a site plan approval. And I think it would be because of the size of the project, the special use permit. And so at that time, council would have another view on the the actual layout of the project. So you'd have more view at the second stage. Could someone from the town uh confirm that?

Yes, that's correct. Correct. So it isn't as if we can get a resoning and as you already know, we can't then pull the building permit, but one would have a view on the on the organization of the site during the special use permit phase. I think a lot of my concerns come from right now the lack of clarity around um especially with tier ones and with the data center situation that's occurring um across the country and I think what will be helpful we're we're having a conversation in a little while around data centers and and a possible moratorum conversation. So I know we moved this up in the agenda so that conversation would have happened beforehand but I think a lot of clarity will happen tonight around which may alleviate some of my issues.

Excellent. Good good observations on clarity. That's what these dialogues are all about. So we'll hit another quick comment or two then we'll move along to address data centers and moratoriums and things the other things we have. Mr. Singleton another comment.

Yes. I attended both the neighborhood meetings. The one two weeks ago tonight and the one in October. So, I know how the neighbors feel and they're not happy. Talk about meeting the neighbors. Neighbors are unhappy. Uh, period. Uh, I'm not going to put any more burden on the residents. At at the meeting two weeks ago, I asked a question and just as a what if you build the building, then the tractor trailer should never the tractor trailer bay should never be on the back side where the residents are. The resident should not hear the tractor trailers loading, unloading, stopping, air brakes, this that and the other. And Mr. San Rutder and his consultants lost their color in their skin because obviously that was the plan that we hadn't seen. So, I'm not that that's part of the issue. I'm not going to sit here and put a buffer there and cut all the trees down and have the tractor trailers back up to their neighborhood. That's a burden on them. Um I'm disappointed. Again, you may say there's a use for this. I know you're building two new warehouses behind the existing warehouses on the excuse me, not warehouses, buildings on the front of Jesus. Two new buildings are being constructed. It's interesting. And I looked, you know, you know what a need here is. What did we hear last week at a presentation about Jurgen Park? We need hotel space. That's part of our grant. We need hotel space. You're going to have 200 beds of two different hospitals. We're going to have parks that are going to have tournaments. And so I look at the hotel across this intersection to look at the tax value. Assess value is $16 million. I looked at the square footage. It's $24 a square foot. 51, excuse me, 4,900 Jones Sausage Road is is uh $259,000 square feet, $36 million on 17 acres, it's $105 a square foot. So, a hotel, which would be a nice use to have and look better on the corner than big warehouses per square foot is more valuable, twice as valuable. Um, I just again have no I plan not to support anything that's going to back up the heavy industrial to a residential neighborhood and put more burden on on the folks at at uh Hunter's Mark because some of the uses at Calibar have created

issues for them and they don't need any more issues. Plus, a town home development got approved a couple years ago and they're building those town homes right now. So, there's going to be more residents coming up there. So, it's going to be continue to be a a traffic issue for those folks. So, uh, just, uh, you need to punt and start over. I'm finished. Thank you, Mr. Matthews. Comment. I just, um, I look forward to see what y'all going to bring back. We go in more detail with this and, uh, and see where it goes from there.

Thank you. A lot of good information exchanged, uh, early preview, lots of action, certainly legitimate concerns, data centers, buffers, affordable housing, parks. uh at the end of the day at some point maybe GDC uh could sell this property and take some of those proceeds and do some of those things at a place that would be more cost effective for either affordable housing or parks or hotels. I I don't know if it's about details we can work through them. Unfortunately, this is probably not going to remain a virgin forest for the next hundred years. uh economic demands and realities and justice to the property owners, the families who own this and are trying to maximize their value. They don't want to let it sit there uh unused for the next 50 years. They're they're trying to, you know, distribute their assets. So there there's a lot of audiences here. There's a lot of people to serve. The neighbors are important. The families who own the property are important. A lot of important thing. Thanks for the information that y'all shared with us. We'll keep working. Thank you very much.

Thank you, buddy. And let's see, that brings us to almost 7:30 and we talked about the idea of taking a short recess at 7:30. And we will come right back in about 7 minutes, I would say. That'll be about 7:35. If we could be back in our seats by 7:35 and we'll keep this thing moving along. Recess.

important stuff left to get through this evening and the top of the list here is capital imp improvement plan an update on that and our sponsor is Sarah Warren our budget director what can you tell us about this important item

so tonight we are bringing forth um the FY27 and 31 CIP that will be included in the recommended budget. Um, just to give you a preview of what to expect. Um, we are going to just go over a quick reminder of what we've done with our capital program over the last couple years. Um, with uh the 27 budget, we will be doing our last bond sales. So, I wanted to give you an update on where we are with the bond program. We'll overview what will be included in the 2731 CIP. David's going to walk you through some of the debt um uh the borrowing that Davenport presented a few months ago and then we'll give you a brief update on what we're working on with our Horizon projects. Just a quick reminder about how our um CIP uh schedule started. So we we really start thinking about the CIP in the summer and early fall where we kick off in October. Um and then we and during that time we're working with the CIP committee to to evaluate projects, understand current project statuses, what we might expect in the upcoming CIP, and then it really kind of follows the budget schedule. So we do budget and CIP kickoff in December. um we get requests in in the February time frame. We're here tonight to go over the CIP work session. The CIP will then be included as part of the proposed budget which will then be adopted in June. reminder that our CIP steering committee which does meet monthly and they will meet more regularly depending upon what we're working on at the time um they are really looking at um this what's coming in and making recommendations and so

really building upon those cross collaborative conversations but the goals as part of our CIP include our vision which is strategically aligning capital priorities and funding to create garner as a thriving community. And to break it a little bit more simply, we are looking to plan, construct, and maintain. We also want to think about what our character is for our town and make sure that we are engaging the public, ensuring that we are distributing our projects across our um planning area, but also that we're meeting different needs of different uh community parts of the community. Connection and mobility continues to be a high priority. We've seen that with the uh community survey. But we also want to make sure that we are looking at partnership opportunities and and how can we leverage private investment with our 2021 bonds. Our park bonds uh totaled 35.5 million. Um as many of you have heard, we we will be spending far more on that. I don't have the exact number on me because we've leveraged quite a bit of grant money to help complete many of our projects. Um, Jurgen will be completed in late summer with an opening in early fall. We've got our South Garner Greenway project underway and then our next big project is Metobrook and so we'll be starting design in the upcoming year. Our transportation is about $24 million. Um the Jones Sausage Road is the big project there. FY27 will include the appropriation for construction. Still working through some of the timeline on that, but we anticipate that being completed within the next couple of years. Storm water was just under 3 million. So, we've gotten a lot of um we've worked on a lot of spot repair programs, some major infrastructure projects, but

the biggest accomplishment here is looking at our downtown and regional storm water studies that will help dictate future needs and major repairs, especially as we move towards a storm water utility. And then the last uh bond category that the voters approved was for public safety and services facilities. And this concluded included the completion of fire station 5 uh in May of 2024 that we did in partnership with Wake County. So just a reminder of some of the things that we've done with the current bond program. And as a reminder, our final bond sale will be in the spring of 2027 for the upcoming CIP over the 5-year plan. It includes approximately 63.7 million. Uh the largest chunk of that is our general public improvements. Those projects include a lot of our um like to call our sustaining asset management. So things like perform penny for parks, it needs our vert program. So we are allocating a significant amount of money every year to help cover those costs. Um, our next largest category is our transportation CIP with the largest project in there being the construction of Jones Sausage. Um, and then parks, we have 6.8 million. Um, a large chunk of that will be going towards Metobrook. And then our storm water CIP rounding out some of our uh, storm water projects and spot repair program. So, we're going to cover uh, first we're going to talk about some of the new projects. Um the first three you've seen um in our our budget uh conversations ahead of tonight. The first is the Jurgen Homestead project um to help uh sustain that facility for future use. The dam the Peacock Dam remediation uh and the completion of the storm water

utility. Um one of the new items that we're bringing tonight is uh some vacant building demolitions across the town. We'll talk a little bit more as we go through this presentation of what that includes, but it's essentially structures on property that we currently own that are posing some safety, health, and maintenance issues for the town and for residents. With the park CIP project highlights here are our Metobrook Park. Um, we will be allocating $200,000 in design funding um for FY27. Um, we will then be looking at uh construction planned for FY28. Uh, the current uh amount that's programmed into Metobrook for construction is about 3.36 million. Though we do have um an estimate for a paired down phase one at approximately 7 million. Uh once we get through the design work, uh we'll be coming back to council for uh the remainder of the allocation that we need once we get that construction cost number firmed up uh based upon the design work. And then the Jurgen Homestead at 1 million and we'll be using one-time funding there for that project. um our penny for parks which has continued to be a really successful program and a great way for us to continue to maintain our parks. Um currently the uh allocation for FY27 is just over a million dollars. Still looking towards a permanent solution at the Veterans Memorial for the pathway and bikeless and pedestrians. Looking at replacing some of our lighting um at the Garner Rec Park. And then we wanted to highlight some of the things that we've done for with the FY26 Penny for Park, which includes uh replacing some playground equipment,

which you can see the uh example there, um and grills at South Garner Park, as well as some fencing and greenway bridges at White Deer. I think everybody's really loving the new greenway bridges. Transportation, again, I mentioned uh Jones Sausage. Um so this al this last allocation is for the construction. Um I will remind you about a little over 7 million of that includes grant grant funding from um our lap our campo partners with lap grant funding. Um and that will be looking to complete the road improvements along Jones Sausage Road from East Garner to the Amazon property. We've also been able to continue to set aside for some traffic calming measures. And so one of the examples is we'll see here um our the speed table. There's a speed table that's been put up on um Fifth Avenue um to help slow some of the traffic down on Fifth Avenue. So we're looking to do some more of those measures across town. For storm water, what we're doing in this upcoming year is uh both are one-time um funded projects. for using onetime funds. Uh as directed by council at the February retreat, we'll be completing the final phase of the storm water utility as well as the Peacock Dam remediation. Um this is just an aerial photo of the Peacock property. Um so that will that's where we'll be doing some of that work. General public improvements. This includes our ongoing um asset replacements and maintenance. And so major categories here are our vert program, our public facility repair and maintenance, IT, we have a set aside for public safety technology which includes

um general public safety technology as well as our bodywn cameras. Last year we added a new category for public art. And this year we've added a new category for our vert replacements for fire. And I did want to clarify um what we are currently paying for for fire we would have paid for uh prior to the merger. However, because the fire department is now a town department, um the mechanics of how we do that are changing a little bit. And so that's why we've added this new category to help us capture the cost of replacements uh for large apparatus regular vehicles and then the maintenance and upkeep of those uh vehicles. And then we've also got the new project of looking at the demolition of our vacant town structures. Again, there are some health and safety concerns on these. Um, and we'll show in the next slide. Bundling them together will help us with our pricing and getting some um good bidding uh scenarios. So, these are the current properties um that we that are or structures on properties that we currently own. Um the first is the evidence storage building. I want to note that one is asterisk because the demolition of that uh that structure is included with the renovation for our 109 building or our town hall annex adjacent to town hall. Um we also have the LS property, the bank building, the creech road house and the Monagu street house. Um we anticipate uh bundling these together into one project to do some structure demo and in some instances impervious surface demolition. Um the cost there uh we have added in the in the upcoming

budget a little bit of funding for some contingency um for the purpose of the that construction project. Um, now I'm going to turn it over to David to talk about some of our debt modeling.

Thank you, Sarah. Good evening, everyone. Uh, I will be doing my best impression of Ted Cole or Mitch Bullio tonight to kind of take you through the Davenport debt model uh, and highlight a few of the the key things they went over when they were here last time in February. uh we had asked them to model out uh several different scenarios with what a future borrowing could look like and just kind of wanted to bring that back to the forefront as we start talking about uh projects on the horizon. Just as a quick refresher, this is this is kind of where things currently stand as far as our debt uh capacity and affordability and what we have uh currently programmed for debt. So, we have the existing debt that we've already sold bonds on. And as Sarah mentioned earlier, we have one remaining bond sale from the 2021 referendum. Uh, it's a little over $19 million in bonds still to be sold, which includes what was part of the original referendum plus the 2/3 bond capacity that council authorized. Uh, puts it at a little over $19 million. Uh, as you can see from the table, u there is capacity to take on that additional $19 million that would be sold uh spring of next year. Uh we have funding available in our debt service fund reserves to pay the debt service on that going forward. You'll see there are three years where we withdraw more from the fund than we put in that given year, but it does not uh put the fund or the reserves in jeopardy to do that. And you can see that once we get past those three years, uh we start to build that reserve back up um pretty quickly.

The next two slides go through what Davenport modeled out as uh different scenarios for us for a future borrowing. Um they looked at this two different ways. So this first slide uh took the approach of issuing debt as quickly as possible. So it frontloads some of the debt. And this is all in the context of our policies that govern how much debt we can take on at any given time. So in columns B and C, they took the approach of maximizing the debt we could issue, taking it to the limit of our policies. Um, I don't think, you know, either one of those scenarios are are really realistic or anything that that council would would wish to pursue, but they did want to say this is sort of the maximum capacity you would have given your current policies. The three columns in blue or the four columns in blue are different cases that they modeled out for us uh based on no tax increase varying levels of tax increase to fund future debt. Uh column D shows you without any type of tax increase the capacity we have remaining for for issuing new debt which is essentially about $45 million under this scenario where we try to frontload as much of the debt as possible. Um, you see that with a penny tax increase in column E, you gain an additional $16 million or so of debt capacity. And then there are other scenarios there um at varying levels of tax increases. The last column is if we decided we were

going to do a very large debt issuance. Um and and there's a lot of things to be determined still as far as which one of these scenarios would be most likely or um would align most closely to what we'd ultimately end up doing. A lot of it depends on what type of debt is issued. So obviously geo bonds that's a whole different process to go through. you have more flexibility as far as when you sell those bonds and take on that debt versus an installment financing that we would do through a bank, which is more of a traditional type loan. In that case, you you essentially get all of the money up front. And we do have some larger projects as part of the CIP in future years like a public works expansion um where we would need a a good bit of money in one lump sum to be able to start that project. So these are different scenarios basically to kind of show what capacity is available and what capacity could be achieved through varying levels of tax increases if needed. The next slide is Yes, sir. Mr. D,

a question. So, when those tax increases, when are they sk those tax increases themselves scheduled to come online?

Fiscal year 29. They they all assume I'm sorry, I should have pointed that out earlier. They all assume that the tax increase occurs in fiscal year 29. The next slide is very similar to the to the one before. The only real difference is instead of trying to frontload the debt as much as possible and still stay within our policies, this assumes that we on a every other year basis issue an equal amount of debt. So, um, this is kind of smooths out the impact of the debt a little bit. So, you don't have, um, quite the same, uh, needed increases to achieve the same amount of debt capacity. Uh so you'll see in in case number one column D where on the previous slide with no tax increase we had about $45 million of debt capacity remaining. Under this scenario it's about $54 million. Um and then case two with a onecent tax increase you achieve about $22 million of additional debt capacity versus 16 million under the prior case. again, you know, once we get to the point of needing to issue debt and evaluating um which type of debt we're going to pursue, this would play out differently than what you see here. But again, this is just to give you an idea of the capacity that could be achieved and potential tax implications of that level of debt. Um, that's all I have on the debt component. So, I'm glad to answer any questions about that before I hand it back over to Sarah.

Let's see. Let's start with Mr. Vance. Excuse me, Mr. Matthews. Questions, comments. So far, no question, Mr. S. Just to confirm the last two models, David, uh again, you said instead of model one, uh frontloading it, uh the impact of a penny would be 16 million, but if you even out the payments, you gain $6 million in debt capacity every for every penny that you raise. Every penny increase, it goes from 16 million to 22 million. Correct. By evening out the payments. Yes, that's correct. However, it's done. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Talent.

No questions, Mr. Dinger. Yeah, just trying to understand the the timeline of capacity and need. So when I went through and inventoried all of our CIP from our budget last year and now looking very similar numbers. Transportation. So this is what's in the budget. Transportation, I got 15. Y'all have 17. Parks, I had 10. You've got seven. Storm water is about the same, 400, half a million. And then public improvements is somewhere. I got 51, you got 63. So they're all kind of ballpark. And that's just for what's listed. But I think the issue I'm I'm running into is the horizon projects aren't Horizon as in horizon beyond the five years. They're just Horizon as we haven't listed them yet. And I have two million storm water infrastructure major repairs. I got Peacock Dam under here. Downtown storm water infrastructure half a million. Our public work center I put 60 million. Future town hall construction 2 million. Demolition I added in there top. Um public information um public safety station 2 million. And then the future public the SS road 2 million and then 6 million for the other. And then the fire truck. I'll move that out. But I've got I'll leave it there for now because it's just round numbers. But those total. So you got the 63 or 51 that we know about. So there's that. But when you add these other committed ones in, it's another $76 million in projects. And so I'm not we've got the listed ones, but then we have all these other horizon ones that we're basically committed to that are

about 75 between 70 and $75 million that has to get started to pay for in the next 5 years. And so I'm having trouble connecting some of those dots. When you add both of those together, it's 127 $120 million in five years. And I'm not sure where that money is coming from. So, and you know, and when I do the calculations, it's it's maybe a mine different than theirs, but there's about 9 cents a tax increase in there for the 120ome million over the next 5 years. So, I'm I'm just struggling to see how these horizon projects that we're committed to are really rolled into this sort of actual number of committed projects. Um, they seem to be separated out even in sort of our our plan, but they're not in our plan, but we have to pay for them. So that we don't have to go into a lot of detail, but we need to make that sort of reconciliation and re reality checking on what are we actually going to spend because some of these projects we're we are committed to at in some form or fashion. Um and that there are whole other list of non-committed for projects that are probably more Horizon related. Jurgen phase 2 future greenway connections boat house relocation I've not even put into the committed program every street rec center and re renovations I've not put in there any transportation P2P that we want to do over five years including planning and actual implementation is probably close to $7 million uh the right future rideway acquisition I don't know if that's part of CIP but I didn't see it in here and then I left out Wilmington Road and Acriman because those are kind of developer dependent and also left out Joe Sausage road, south and and west side. But there seems

to be a lot of other wishlist projects that are kind of sitting on the sidelines that kind of get yanked in every once in a while like the boat house and other stuff. It's like they don't seem to be run into the model, but maybe they are and I'm not seeing it. Um, so that that's a that's a concern I have on just the the the financing piece of it, too. is you also mentioned there's so many different ways to finance these things um that the numbers could work out different. I kind of worked on a traditional bond model, bond issuance model. Um I did have one question on the fire vert. So the vert as it stands now year-over-year is that $2.2 million budgeted and so the fire vert is that going to be in addition to that 2.2 to and is it is it also going to include debt service for instead of just being revitalizing is the fire vert also going to be debt?

Yes. So the what we've programmed in for fire vert is in addition to what we've programmed for regular vert and we are we will be issuing debt. However, we are not going to be paying any more debt than we would have under the county model. um it's just a different way of reflecting it because they're now a town department. So, we have still we've always been paying debt service on our uh fire apparatus, but we've been paying it um through a different mechanism and now we're making it a little bit more visible um because we will be um we will now have to acquire we will be responsible for issuing the debt and acquiring the vehicle. I guess my my outstanding question is all these Horizon projects that we're committed to, how are we putting them into our model as projects that we most probably are going to have to finance in the next five years?

So I think some of those horizon items are the cost estimates are just very loose estimates at this point. We don't have enough design or study to come up with a firmer number. So for the model knowing that capacity is going to be limited, right? There's going to be a dollar limit on it no matter no matter what projects are included. This 75 million that you see, which is kind of I would say that's like the target, right? They reference as a targeted case. We honed in on that number because that we feel like that represents a a best guess at the most high priority projects of the CIP including the horizon items. So that's you know primarily your public works campus but some of the other um you know higher priority projects again it's just a starting point. Obviously, you know, that number could be expanded, increased. Um, like you mentioned, some of it's going to depend on the the uh type of financing we pursue. But the 75 million was just kind of put in as a placeholder as a starting point for some of those high priority items that we realize probably need to move sooner rather than later. Um, obviously with a GO bond, you have a little more time. So we we would need to determine, you know, an amount for that bond referendum, but those bonds could be sold over multiple years, which would, you know, give us more time to kind of work on some of those horizon items if there was money available as part of that bond referendum. And that's probably more is closer because a lot of the stuff is is general fund funded but a lot of the transportation parks and storm water uh along with these horizon projects

combined is kind of given that um total that I think is what we need to be looking at and you separate the bond financed CIP items from the general fund funded items. And I think that might be even a better way to kind of look at some of the CIP stuff. Um, so I I still have some questions because I think we need we do need more capacity uh revenue to support more capacity. I think when we transitioned away from the revenue savings plan, we did a fixed eight and a half that wasn't sort of designed to grow in proportion to the the budget. And so I think that might probably not this year. Uh but at some point I think we need to look at that part of that structure and see how it's something that can grow in uh in relation to the operation side of things. That's all I've got.

Okay, Mr. Pants. No questions. Okay. Any other comments? Wrap up questions.

Got to wrap. Can you pull that back up, Mr. Beck? Thank you. I think I'm overthinking this. Okay. the target case is 75 million. You mentioned why and that seven is up front and that's why if you if that was considered the 3.87 cents because you're doing everything up front all the money at once and then uh case 2 and E to get roughly 70 $76 million roughly the same amount with the equal payments that's the difference between the impact of the tax increase is because you're stretching out the payments but you are gaining $6 million in additional capacity every year. Yes, that's correct. So, so the value, you know, of a penny grows over time. Um, we're able to to bank more in the debt service fund, which, you know, lowers what we need to uh have available in there to pay that debt service. So, you're correct. It it it's just spreading out the impact of that and as a result, it lowers the tax impact. But the scenario, you know, where we would frontload 75 million, again, that's that's really dependent on the the financing mechanism and what projects are included. Um, but you're you're looking at it the right way. I I agree. It is it is just the impact of spreading that debt over multiple years and when that debt service would kick in.

Okay. Because that tardy case was the same on both debt models. I just want to make sure I wasn't overthinking it. Thank you. Yes. Okay. Good question, good feedback. a lot of information here. We'll be spending a lot more time on these budget items over the next few weeks. We're not done yet. We we've got a little bit more to talk about. So, I'm going to let Miss Moore finish up the presentation. So, just to recap on where we are with our C CIP horizon project update.

Wanted to just review what we heard from council at the February retreat. Um this includes there was support for moving forward with the public works center. Right now, we're looking at $55 million. We currently have some preliminary design work underway and would hopefully uh have more information on a cost estimate and a plan moving forward uh in FY27. There was support of the Sals Road Public Safety Center or station 2 relocation. Currently, the town share is approximately 7 million. And there was also some interest in us working to secure the adjacent property and secondary road access. And just note that if we are able to do that, that may cost us some additional uh funding. There was interest in moving forward on partnerships and early design for Acriman and Wilmington as those uh partnerships become available. And then the other thing that we heard is there was an interest in moving forward with the station 6 EOCC training center. Um really looking at the uh evaluating what land opportunities we might have and considering a phased approach where we implement a portion of those combined projects um as things become available and moving forward um with specifically with the training center earlier uh sooner rather than later. As a reminder, these were some of the other projects that have been prioritized. Um parks. We still have the Lake Benson boat house, the Avery Street annex renovation, Jurgen phase 2. Um transportation, we're still keeping some construction um on on this horizon for Acriman and Wilmington um just to keep that uh at the forefront. and then the uh two Jones Sausage projects on our public facilities. Looking at a future town hall expansion,

looking at the uh Jurgen Homestead restoration and future use um beyond just what we're having to do with it in FY27 and same with the Rand Brian House. On our storm water, we have some preliminary numbers on early storm water repairs. Um, these are projects that have been identified that will likely need to take place before we've got the utility completed and generating capital funding. Um, but then we're also still looking at the downtown regional structure u for storm water. What we're working on now is we do have a CIP inventory. So, we are looking um to update that uh based upon projects that have been completed. And now that fire is part of the town, we are working to incorporate those needs. So we hope to have that full list to you by the end of FY26. And then what's next um on the plan for Horizon projects is um the Lake Benson master plan update which I think you'll be hearing about very soon. Um and then I do want to me reiterate the uh meadowbrook design and construction uh will be we'll start that project in FY27. Next steps as far as the CIP is concerned. So we will look at adopting the CIP with the FY27 adopted budget in June and we hope to bring back um the CIP horizon projects as part of a fall work session. Um at this point at that time we will review the whole project inventory. Um we'll also look at some prioritization of the projects and look at f future borrowing. So Mr. Mayor, now we have finished all of our content. If there are any further follow-up questions that that's a lot of stuff. Uh I know some things you mentioned are on the

agenda tonight, others on the agenda as part of our budget review. Uh are there other other details we need to delve into tonight? We'll come down this way. Mr. Mr. Vance, no questions. Mr. Dinger. Yeah, I had it in my notes for the storm water infrastructure major repairs is 2 million. I don't know where I got that number, but now it's 8 million. What What What has changed from wherever I found my $2 million number? We've had uh some projects uh now that that pro we've had some preliminary come numbers come in from the study um and those were the top priority projects. Okay.

But we can provide more information. Well, we can provide that information as part of the inventory. Thank you, Mr. Stalins. Questions, comments? Um, question about the Avery Street annex renovation. What does that consist of? This is the um this is not the gym. This is the um school portion. Um uh look really looking at the roof. Um some of the other issues in that facility. So, we are already moving forward with um updating the bathrooms and the gym. Um we were able to I think y'all wanted to separate those out and move forward with those from the retreat. That was my question. Thank you. Okay, Mr. Sleton,

I know we'll talk some more about this when we talk about the budget stuff. Exactly, Mr. Matthews. Okay. Well, one last Yeah, one last Sorry. Um, in just again looking at last year's budget in in Metobrook and in there was only like 200,000 probably for planning in 2027 and then tonight you're mentioning three and a half on this paired down version in 2028. Is that that's where we are with that sort of now?

That's well really that 3.3 is all the all of the bond proceeds from bond issuance that we have remaining. Um, so all of that's allocated to Metobrook. Um, but we do we do expect that project to come in at a higher cost. Um, we do have other funding options that we would consider and bring back to you once we have more information on the final design

and construction cost estimate. So when we were talking before about a short-term mera and we there was some kind of deja vu I think I talked about this last council meeting some some number we threw out of one or two million dollars. Does that mean that this that's even further delayed into fiscal year 2028 or I'm not clear on what the timeline is for the Meadow Brook stuff. That's what I'm kind of struggling with

and and and Maria and Matt are here to help me if necessary. Um what is really um becoming the barrier at Metobrook is the road access. So that's driving up the cost on the timeline. So we're still moving forward with a design. uh we do have the money set aside to do that as part of FY27 and we would look to then be sure to uh allocate the construction money at the sufficient cost in FY28. So we would likely make some um adjustments as part of the FY28 CIP. So there's not any scenario where that park has public usage in the next two years.

I I don't think so. look to my peers now. We just need to know so we can tell people. Thank you.

Okay. Hearing no comments or questions. Any more Miss Warren share with us? Okay. Well, that that's good stuff. A lot of more details, particularly that Metobrook. We want to keep our finger on that and we were certainly hoping to get some use out of that before two years. We'll see what we can do to do some intervals or some interim projects. We'll put our heads together. Thank you very much. Okay. And I believe that brings us to uh what is now item three on the agenda. Lake Benson Park master plan update. And our sponsor is Maria Munz Blanco, parks and rec resources director and perhaps assisted by the everpresent Mr. Matt Baird.

Yes. Uh good evening uh mayor and council members. Thank you for um the opportunity to bring this back to you. Uh as you all know um the purpose of this presentation is really we need to get your guidance and feedback regarding key decision points for the Lake Benson master plan update. Uh and the Lake Benson master plan update has been triggered essentially because as we develop the South Garner Greenway um the current location of the boat house is no longer viable. So we have to figure out uh what do we do next? Um so that's what we're here tonight to get your um feedback and and consensus on next steps. Um just a little bit of of um very quickly I go through this. As you all know, this is a long-standing park. It's probably one of our our most popular destinations. Uh it's about 64 acres, and those acres see extensive use throughout the year for festivals, community events, uh picnics, uh athletic uh activities. It is certainly a beloved asset in the park system here in Garner. Um and various components have been added through the years. Uh but the park's master plan which you see in the image on top of the slide has not been updated. Um so um town council approved initiating an update to the park master plan way back in 2024. And I mentioned the the recents earlier. It's the primary trigger is really the development of the greenway and the boat house and how adding an amenity of that scale to the existing park would have a significant impact on the park. uh particularly and very importantly uh the stormwater considerations that are associated with the Lake Benson uh overlay uh and the Swift Creek um land

use plan. Did I get that one right? Uh so uh we had a couple of early concepts that were presented to you uh at a town council either work session or retreat, I cannot recall. Uh and then we brought back a couple of refined concepts uh to again get your feedback and sort of uh figure out what council guidance we would get before moving forward with getting more community feedback for this particular project. And I'm going to have Matt uh talk to you about uh kind of refresh uh your memories on concept A and concept B. Good evening, mayor and council. So, just to take you back to um the concepts as they were shared uh with most of you previously. Um so, for concept A and you can my I'm going to try and use my cursor. Let me know if you can't see it. Um, so this this concept continues to use the existing uh main driveway location along kind of the large treed um what I would call an alley. Um, and that leads you all the way back to kind of the shelter one area. This is keeping a lot of things relatively unchanged. Uh, one big change was the shift in the playground area over to where the dog park is located. that would allow for a little bit more tree cover, a little bit more room to expand that playground. Uh uh since the dog park would be displaced, we would put that out into the field along the entrance drive. Uh further improving the uh parking area that's out there now and adding a nature play area to the west uh kind of along the western boundary of the uh property. So over here you'll

actually see the uh proposed location of the boat house. Um because of the some of the environmental features along our southern um property boundary and and lakefront um our options are somewhat limited. Uh this location allows for direct access to the parking area. Um and then extend extends a trail out to uh kind of the beach area that you have out there now, which is located between the two pond uh/wetland areas. Um the second concept um this would adopt a I'm sorry I don't want to touch on the I'm going to go back to a and touch on the the uh trails around the uh veterans memorial. Um so one of the reasons that we wanted to uh kind of take another look at the trails was um to improve emergency access in and out especially during large events. Um this kind of orange dashed line represents a uh emergency vehicular circulation. So a a secondary means of egress um in the event that the main entrance was blocked. So both plans show that uh the difference being that um this uh this concept kind of left the existing trail circulation going through and just around the outside of the veterans memorial. Whereas when I shift over to concept B the uh memorial is n then made part of a kind of a loop an external loop. So it doesn't represent a kind of cut through anymore. Uh instead you would have trails that would extend out here in the same manner that they were shown on the other, but there's no connection going through.

With this plan, you're also relocating the main access drive further to the west and retaining this uh exist the the current driveway area as kind of an entrance prominade uh through the large trees. Um it opens up this area for more of a pedestrianfriendly kind of festival atmosphere that we've uh so um wonderfully cultivated out there over the years. Um it also would significantly increase the longevity of those trees rather than having cars parked on them. Um the uh the boat house is located in a similar location albeit pushed a little bit further back towards the shoreline. Um, and then the uh playground was located a little bit more centrally along that uh entrance prominade uh so that you have parking next to it, but you also have a pedestrian um access right here. And we located the dog park off of the new um the new entrance drive. So, in kind of a summary of some of our previous conversations, where we're at, decisions that we need to make going forward, uh, as Maria mentioned, the boat house is kind of the, uh, the tip of the iceberg. It's the first thing that's going to be impacted, uh, because of the development of the South Garner Greenway. Um, so at this point we we need to uh locate um a new home for the for the boat house and to um really kind of focus on uh all the different things that we need to get out of the boat house uh to make it work for us. Um there's more slides on that so we'll kind of dig into that a little bit deeper. Uh the second piece of the uh the the conversation that we had uh last year was around the park driveway orientation, whether to keep it where it

is going through the trees, whether to peel it off um and take a new route uh through the park. Um the um again kind of the the direction was to um go back and look at the impact of the boat house um and any other imperous surface issues. Um so right now we are we are up against our imperous limits out there. So any further development will require um uh significant investment in storm water control measures um out there. So just kind of keeping that in the in the back of your mind as we start talking about shifts in paving areas, parking areas, all of these things have impacts there. Um but the um kind of the direction that we got coming out of that conversation was that we really did want this to be something um that was put in front of the public. That's that's a big change for the park and something that uh we would really like to see uh the community provide some feedback on. Uh the third point was the walking trail and this is focused on the walking trail around the veterans veterans memorial. There was consensus that um creating a less uh a less direct access uh for the general um kind of recreational users. So people that are you know hiking, running, biking around the park um rather than those who are just trying to go to the memorial. So to create more of an out and back um and and cut it cut it off from the main loop. So that's what we are planning to kind of bring forward uh with any future concepts is a plan that has it as kind of an external loop rather than part of the larger uh pathway and also to look at material choice to make it clear that this is not part of the uh the running loop. Um and the fourth point uh was distribution of amenities. that's a much larger

conversation. Um, and again, something that we wanted to um, get some additional community input on. Um, so again, that's another thing that will be informed by the boat house relocation of how everything kind of fits together within the park. Um, one thing that we did hear from you was that we do not want an entr placed right at the entrance to the park. So, that will not be something that you see on the plans going forward. So, going back to the boat house, um, previous slides I showed had the wetlands, and I'm going to jump back real quick so I can kind of point them out. So, when we when I when I say the point, talking about this area out here. So, this this little kind of brownish tan hatched area, that's a wetland. This is a pond. These are both things that we can't disturb. Um there's there's um you know this this would be kind of our ideal place that we had looked at uh and we were asked to kind of look at a little bit closer after our last conversation uh in engaging with our consultant Withers Ravenel. Um they were able to identify that those are jurisdictional wetlands um that we would not want to impact as part of any part of our development. So again, kind of going back to if we're going to choose to put a boat house along this shoreline, there's a pretty limited number of places that we can do it and a relatively limited scale at which we can do it without uh creating additional impacts to the environmental features um within our park. Scroll back

question in reference to the location based upon the environmental analysis. What would be the preferred location based upon uh the staff review? Uh the I mean we support the the consultant's recommendation to kind of split the middle of these two kind of blue areas just because of existing improvements that we have back there. If if the boat house was to be retained on site, um then I I do believe that this represents an approximation of the best location. We would want to dig into that a little bit further. This is simply a conceptual master plan of the stage. Thank you. Comment on blue house if I may. Mhm.

I like what you got going here. One thing um after we move this over, well, let's be where we can uh people down there can if they can't go out on the pier and we've got it fenced off or locked off. Uh along that shoreline is a way we can design it where people can go go fishing. People are fishing off the bridge down there and they're out there all over. They want to go fishing regardless whether they got a boat or not. as we place that uh boat house facility where it's going to be at least on these sides some dockage or somehow where people kids and families can go fishing whether the boat house is open or not.

Yeah, that's that's kind of the intent. Uh you know, I think that we've had some success with our our uh our fishing programs even. Um so that's something we would like to retain. Um, if we're going to be kind of putting a boat house out there, we would want people to go out and be able to hang out, go fishing, um, watch others fish, watch others boat. Um, so yeah, viewing and fishing would definitely be part of the equation. Make it sort of year round, so to speak. Certainly. Thank you.

Um, so considerations for the boat house relocation. Um, so f first bullet point is kind of the big one in the existing park or looking at other options. So, not on the park. Um, the area around Lake Benson has been pretty well developed. Um, some of the the properties that that are are vacant may be areas where adjacent properties just had their septic fields and or there's another reason why they weren't developed. So, um, whenever we look at those other locations, it's very important to, uh, kind of really dig into the information and make sure that you know what you're getting. Um, so we've been able to kind of start looking at some of that. Um but really the the there's a lot of questions still on the table uh regarding you know the size of this facility. Where does it get access? Um what are the storm water considerations since this is an environmentally sensitive area. Um these are all things that kind of get get put into that that piece. Um and then there's obviously going to be a a financial impact. You've been hearing about CIP and budget a lot tonight. So, um, financial impact is going to be there regardless of where the boat house gets placed on our property or on another property. Um, so there's going to be a hit no matter what by replacing something um with something brand new. So, going back to uh the walking trail, I kind of already talked through some of this, so we don't need to necessarily read through the whole slide. Um, but we are actively working on uh the the rerouting of the trails. Um since that piece was uh was given kind of consensus

from the council last year, we we have proceeded forward uh in contracting with somebody to to do that design to take that up through um kind of 100% construction drawings at which point we can go out and bid the construction. Um that would be you know for the for the trails um and any kind of related requirements whether we're required to do uh storm water uh control measure as part of that that would be included in our scope. Um but um part of that is is kind of the uh determining the feasibility of using a permeable paving system. Um so that would be allowing water to infiltrate through the pavement. Um if that is found to be uh feasible and functional um then the storm water control measures are uh are mitigated. So we we are able to continue to build out on the site using this technology without necessarily having to disturb more to add a pond. We can keep our nice open unprogrammed green space um within within the center. So we're hoping to be able to uh work through that process with the designer. It takes some additional testing to make sure that the soils underneath the pavement will actually accept water. Uh since there's a lot of clay around here, that doesn't necessarily permeate very well or percolate. Um and so we're going to be working on that. Um this uh update has gone to the veterans committee. Um and um the only thing that they had kind of asked, they they appreciated the the the rerouting of the trail. Um the only thing that they had um asked is to reserve some space for future memorial expansion um and that that be documented uh within the master plan and that's something that we are obviously happy to do.

I have a question about like white deer and it's storm water and then we put the um water thing out there. Where where does it sit in terms of its impermeable surface percentage? Does it have more margin than Lake Benson or not?

It it's a it's a separate parcel. So we've got a number of properties included within the White Deer um kind of catalog or basin. Um and so right now I think that's something that we track as part of each development proposal. Um, since we own a decent amount of water kind of upstream from there, you can kind of buy down against that as long as we're not developing that much upstream, what we have on site isn't making too much of an impact. But yes, there is a threshold at which point you would have to build a storm water control measure um out there as well. But we don't have but we're not there with our development plans with white deer. No, sir.

I guess that's my question. Is there the opportunity and enough surplus there to combine the parcels and then use some of White Deer's capacity to get more impermeable surface in Lake Benson? Looking at Leah.

My understanding is that the parcel that has capacity for storm water is outside of the Lake Benson um overlay. So it would not be counted against our needs at Lake Benson Park. Um the parcel that's within the appropriate uh management plan, Sweet Management Plan is pretty much capped uh or very close to to reaching its limit of imperous surface and that includes the the nature center, the various playgrounds, the picnic shelters, uh all the trail activity at at uh White Deer Park. So we're at a very tight spot. Okay. So they got different rules. Okay. Thank you.

All right, so the next slide is um you know, this is kind of the fun one for me, community engagement. Um getting out there to really find uh what what the community feels about this plan. Um you know, obviously we have um we have a very successful park out there now. Uh it was based off of a successful master planning process. Um over time the community has grown significantly and we have a lot of new voices out there that we are curious to kind of hear from um as to you know the park driveway location. That's a big one. Uh distribution of amenities, moving the dog park, moving the playground. These these are not necessarily things that that are going to happen all at once. It's not knocking everything down and starting over. It's as as replacement comes up for the playground, is it in the right ultimate location? Is it in the best place to serve our community? Um, these these are kind of the the questions that we want to get answers to as part of this this uh public community pro uh engagement process. So, some of the kind of ideas that that um Maria and I have put together uh would be to um kind of set up uh parks staff office at hour office hours out at Lake Benson. So, um you know, pick a few days in May, June, July and say, "All right, well, if you want some more information on this, we'll have some posters and some information set up out at shelter 1 during these hours." Um, we can have our our uh obviously our our very popular July 3rd uh celebration. We can have a a tent out there during that. Um, I'm sure we can catch a lot of uh pass through traffic there. Uh, obviously we could do a a uh we've got lots of summer camp participants. Um, and we can have a workshop with those participants. We can have online uh polling active throughout this whole process. Um there's a number

of different ways that we can do that whether it's you know through our social media through um like a publicinput.com survey both um we will go to our uh parks advisory committee veterans committee senior advisory committee um any other committees you want um and then we would uh hope to compile a report and bring that back to you um in just a few months. Um, so we really want to kind of hit this hard and and get things get things moving quickly um out there. So with that, I believe that I'm turning it over to Maria for next steps. So, as I mentioned earlier, our goal this uh evening is to really get your guidance as our governing body uh regarding the boat house relocation and get more feedback from you as to the park driveway options that uh were presented earlier. Um also wanted to make sure that you're comfortable with the community engagement plan that we have proposed so we can uh spend some lovely spring and summer days uh at Lake Benson Park. Um, and then again bring all this information back to you for a final decision in August and uh get all the paperwork and uh and put together a master plan for adoption uh later in the fall. And with that, I think that is it for our presentation. So happy to try to answer any questions you may have.

Okay, let's start with Mr. Vance and see if there's further questions and comments as we go along here. Mr. Vance, um I'm developing mine to continue on up. you come back to me. Nothing right now. Okay, Mr. Dallas, no questions,

comment. I haven't got any questions. I'm 100% in favor where the veterans walk by. That's got to be done. Me and Mr. Matthews has talked about this a half dozen times. No problem with that at all. Uh, you know, it's nice to have engagement, but the problem is half the people out there don't live in town. And the other ones, you got to say, well, this may call may create a tax increase to do all this. And you got to be blunt about it. Um, I stated this before and I'll state it again. You shouldn't move the playground across the road, the big playground. It's by the large shelter for a reason. The playgrounds over at White Deer Park are all right beside shelters to splash pads around the shelter. Uh, that's that's just a disappointment to have to have people go down there, cross a road after a child may have to cross the road for go to the playground. That's that's just that's disappointing. It's nice and I'm in favor of doing something with the boat house, but we don't have the money. Let's just be We just saw this. We don't have the money to do this. Let's just be blunt. So, this looks nice and it's nice to talk about it, but we have to be realistic and have priorities and priorities if we if we treat our public work facility and we got to do fire station and storm water. So, again, we we the walking trail and way to work in the boat house, but other changes should be minimal. We need to update a restroom. Okay, update a restroom. That's fine. And add a family restroom, but uh we don't have the money. Let's just be blunt about it. This all sounds good, but just don't have the money to do this. I'm just put it out there that I think you're going to get people excited about something that's not going to happen. The boat house is going to happen, we hope, and and this, but uh other changes are really going to have to be minimal. And as you said, Matt, once something breaks down or the the shelter, the bathroom needs to be replaced, signs got to be replaced. I understand that one at the time, but uh trying to do all these changes at once or over a period of years still can cost a lot of money that we just right now that's just I don't think it's a priority. I'm being blunt. I'm not sugar coating

it. We got a functioning part that works great. It needs some tweaks. It needs a new restroom. If it needs an expanded restroom, fine. But, you know, we don't have the money. I mean, it's nice to talk about a new band shell, but really people are not going to support that. I'm sorry. When you tell them their taxes might increase. Okay.

Well, I sure put a damp on everybody that good gosh. I'm just trying to tell the truth. You know me. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It's nice. It looks good. But it we just this we've already talked about our priorities and that's just not one of them. Uh the two main components of the boat house relocation and the the walkway around the veterans of moral uh needs definitely needs to be done and the emergency access which is all tied to you that this we talked about that retreat last year. I'm done.

Okay. Thanks D. As you say we're not here to make a decision. We're here to float ideas here to look at time frame look at the other ideas you have as next steps. Mr. Matthews questions, comments at this point? definitely got to create the boat house cuz that greenway's coming through there and everybody is excited about that out that way and uh especially up and down uh the road uh and the veterans thing that's that's a priority and uh but that park is really used um walkers runners uh the fields and uh I don't know how we can I know those two or three items definitely top on the priority to look and see what if anything else could be added in and what kind of cost we're looking at and uh and as realistic as we can and uh because the again that bow house will be well used if we're going to do it let's do it right and it might be a deal where we can get somebody want to do some naming rights on it uh the sponsor help a cost on that and that there's people in Garnet would do that as a memorial or something so something to think about if you guys come back with a cost on it that we can put out there on the street that hey, we could name it the Buddy Gupton Boat House or whatever. So,

yeah. Yeah. Waiting for my donation before you There you go. But, uh, the boat house will definitely be used and of course the Veterans Memorial is it's just it's just doing great things out there. We're very pleased with that. So, great. Look at your dollars and I think we got the top two or three priorities in we're here to move forward with.

Great. All right. Well, Maria and Matt, you certainly your you and your team have done a great job of pulling this together. I think it's clear we certainly don't plan to do all of these things within the next fiscal year. Uh it's just what what is the master plan over the course of several years to be working toward as needed. Uh certainly the boat house is a priority, taking care of the veterans memorial, th those are priorities. The rest might be done on an asne basis. I really like your next steps laid out. Uh you got a little guidance from the town council this evening. You're going to continue to get community involvement. Bring the information back by August here for some further decision. Town manager, would you like to weigh in on the overall?

Yes. Um just um to make sure uh staff is clear on next steps and and guidance from council. I I'm hearing a few things. I just want to confirm that we're we're all on the same page. Uh, one, there seems to be support for the improvements to the Veterans Memorial area and the emergency access piece of of the park and making sure we include that in any updates to our master plan. So, that sounds like there's consensus among council members to do that. It sounds like there's an interest in council and wanting to pursue the community engagement that's proposed over the summertime to get some additional feedback on some of the other ideas and concepts related to the driveway, the dog park, the playground, and just some other things about the park as we continue to think about a master plan. To Mr. Singleton's point, we the the budget is very tight for some of those improvements now, but if we have an idea of what we're trying to achieve, there might be opportunities to seek out private funding or grants and those types of things that may help us phase in some of those amenities in the future. Uh the final thing is is I'm hearing there's still there's an interest in council with wanting to uh relocate the boat house from its existing location. Uh what we need continued clarity on is is council want to keep that amenity uh in the park itself as proposed and option A and B or is council interested in staff pursuing a different location that's not within the actual park itself but may be adjacent.

And I think that was the potential issue or question we might talk about at a close session if we choose to have one this evening. Yes. That is correct. So,

so, so if council wants to pursue so looking at another option outside of actually relocating within the park, we can certainly talk about that and explore that further. But if council's preference is to keep it within the park itself as proposed based on what we know are some of the limitations with the wetlands and those types of things, we can move forward with continuing to include that in the design as well. Shooting from the hip, I would say that we might want to hear about the potential option that is somewhere in process before deciding to go with plan A, B, or maybe at C. We we we can make a decision pretty quickly, you know, within the next week or two to proceed with A or B or to see if we want to look further into C. I I don't know if it's that urgent that we have to decide without getting that information. Now, let me hear from council members. Do do we want to just say we don't want to consider any option except these or do we want to hear more about that other option that we have some information in our hand about?

I personally like to hear more information about the the options have all options on the board on on the table and take a look at them all. I I agree. I also have some other comments, but if you want to get feedback. Okay. Yeah, let's get just feedback then we'll come back. Is this something that we have to do before we have input from the community? uh we certainly don't have to do other than um if if there's an interest in wanting to look at other options probably sooner is better than later in terms of identifying options and negotiations and those types of things because I know we may sit down and make a decision, but I would love to hear what the public would have to say about the options that are provided to us this afternoon.

Yeah. And just to double down on what you're saying and on what Grace said, a whole lot of people from out of town use this park and they'd like to see us spend 50 million on it. It doesn't impact their tax rate. It could be that dur during our further information if we get opinions from individuals. By the way, do you live in the Garner city limits? By the way, would you be willing to have your tax bill go up 50 bucks a year to do that? Or get some perspective. Everybody wants something, nobody wants to pay.

I think that mayor, we can certainly make sure that the information that we collect, it's sort of we track what is the opinion of residents of Garner. I mean, there's zip codes, there's street addresses. We do have the ability to to collect that. Um, and we can still present to you the information from those that are not residents of Garner, but we can split it so you can get a better sense of uh of um residents thinking about um the boat house and and Lake Benson Park in general. Okay.

At least with some of the online polling, it has kind of a low-level kind of geoloc attached to it. you can kind of see who's giving their information and we can see all right we'll see if we've got 150 people from Saskatchewan logging on to tell us how to do our thing then maybe I give a list we we like input from everyone about our parks and facilities um but certainly being able to look at that information from different perspectives is helpful

yeah I guess we were asking about do we want to pursue option see by by having a close session this evening to hear more about it. Did you finish your comment on that part? Okay, Mr. Singleton. Yeah, we should I'll always listen anytime we get a chance to wherever we put it. The Buddy and Phil boat house would be nice. Yeah, I'll let other options. Does that give you the guidance? Yes. So, it sounds like uh council's looking is interested in exploring potentially other locations and we can um go into close session after our regular business this evening and talk about that further.

Thank you. And and I I hope that even if we talk about C whether we pursue it or not, the next steps outline of time is still realistic. We still want to move ahead. Not that we're going to do all of this stuff in the coming 12 months, but we it's good to have a vision of where we're going over the next several years.

And as we've shared with council in the past, part of the importance of doing this master plan work is that it allows us then to seek funding sources. So whether it's grant funding, uh whether it's private investment, um having this work done ahead of time and and part of our plans, we can then leverage that for looking at bringing these amenities or even updating some of the amenities at the park. And so it's important that we make sure we continue to do this work. And I think the timeline proposed by staff in terms of bringing back the recommendations to council um on the community engagement in August and then looking to do an approval and that the fall time frame on the master plan would put us in line for being successful.

Okay. Excellent. Other comments other guidance needed? Good job. Excellent job. Thanks for you and everything your team has done on this. That's extremely helpful, extremely important. Mr. Mayor, I did have Yes. around again. Let's go around again.

No, no, no, no. I just want I wanted to reiterate kind of what the town manager said about the importance of having a master plan on this. Um, but I I also would like to see you do the same start looking at the, you know, rand 50 parcel in in a similar way and kind of getting community outreach brainstorming and stuff. Even though there's not the money to do it, um, we've done a pretty good job of leveraging funds. So, the sooner we can kind of look at those other big I mean that's that has the potential to be something as well. Um, but I appreciate all the outreach and stuff and getting these plans done really does give us something to fund against. So, keep up that work. Thank you.

Okay, we're good to move on. All right. Thank you. Excellent input. Uh and here just 10 minutes until 9, we have the choice to push ahead with the zoning text amendment options as well as the uh the other wrap up here, manager reports, uh attorney reports before we would move to the close session. Do we want to push ahead and get these done or would you like another short break? Move ahead and have a break when we go into close session.

Okay. Push through and then take a break in between. Okay. We we'll we'll push ahead with that. Uh that being said, that brings us what is now item number four. It was number three. It shows here that's zoning text amendment option. Uh Terry Jones, our town attorney, is our presenter on that. And Jeff Trezenberg, uh if and this has to do with everybody's favorite new topic, data centers. So tell us what we need to know here, team.

I I think Mr. Trezenberg is going to do the bulk of the presentation, but I just wanted to um outline uh moratoria are governed by state law. So a memo was provided in your agenda packet that u Mr. Trezenberg and I prepared. Um so there are specific requirements if you would want to adopt this. Um, outside of the data centers, which I know council wants to um, discuss, there was um, some concern about whether council could do a moratorum on residential projects, for instance, rental apartments until we figure out whether the Blige tax exemption loophole will be addressed. We absolutely cannot do a residential development moratorum unless we can tie that to um addressing uh public safety or the adequacy of public infrastructure and and that's not public infrastructure in a general matter. That would be like if there was a water sewer type capacity crisis where you could could not provide services to the new housing development and and that moratorum applied broadly to all commercial property and other development in the area then then you could apply one to residential. Uh but I know the topic at hand is is data centers. So I think um Mr. Mr. Trezenberg is going to go over in general uh what some of the requirements are and then we can talk about what um some of our neighboring jurisdictions have done and a timeline for going forward.

Thank you, Mr. Trezenberg. Good evening. How are you? Good.

Good. Um yeah, Terry and I were putting the pulling some of this information together for the memo that's in your packet today. And um I think generally you know just give you a little bit of background 20 years ago moratoria were probably a little more liberally used. Um and so you know back in 2005 the uh general assembly did tighten down the process and procedures and put in some of these restrictions as to what moratoria could actually be used for. Um, so we've now had that kind of governing uh legislation in place now for 20 years. Um, and as Miss Jones noted, residential is is very very highly regulated and very difficult to do, but I do remember the days when communities um would do that with with pretty pretty regular frequency. Um that being said, um in talking about data centers, um staff has been looking into this over the last couple months as we've begun to hear a little bit more about these. Um, we've been kind of monitoring our UDO as we've learned more and more about how these data centers operate, the kinds of um, nuisance type things that are generated by these centers. Um, I would say we've learned more about the noise impacts and the vibration impacts um that are very unique um and probably admittedly are not captured very well by what we have in the ordinance currently. Um, the noise and vibration types of thresholds and regulatory measures that we do have are really geared towards traditional manufacturing.

Um, the things that are a big a big impact, a big thud to the ground that reverberates, not these very finetuned and fine scale kind of underlying hums and and things of that nature. Um, I suspect it's probably a little bit more similar to the things the impacts of the overhead power lines that some people are very in tune to with some of the vibration and humming that comes off of those those high transmission power lines. That being said, um, you know, the process to adopt is pretty straightforward. Um, I don't know that there's an imminent threat to public health and safety. Um, but to to draft a text amendment and come up with a process um for for solving the issue at hand that you're identifying. um we'd probably be looking at the option there under the process to adopt of a moratorum that's going to take more than 60 days because this is not something that we can despite all of the efforts that other jurisdictions have already put in. We're going to need more than that amount of time just to get through our own process of having a public hearing, planning commission input and then back for final adoption. Um so we would need to advertise for a public hearing. Um and that again we need at least 10 days but not more than 25 days to go ahead and advertise that we do need to adopt the moratorum as an ordinance. Um so staff has been pulling ordinances together from other jurisdictions that have already done this. Uh again, there's not many who have, and if they have, they've done so probably in the last two two to four weeks. Um but, uh staff is working

on pulling one of those together. Um so that we can have it ready to go. Uh so I do know that it is in its early draft formats. Um but we have not sent it around yet for any review. Um but we are working towards having that ready for you should you direct us uh to pursue this further. Um as noted in the in the outset of the memo there are kind of the three options. One is to just maintain the status quo just to give you a little bit about where we feel things are under the UDO. Um we've not issued a formal opinion on it. Um, but when we did craft the video, we did so trying not to have a lot of uses that were not included. Um, so we in almost every section of the use table, there's a other types of uses not listed and it's usually tucked in as a special use permit requirement in one zoning district. On the industrial side, um we do have that other category. Um and it does make reference to uses that have those nuisance type uh byproduct and that those would need to follow the manufacturing and industrial with outdoor use. um which is limited to the heavy industrial district, but as of right now, it is a permitted use. Um so it is not even a special use. Um not saying that that's how they would be classified, but as of right now, that is the one thing that we would see that might be closest. Um so part of it is yes, we

need to define what a data center is. um you know data where I've listened or I've I've read a little bit enough to know that there's data warehouses and there's data centers uh and the two are not the same. Um and then there's also the scale of the operation. There are some things that might be classified data centers but are just accessory to the use that is primary on the site. For example, a hospital system may have a an accessory kind of data center um through which they operate only, but it's not accessible to folks from outside to actually use their equipment to process and do things. Um, so there's going to be definitely some nuances to this, trying to define what cases are accessory, which ones are, you know, of a certain size that they don't have as many impacts. And so maybe we want to treat those differently and those that are more what they call hypers scale which are the big ones that are in the buildings the size of Walmarts super Walmarts and um truly have a lot of those huge utility impacts and it is interesting I forget who who mentioned this and mayor might have been you in the email. I had forgotten because this actually was permitted even before I got here in tw late 2014. Um, but we do have a use in town um, over on Garner Station Boulevard that calls themselves a data center. Now, I'm not sure if it will meet, you know, whatever definition we might ultimately come up with, but when I pulled uh the zoning compliance permit from 2012, it was permitted as a data center, at least as they were known. uh back then. So, it is interesting to note that we do at least

have one small uh facility that considers itself a data center. And so, it might be useful for us to look into that. It is, like I say, it's a smaller operation. It's not a huge building, but it's good sized. Um and see what kind of utility impacts and other things that um we may have some firsthand experience with and not even necessarily realized. Um but we certainly do not have anything hypers scale um or even anything of that scale on the horizon. So all that being said, we are ready to go. We will move as fast um as you all would like us to and to meet um the review needs of the legal department. Um I think we could theoretically have something ready for you as early as the second meeting of May. Um although that would be very very expedient and fast but if that is how you would like to direct us we will certainly do everything we can to meet that. Okay, let me ask a a qualifying or process question clarification uh before we come around with questions here. But uh clearly this particular item is the one tonight that we do need to make a decision on unlike the other items where we had discussion sections and you've and staff has suggested three options here that that show on our condensed version here the proposed action uh which direct staff how to proceed. Number one is do nothing, maintain the status quo. I think it's safe to say nobody wants to do that. Okay, so it's not going to be number one. So we're choosing between number two and number three. And number two is adopt a moratorum as quickly as we can and and then take our time to

draft the final uh amendment. And number three is don't do a moratorum. Just uh pro process the zoning text amendment as quickly as we can. So my question is how quickly could we uh declare a moratorum as compared to how quickly could we process the zoning text amendment without a moratorum uh knowing too that when we focus on doing a process here I thought I heard you mention more than 60 days but that's right in the middle of budget time UDO review I'm just trying to get the relative value how quickly could we get a moratorum in place as an interim measure while we take more than 60 days or maybe spread it over a longer time. How long how long would it take to issue a moratorum? Yes. So the moratorum was what I was describing there at the end. We need at least 10 days to advertise for the public hearing not more than 25. So the earliest that we could do that would be the 17th of May if we can get the ordinance drafted, reviewed and approved. Um that would put the moratorum in place. Um in the memo there are four things that are included in that moratorium. We have to define the problem. We have to define the steps that we're going to take to solve it and all of the alternatives that we've considered and determined are not reasonable or feasible to solve it. Then we actually have to go through um and do the drafting of the text amendment. Um and then you know it has to be moved along at a at a decent pace. We put a timeline on it and then most of the ones that we've seen so far set the moratorum to expire either at that specified end date which most of them are choosing a year. If you think of our past text

amendments um some of them do take a while to get through the process. Um, so I understand why they're putting a year on there, but then they also give the option that if you adopt the text amendment sooner, then the MO moratorium expires as of the date of adoption of that text amendment. Um, so again, yes, the text amendment you're looking at at least 3 months just to get through our process. So putting the moratorum in place first would be something that we can do within a month to six weeks. Um so that is definitely the faster approach um to give you the time to go through that text amendment process while having the moratorium in place.

Okay. Now we'll take a round of questions. We'll start with Mr. Matthews. Sounds like the moratorum is about to go and that'll get things moving quickly before we can protect ourselves and that gives us that timeline to draft what you need to do. to be all in with the morator as quickly as possible. Mr. Singleton,

yes, I'm in favor. I think we we do a minimum of 12 months because you said clearly that if we decide something at 10 months and that can take care of it, but at least a minimum of 12 months is not 15 or long or 15 or more because things keep coming up. I mean, there's a news report that just came out yesterday that talked about the temperature, the average temperature that that impacts average of 3.6 6 degrees. They've been doing it for tracking them for 20 years from 3.6 degrees of heat heating heat centers to up to 16 degrees in some places. So, uh that's a huge impact. Um we had another one you mentioned one on over there. We had a we wouldn't close session many times about one this I can't remember calling them data centers but it's been 10 or 15 years ago because we talked about the impact of the water. That's what the big concern was then is how much water was going to be needed to cool the servers. That was a big concern and it didn't work out here. But anyway, um yes, move forward and a minimum in my opinion of 12 months at least so we can give y'all ample time. And again, this thing about the the uh the heat just popped out in the news that had been a concern until now. So, who knows what else might pop up.

Okay, Mr. Talons, comments, questions?

I'm definitely in favor of a moratorum. Um from the ordinance I' I've seen, they have listed it out to be 12 months. Um, I would definitely be in favor of um putting this 12 months and if we pass the text amendment earlier, then that would alleviate the 12-month period um of the moratorum. Um, but I definitely do see um also in the ordinances from other um municipalities that have adopted it um that have also listed um that they do not h have definitions for data centers in their um UDOS's as well too. um kind of parameters in which they have um defined um what data centers are as well as data processing facilities, cryptocurrenc cryptocurrency mining operations and any other uses associated with those that require considerable amounts of electricity or water usage. Um so there are um guidelines out here from other municipalities who have done this um for what they have regulated at the center zone per their UDO or what they're defining as to put in their UDO. Um so I'm definitely in favor of moving forward with the moratorum.

Mr. Dinger moratorium, Mr. Vance, I think it's a prudent step to adopt a moratorium while drafting a text amendment.

Okay. And just in case if it were if we decided we needed to take more than 12 months, um there is a process to extend it, um it'll just be very important and I'll be working with my staff to make sure that we are documenting um all the steps that we're taking. Um, so we have a very detailed timeline of things so that if if that were to come up that we needed to do that that hopefully we would have all of our ducks in a row as far as justifications um as to why that extension is actually needed but there is that process.

Okay. Does that raise any other questions or comments? Okay. Uh in that case u I will accept a motion if someone would like to make that. It is my pleasure to make that motion. Okay. A motion to adopt a moratorum uh as quickly as possible then to follow up with Mr. Mayor. If I think the motion should be to schedule a public hearing on consideration of adopting a moratorum. Thank you. That's what I'm looking for. We do have to have the public hearing first. Okay. So, the motion is to proceed with the moratorum process as quickly as possible. So, move. Okay. Second.

Motion by Mr. Stalins, second by Mr. Singleton, are there any other questions or discussion about the motion? Then we will do this with a voice vote. All in favor of adopting that motion, approving that motion, signify by saying I. I. Any opposed by nay? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Trezenber. Very helpful, Miss Jones. That was extremely helpful information. Complicated, very important. We want to do it the right way. It takes a great team. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And I believe that concludes most of the agenda there, which takes us now to manager reports.

Yes, mayor. We have our development activity map update and I will ask Mr. Treasonberg if he will walk us through any updates to the map. So, Mr. Trezenberg.

Yes, there's been a couple of additions um to the map since last month. I will just bring it up here a moment. One of the uh projects is a conditional resoning request. So it would uh come forward uh to this body for review and approval. Uh the other one is a site plan that is uh reviewed by staff. Um so this first one is a project out here um across from Camping World. Uh Camping World is right here. Uh TV Tower Road intersecting US70. Uh you have the 540 uh future interchange with 70 just right next door. um and the use that we continue to hear a lot of demand for with the convenience store and convenience store and fuel sales. Um let me bring this project up here. They do need though to request a resoning. Um is currently zoned residential. Um there is an older home uh that was on the property. I believe it's been aband or at least vacated for quite some time. But in general, not um not a lot of unusual. I think we've seen enough of these type of proposals to kind of generally know how they how they look and feel. Um do you have a gas pump island uh out in front with the store circulation of driveways through and storm water uh provided on site? I do know that uh they would be accessing water directly off of 70.

I'm not quite sure it's proximity to sewer, but my guess is that it's directly across here um at Garner Business Park Drive. Happy to come back to that one if that spawns any comments. Um the other project that we have entering into the system this past month is um the Duke Health Building Phase 2. And so here you see the existing uh building or the one that's under construction uh and approved here previously is kind of grayed out here in the center of the site. What you're seeing over here is the second building which I understand would house uh the urgent care uh facility and perhaps the emergency room if that were to be approved. Expanded parking throughout the site. I believe eventually there would be either the potential for an additional phase here or over in this area. Um but definitely they are looking to expand the parking to accommodate all of the office uh space and medical space. So those are the two projects that I have for you. Again, this one is going through staff level approval. Um, I know it's had at least one complete round and I believe it's in its second one. Uh, so they're now responding to our first round of comments.

So, two questions. One, these are multi-story buildings, correct? Correct. Three story, four story, twotory. Just curious. That's a good question. I kind of I know it's at least three. This this one might be four. Okay. Also the connector road that that looks looks there that will connect over to Evolve Drive. Yes, there is a drive path that will weave through behind where the Bojangles is is being constructed to to the uh that driveway. Yes. Okay.

All right. That's all I have for you on this tonight.

Two two very interesting ones. Thank Thank you very much. Back to you. Yes. Um just a preview of your May meetings. Um because the time is running long, I'm just going to briefly review these items with you for the your meetings in May, but certainly if there's specific questions, I'm happy to answer the questions. So your first meeting in May is May 5th. We've got several presentations. And May is a busy month in terms of recognizing a lot of public services from public works to our police officers to building inspections, um economic development and small business. Uh we have several items on your consent agenda uh for consideration. Um just one I want to um bring to your attention, the Trion Station conversion to income averaging. We shared some information with council on that. ahead of your meeting. So, please let us know if there are any questions about that um as part of your consent agenda. Looking ahead to public hearings, looks like we do not have any scheduled as of yet for your May 5th meeting. Um I also failed to mention um at your May meeting under presentations, it will be introduction of the recommended FY27 budget as well. Um, and those are all the items that we've got programmed so far for your May 5th meeting next week.

I'd like to it'd be nice to see the TR station pulled off just even for five minute presentation on what that is and um I think that would be helpful for sure certainly in the public. Certainly we can do that. have to be a long drawn out presentation, but I think it's important to highlight some of the work we've done and you know how that those things operate. Certainly, we can certainly do that. Thank you.

All right. Uh looking ahead to the May 19th meeting, uh we've got the presentation. Uh we've received several awards from the North Carolina City County Communi Communicators um association. So, we'll be highlighting that. Um uh right now there are no items under consent agenda, but we may be adding some. Uh we looks like we do have an SUP, a quasi judicial public hearing, uh scheduled for your your May 19th meeting for Timber Drive East mixed use uh project. Um and and then we have our standing uh manager reports and um under development services, economic development and your talk for the town as well. As just a reminder, uh in addition to your reg your two regularly scheduled meetings in May, on May 15th, which is a Friday, that's going to be your budget work session as well. And so that's when we'll have do a deeper dive and conversation into some of the details and the recommended budget as well. And then looking ahead to your official work session in May the 26, we'll continue our budget discussion. This will be a followup to our work at your budget work session on May 15th. Uh looking at um funeral homes um and and looking at adding that into the MEX zoning district as well and some staff information and presentation on that. As as mentioned uh in our last uh meetings, the general assembly is in session. There's a lot going on in this short session. So if there are any updates to bring to council, we'll make sure we provide those. We've also talked about code of service uh excuse me, cost of services continued discussion and we've got uh this tenatively on the agenda as well uh for continued discussion and work on that as well as the code revision project update. and

then we'll do our development map activity report as well. So, um, as always, these things may are subject to change and may shift a little bit depending on how things develop as we get further into May, but wanted to make sure we had an opportunity to make council aware of what we anticipate coming forward to you in May. I I have a question. Um, with the action that we just took, um, would the public hearing be on the May 19th meeting? That would be the earliest we could do it unless she wanted to call a special meeting, but that would probably put it before May 19th would be too tight to get it drafted appropriately and the the notice out. Thank you.

So that that's a good example of the things that we will add to the agenda, things that will move around as we continue to move forward into May. That's it for this evening, Mayor. And that takes us to attorney reports. I do not have a report this evening as appears we need a close session. Well, then we will go to council reports and let's start with Mr. Banks. Oh, the uh nominating committee will meet on tomorrow to consider applicants for various positions. Mr. Tal,

um I attended our um barbershop wraps that we started back up with the police department. Um it was pretty well attended. Um we had a couple of folks that were coming in to get haircuts and they got a chance to chat with the deputy police chief as well as myself and two other police officers and it was just a great conversation. Um we talked for about 90 minutes. Um and they got the chance to ask the police officers a lot of questions. Had a lot of dialogue about professionalism and building relationships. So overall it was a a pretty great event and they were we were talking about cadence and I think Heavenly Cuts and the police department are going to schedule what that cadence looks like but overall they're looking forward to the next one. Cool. Cool. Thank you Mr. Singleton.

I mentioned uh Mr. Stalls mentioned the barber shop. Had a longtime businessman pass away last week. His name was Donald Thompson. He was my barber for over 40 years. He had the barber shop on uh highway 70 near Monu right beside the stormwater pond between the stormwater pond and the attorneys. He was there over 40 years. Got my I started going there in January of 1980. He was 93 years old and he was a barber for 70 years. He started on Hillsboro Street across from Burke brothers. Bri he I saw it going to him at Tiffany at Try Hills and then where he was now but he was lived right off road lived here in Garner. Grew up here. He used to tell me stories about working at places in Garner and Raleigh. You you remember Bob Saul's barbecue where South where South is. Not many people remember that. He worked there. His dad had a barbecue restaurant in Apex. He was a barber for over 70 years, but he passed away. A long time businessman lowkey uh you know it's just those type of people, the longtime barbers just you know do the job for so many years. It's just a dying occupation unfortunately. But I just want to mention that he was here uh working. He loved talking about Garner and talking about the surrounding area. So I just want to mention that.

And you talk about Garner being built on small business. That was a picture. That was that was one of them. Yes, sir. Mr. Matthews can't top that. You know when to fold them. Okay. Uh with that being said, I think the other item before us this evening is the possibility of having a closed session. Uh, Attorney Jones, could you give us the proper citation if we choose to pass that? Yes, Mr. Mayor. It would be a motion to enter close session pursuant to North Carolina General Statutes 143-318.11A5 to instruct staff regarding the acquisition of property. So moved.

Second. Motion by Mr. Singleton, second by Mr. Stalins. All in favor of moving to the close session signify by saying I. I. All oppose by nay. Hearing none, it's unanimous. We'll move ahead. Thank you for coming. We'll be back later. If you're here, I'll be surprised. Thank you for coming.

return from the closed session back to the regular work session. Uh, and at this point, I'm going to ask our attorney if you can give us a summary of what was handled in the closed session. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. uh council met with um town staff and gave instructions regarding the potential acquisition of property, authorized the town manager take additional steps uh to carry out those instructions. Thank you. Uh if there's no other business that we need to take care of this evening, I will accept a motion to adjourn.

So move second. Motion by Mr. Stalins and second by Mr. Matthews. Uh all in favor of adjournment please signify by saying I. Any opposed by nay. Hearing none is unanimous. Meeting adjourned. Good job kids.