Town Council - Regular Meeting

All right, good evening and welcome to the Oak Island Town Council regular meeting of Tuesday, September 8th. I call us to order. At this time, I'm going to ask Mayor Pro Tem Bill Kraft to do the invocation and the pledge of allegiance.

I stand. Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you tonight to ask your blessings as we conduct business on behalf of the town of Oak Island. I ask that you be with us as we make important decisions on behalf of our friends and our neighbors and our town. Your word says that if any of us lack knowledge, we should ask of our God who gives of it generously. I ask tonight that you give us wisdom. Wisdom to make the right decisions and to do the right thing. This week, this Friday, we remember the tragic events of 9-11. I ask you to be with our country. Comfort the people who have lost the most during that. Be with us and come back and be our God one more time. As always, I want to give thanks for the many blessings we received living here in Oak Island. Thank you for all you've done for us. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

All right, so tonight we do have three presentations. Our first, well, we have no public hearings. Our first presentation is the update on the Big Bend Trail from Bill Millard with the Parks and Rec Advisory Board. Come on up, Bill.

Good evening honorable mayor and council members. I'm Bill Miller vice chair of the Oak Island Parks and Recreation advising advisory board and Before I move into the main feature for tonight, I want to give you a real quick update on some activities the board has done in the last few months. We worked with the town and have placed three new beach toy boxes, one at the Cabana, another at 54th Place West Access, and another at the Point. These were built by a local Girl Scout troop, 2169. Great kids they were. At our August meeting, we brought on two new outstanding youth members, Jacob and Miller. They will replace Molly, who has been an outstanding member, but is now moving on to Chapel Hills. And Molly replaced Addison, who was also an outstanding youth member. So we keep getting these outstanding youth working with our advisory board, and it sort of gives you hope for the future. We are also currently touring our parks to acquaint new board members with the parks and to put together a list of enhancement recommendations. In August, we toured Bill Smith Park, and earlier today, we toured Maymore, Malcolm Register, and Templeton Park. And now for our main feature. It's a well-established fact that the primary attraction of Oak Island is nearly 10 miles of beautiful beaches in our town and another four miles in Caswell Beach that make up the southern face of Oak Island. But there are other intriguing natural resources that help make Oak Island an exciting place to live and visit. The intercoastal waterway, our marshes, parks, and trees are just a few of these. In most of the surveys done by the town, walking trails in these areas has been a desire of residents and visitors. With that in mind, the Town of Oak Island Strategic Plan calls for exploring the possibility of adding walking trails along the Davis Canal. And I want to give some background to this.

Let's go back. I hit that too quick. There we go.

In May of 1963, the Davis Creek was dredged. I laughed when I first read that line because it sounds like the opening line of a 1960 pop hit by Johnny Horton. But I also realized that if you were born after 1950, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. But back to the creek. In 1963, residents along the Davis Creek decided to have the creek dredged to form the Big Davis Canal, allowing them to navigate their boats along this channel. It's what's encircled in red on the NC DOT map from that time. Incidentally, if you want to have a good laugh or chuckle, Look in the small print there of the population of Long Beach and Yopon. Long Beach was 122 and Yopon was 59. There were more people waiting in line at the Old Bridge Diner yesterday morning than that number, so something has changed. When dredging was done, a dredge spoil bank was created along the south side. The embankment separates the canal from the rich wetlands of the marsh to its south until it rounds the corner at Southeast 40th Street. There the dredged canal ends, but the waterway continues on in the opposite direction along the southern margin of the marsh in what we often call the Little Davis Creek. In May of 2023, I made a presentation to the town council representing the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board exploring the idea of developing a system of trails along that embankment. Bill and Lisa are the only ones left ever present here for that presentation. But members of the council encouraged us to keep exploring, which we have done as a board. A number of informal trails created by humans and animals already exist along this embankment. We quickly decided the best course of action was to focus on a single one of these trails. We chose the most used and discernible of these trails, which branches off the 31st Street crossover. We call it the Big Bend Trail, named for the canal's prominent northerly bend. At roughly 4,000 feet in length, it's the longest of the various trails and currently is the clearest and most widely used of the paths in its unsanctioned forms. It also has the advantage of its connection to the recreation center parking. And I use that term unsanctioned intentionally because it is state-owned property that has not officially been opened to the public. The public still uses it. The best way to see this trail is to go down and walk it. But we can't do that tonight. So I want to fly over it. thanks to Andy and the town drone. And yes, that is Andy and me on the bridge flying the drone. Andy's the rectangle and I'm the battery there, it looks like, or whatever those profiles are. The new trail starts where the 31st Street crossover turns over the marsh. The first 600 feet of the trail we believe could be created to be ADA accessible. During the flyover, some information about the project will pop up on the screen, including where we could put education and viewing platforms.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you

We chose to end it here because that's pretty much where the discernible trail ends. Someday, if it's all successful, we would ultimately like to take it on down the embankment clear to the 20th Street crossover so we'd have a loop. That'll take a little bit more work. But we have talked with countless agencies, including CAMA, the Fish and Wildlife, and NZTrails, The parks and rec and others and while supportive and they have been supportive. They all came to the same conclusion We couldn't go any further until we received permission from the state to use land the land since this is their land They are the legal owners So in contacting them for the past for 18 months I've worked tires they probably longer in 18 months maybe two two years working there but for the last 18 months I I've worked tirelessly with Catherine Adams to get the North Carolina State Property Office to consider this. And I think it took Catherine calling in a few favors from her past work in the state that we finally got them to consider this. They drew up a lease proposal. Presented it to the North Carolina Council of State which is comprised of the top ten elected executive officers of the state you see the list over there I'm just totally amazed that you had to sign off on us getting a little trail in the swamp, but There you have it at their August for a meeting Led by the governor they approved a lease to be offered to us and you have that lease in the packet that came to you earlier and But they are offering us approximately 4,000 feet along that, which runs along what you just saw on the flyover, a 40-foot wide swath, which started out as a 10-foot swath. And I told them we needed a little bit more room to build the viewing platforms. And they said, well, what about 40 feet? Would that work better? And I said, that would work just fine. Offering us this in a 20-year lease, starting in October at $1 per year. I thought that was a pretty good price. I wish I could lease some property at $1 a year too myself. So what we need is to see the formal lease. I hoped it would be here by tonight. I talked to State a few days ago And they told me it's almost ready, but it's in the hands of lawyers who are checking over the list to make sure we have all the I's dotted and the T's crossed. The lease is not going to come looking any different than the summer you have, but it'll have all the language in it that none of us will be able to understand. But hopefully that will be here by the end of the month. If the town approves that lease when it's here, here's what the next steps could be for us. Number one is we're going to have to do an environmental impact assessment. And then follow that, we'll get CAMA approval. And if the environmental impact is good, CAMEL has been very supportive of this whole project. We'll want to do a safety and risk assessment of the trail. We'll need to assess what the maintenance requirements would be. We will also want to do a financial assessment. And finally, we'll want to see community support and engagement. It is my belief that this can all be done with the current number that's in the budget. All of these assessments, there is money in the budget for us doing this. And if they come through and we get a green light on everything and the town council approves moving ahead, we will begin a trail capital campaign looking for donations and grants Hoping that we can carry out this project without any real financial burden to the town. That's my hope So in closing Agreeing to the state lease does not commit the town to the trail but it allows us to formally explore the trails feasibility and all those assessments and That's what we really need at this point Thank you for giving us your consideration. I will be willing to take any questions if you have any.

I just want you to know I work with the State Property Office on a daily basis. The fact that you've completed this in 18 months is nothing short of miraculous.

Thank you. A lot of that credit is going to go to Catherine.

I'm serious.

She had to twist some arms.

If you can get the lease out of the Attorney General's office, that's another story. Yep.

Any questions? I'd like to say first, Bill, thanks for all your hard work. You were pretty much spearheading this by yourself, and thank you for everything you've done. Each time I've talked to you about it, and of course you can't guarantee what the future holds, but it's always been your thought that this would be very little cost to the town due to grants, sponsors, some of our friends in state government.

I still believe that, and I know that the people at CAMA and DQM have all said that they are willing to work with us to find the money. Parks are the trails, North Carolina Trails has also said they want to help. They've been very supportive. There is money out there. We're going to have to look for it, but we're going to have to do the hard work, just like I've been doing the hard work for the last couple of years to get this into the state property office. But I believe we can do it with very little impact to the towns.

I was pretty sure I knew what your answer was, but I wanted to get it out in the open. I wanted everybody else to hear what you had told me in the past. And again, thank you for all your hard work.

Thank you.

Anyone else? Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Okay, our next presentation is Sam Boswell, the Regional Transportation Planner with the Cape Fear Rural Planning Organization.

Good evening. Mr. Mayor, council, thanks for having me here. A couple disclaimers. I don't have drone footage. I also don't have anything with a $1 price tag. I do have a healthy serving of acronyms that I can offer, but that's where we're going to start. My name is Sam Boswell. I've met a few of you. Some of you are new faces to me. I'm the transportation planner. at the Cape Fear COG, at the Council of Governments. And kind of nestled within that is this organization, the Rural Planning Organization, a transportation planning organization kind of serving as the middleman between DOT and local governments here in the Cape Fear region. What I wanted to do, so first I'll say that Councilman Tommy Brown invited me to speak tonight to talk about a process known as NCDOT's strategic prioritization. And prior to getting into that, for those of you who may not be as familiar, I want to do a quick run through on what the RPO is and then how this prioritization process plays out. I'm going to make the constant attempt to be both thorough and brief and to hopefully answer some questions that you may have. So zooming out first, the Cape Fear RPO is one of 18 RPOs across the state of North Carolina. serving the rural regions of the state. One of the ways that I compare the structure of RPOs as opposed to our sibling organizations, MPOs, the Metropolitan Planning Organizations, is it plays out roughly that the MPOs cover about 75% of the state's population, while the RPOs cover roughly 75% of the state's land area. And then we go about 50-50 split when you start looking at lane miles of roadways across the state. But that's the relationship between the RPO structure and the NPO structure. And then within the RPO, this is kind of what's established in our bylaws. Some of our main responsibilities are to help develop what we call comprehensive transportation plans, CTPs, off that menu of acronyms for you. These are generally done at a county level, but that can vary depending on the context. We also serve as a method for public participation. We help prioritize projects to go into the State Transportation Improvement Program, another acronym, STIP. I will use that as though it's a word. And then the catch-all is providing information as needed to local governments. Anything transportation, try to be a catch-all in that way. We're made up of a couple different committees. Much like a planning board could report to a governing board, we have what's called our technical coordinating committee, our TCC, that consists of local staff, managers, planning directors from across the Cape Fear region, which from the RPO perspective includes Pender, Brunswick, and Columbus counties. Your planning manager, Taylor Davis, sits on this TCC and participates. We meet roughly every other month. And that committee makes recommendations to our governing board, which is the Transportation Advisory Committee or the TAC On which mr. Tommy Brown participates with that group and then we recently in this past calendar year created What we're referring to as community liaisons This is so that each community within the RPO has a designated contact person for the RPO from among their elected body given that we cover three counties and 25 municipalities and We do not have a 28-member advisory board. And so not every municipality is represented as a voting or alternate seat. And so our TAC created this community liaison role for those communities to stay as actively engaged as possible. And then as I mentioned, the RPO is housed within the local government services department at the COG. OK. So, prioritization. I use that word way too much. I twitch when I say the word prioritization or when someone else says it. I hear it all the time. Basically, you're taking data and you're using that data, kind of a rubric of data, to give a project a score. And then from that score, we take the highest scoring projects that line up with available funding, and that creates this 10-year document a project funding and schedules known as the STIP, the State Transportation Improvement Program. That programming process assigning that funding and schedules is about a two to three year process that we're always in the middle of. There's always an update to this STIP document. There at the bottom of the screen, very roughly laid out kind of the steps that go into this. Kind of always long range planning, but we go in phases of submitting projects, projects get scored, We can assign local input points to projects. I'll touch on that more in a few minutes. To effectively boost project scores based on the local priorities of our board members. And then at that point, highest scoring projects are programmed into the STIP document. Everything that goes into this process of prioritization uses the foundation that was outlined in the 2013 Strategic Transportation Investments Law. That law created this framework as we know it. Okay, again, trying to give you the very tip of the iceberg, save you from what could be a two-day presentation. There are three funding categories. Color code them this way, the blue, green, and orange, statewide, region, division. Statewide projects, are major roads, think US 17, think I-40. Then the state gets carved into seven regions. That includes NC 211, a lot of the NC routes. And then from there, each region consists of two divisions. The reason this is important is because some projects are only eligible for certain tiers. So NC 211 is not eligible at a statewide tier. It is eligible at a regional and division tier. Bicycle and pedestrian projects are only eligible at a division tier. They do not compete for funding at a regional or statewide tier. So sometimes when people look at our sheets of project scores, some projects will have scores for all three because they were eligible for all three. Some will only have one score. That's where that comes from. We submit projects across six different modes of transportation. The Cape Fear RPO has a unique opportunity to be one of the only planning organizations that does all six, because that is aviation, bicycle and pedestrian, ferry, highway, rail, and transit. As I mentioned, the final score of a project comes from this data rubric, essentially. And then we can add local input points. We being the Transportation Advisory Committee, the TAC, makes those final determinations. Funding is given to the projects with the highest score. And the weight of local input changes for each of these funding tiers. The statewide tier, there is no funding, or sorry, there is no local input point process. It is completely data driven. And then between regional and division, the weight of local input is greater in the division, in the most local-based funding kind of competitive area. So P8, that's the shorthand for this eighth iteration of the prioritization cycle. The first version of this cycle dated back to the late 2000s, but really the form that it takes now started with P3, which began in 2013 following the passage of the Strategic Transportation Investments Law. We include the .0. I don't know why. We just do. It feels better to say P8.0 than it does P8. I can't explain it. So we started this last year in 2025. We spent the summer and the fall doing workshops across our three counties to determine our project submittal lists. We were given a fixed number of submittals that we can turn in. And that cap applies to all six of our modes. So we submit those projects. It takes a little more than six months to get scores back for these projects, which we got at the end of May, just before Memorial Day. And at that point, it kicks off the first round of local input point assignment. Because when they release the scores, the statewide projects, because that's all data driven, is done. But yeah, I have there on the screen, there was a little over 2,100 projects scored statewide, with 82 of those in the Cape Fear RPO region. Most of which we submitted ourselves, but some came from planning partners like NCDOT or our friends at the Wilmington MPO or at GSATS. Some projects that we have that cross our planning boundaries, so we kind of share responsibility for those projects. Once we had those scores, it kicked off this first round of local input point assignment. We took what projects we had that were eligible at this tier. Of our 82 projects total, 46 of our projects were eligible for these, you can think of them as bonus points almost. And we have a methodology that's posted on our website about how we go about determining which projects we're going to assign these points. And our TAC made a final approval of those points at their August meeting. And now we're on to the second round for the division projects. This is our full list because everything is eligible at this tier. And that point assignment allocation will be up for approval at their November meeting. I should mention here before I forget, some of you, hopefully many of you, may have seen that NCDOT released a public input map where folks could go on, click on projects, leave comments. And it was, I guess, comforting to see. We read through well over 100 comments of projects in the Cape Fear RPO. And the projects that members of the public had the most support for lined up well with what projects received local input points at that August meeting. So a lot of the major concerns on the 211 corridor, on 74, 76 up in the northern part of Brunswick County and Columbus County. It was good to see that there was alignment between what the board was seeking approval on, or seeking to approve, and what the community members felt were the highest priority. OK. So again, I don't have drone footage, but I have screenshots of Excel tables if that's just as interesting for you, I hope. So what I wanted to show here, this was a new, kind of strategy of explaining project scores this time around. I did sort of a version of this in the P7.0 cycle, but what I have for you here on these next few slides are some of the projects I would guess either because they are firmly in Oak Island or because they are very close to Oak Island. would be of greatest interest to this group. And rather than tell you just its numeric score, this project scored a whatever out of 100, I wanted to just pull back the curtain a little further and show you how projects are scored, because otherwise its total score might just seem a bit arbitrary. So this project, which is upgrading the intersection of 17 and 211, is eligible for all three of the funding tiers, which is why I have three very nearly identical scores or criteria charts. And what I have here, I think that it helps show, is that project scores aren't just a fixed number. They're relative to all the other projects that are competing. So as we look through this, it's important to keep that in mind, even if something is a relatively low scoring aspect. That's not proof that the project isn't necessarily needed. That's just evidence that the other projects competing against it might have a more pressing need. So looking at these three, what we can see is the congestion scores are about average, kind of middle of the road. But the biggest issue with this project moving forward is that second criteria of its benefit cost. It's a very expensive project. And that is the same way through at all three of these funding tiers. Some of them change a little bit. I myself was kind of surprised that its relative competitiveness at the freight category went up across the three funding tiers. And sorry if I didn't explain this better. These percentages are percentiles. So congestion-wise at each of those tiers, the 44th percentile, 46th percentile, relative to all the other projects that were competing with this project at that tier. Next, I have one segment of the remaining portion of NC 211 that has not yet been funded for widening and construction. This is specifically the segment from Midway slash Middleton west towards Sunset Harbor Road. There is a second segment that picks up there from Sunset Harbor Road all the way to US 17. That segment is within the GSAT's planning area, which is why I don't have it first here on the screen. But I do have a couple notes on that. But let me start with this segment. This one, much higher congestion score than the interchange. Benefit cost score is much more competitive at the regional tier, which is that top chart, than at the division. And another way that this has been a helpful thing for us to look at, both in our committees and just as a staff perspective, is this gives us an idea of where project concepts or designs might need to be revisited to make a project more competitive. 77th percentile for congestion is not bad at all. But how can we tweak the project to bring that safety score out of the 40s and higher? We want all of these criteria to be high. somewhere in the green in order for a full project score to be competitive. That does bring a little tension into trying to not be totally reactionary as a long-range planning organization. Those two things kind of clash. We don't want to be reactionary. We want to get out ahead of it. So that's the tug of war that we're constantly playing. For your information, just so you know how the two segments of 211 stack up, They are roughly the same when it comes to congestion, relatively high competitively. The benefit cost portion of the other segment that goes all the way to 17 at the division tier, so that bottom chart, is much better, much more competitive than the 39 percentile that you see there on the screen. The other segment that goes towards 17 also fared much better from a safety perspective. It was a much higher percentile. But then freight and the accessibility connectivity, again, were about the same for the two segments. So I realized that when I first put these together, that was a bit of an oversight to leave out that section of 211 and wanted to include a note on that. On the other hand, you have improvements to 906. This is headed north of 211 up towards Bolivia. And this, again, is another good reminder of I think we can all agree that improvements to Midway would benefit the county. However, it is not the most competitive project at this time. A lot of that comes down to that zero percentile for benefit cost. It is a very expensive project to widen that corridor with the current designs that we have now, and so we are actively looking into a way to restructure or kind of reimagine that project concept in hopes that we can find improvements to 906 for the benefit of residents and visitors in Brunswick County. Okay, and then two projects here. They're included in the same screenshot because Bicycle and pedestrian projects were only eligible at one funding tier. This is constructing a sidewalk on the north side of East Oak Island Drive from Northeast 56th to 65th. This picks up where the new sidewalk segment was recently put in. Some of you may remember from a previous round came and presented. At one point, this project concept was a full multi-use path going from Northeast 46th to 65th. And then the town was able to put in the sidewalk segment. And so when it came time to submit projects for this P8 cycle, we felt it was more appropriate to switch that concept from the multi-use path to a sidewalk to match what the town already had plans to construct. And then the second project here is widening the existing bike lanes along East Beach Drive. Again, a good illustration of how these different scoring criteria work. You'll see both projects score relatively well. It's worth noting that just in their overall score, these are the second and third highest scoring bicycle and pedestrian projects in all of Brunswick County that were submitted. The accessibility and connectivity score that is not particularly good on the sidewalk project compared to the relatively low cost effectiveness score of the bike lanes illustrates kind of this paradox of what we're trying to do when we submit these projects. The accessibility and connectivity score for the bike lanes is better because the project spans a wider range. It literally is just connected to more things. It patches into other sidewalks or other bike lanes or other kind of beach access points. However, a longer span makes the project more expensive. Conversely, the sidewalk, a relatively short segment, not very expensive, but because it's shorter, it connects to fewer things. So we're trying to find a sweet spot with projects like this of how do we both connect it to a lot of things, but also not have it be so massive that it becomes kind of cost prohibitive. Lastly, just a short list, a few of the other areas that the RPOs, kind of keeping an eye on project-wise from other parts of our list. Improvements to NC87 right through the heart of BSL, adding some turn lanes. We have several projects on the list for the Southport-Fort Fisher Ferry, as well as a project for passenger rail from Wilmington to Raleigh that passes through Pender County, which is part of the RPO. And I mentioned earlier, US-7476, several projects along that corridor in Brownsville and Columbus counties. 410 through Chadburn, there's a lot of Myrtle Beach bound traffic that goes through that corridor. And then some other parts of Pender County, US 17, 117, excuse me, going up from Rocky Point, a couple spots in Burgaw, and then some improvements to some of the main corridors in Surf City. So where we're at next, and I should clarify on some of the data from those criteria sheets from specifically the division list, that will change once they have announced which projects from the regional list actually got funded. I can pull those projects out, and that will restructure how competitive other projects that remain unfunded are. But anyway, we will continue to coordinate with our planning partners, other MPOs, with DOT, with our committees to go through this process of assigning local input points for our division list. And that will be talked about and discussed through workshops and through our October and November meetings. And then continually try to engage with groups like this and others to make sure we know what priority projects need to be on our lists moving forward. And with that firehose information, I would be happy to answer any questions that either didn't get to or that I may have created by something else that I said.

All right, thank you. Sure, I'll start. Sam, can you just help us appreciate as a board what we should do with this information, right? Even if R2 or the four or six project you showed us scored number one, there's no guarantee that they will actually be funded, correct? So how do we take, we have, for example, Yacht Drive, which we as a local community believe needs quite a bit of attention in terms of pedestrian and bicycle safety. Does that mean when it comes to budget season in January, when we start getting involved, that we have a really hard conversation to say, hey, do we wait another 10 years to see if the state or the county finally start helping us out? Or is this that clear direction, at least right now, that unless something wild comes out, it's going to be grants or the taxpayers here who pay for projects like that? Yeah, that's a great question.

One thing to keep in mind, this process isn't fast. At best, best case scenario, projects through this prioritization process will take at least five years. And that is very optimistic. That is very generous. This is not a fast-moving process. So yes, if there are high priority, especially in the bicycle and pedestrian space, if there are high priority projects, it I think would be wise on the town's behalf to pursue other ways to get projects like that, whether it's through grants, whether it's through other means. And that's something that the RPO can assist with, whether it's grant applications or anything like that. It's also worth considering when we submit these projects, there is a requirement for a local match for bicycle and pedestrian projects. If the town is also willing to overmatch, that cost benefit part of the score is purely cost to NCDOT. So if there are projects that the town is willing to overmatch their 20%, that will improve that score and make it more likely to be funded through this. So you might not have to be paying 100% of the project cost down the road. Does that answer your question?

And then at the very end, if you have an update on 211, I know folks would love to hear any chatter from the DOT on when you forecast the overpass being in. Any update could be helpful, I know. But I don't want to pivot if folks have more direct questions to your presentation.

The Notice that the the first leg of the 211 widening going towards 17 Stops at Sunset Harbor does that's what's being looked at and scored now?

The Sunset Harbor to 17 is not even being looked at at this point No, so the segment from Sunset Harbor 217 is being looked at it's not in the RPOs planning jurisdiction It was once upon a time. Planning boundaries changed. So it is and it was scored through this process. I did not include it as a standalone slide because I had it filtered for only RPO projects, but it was submitted. The GSAT's planning organization submitted that project and it scored roughly around the same as the segment from 906 to Sunset Harbor.

So a question on safety. Yes. So define that, if you could, as far as what's comprised of the safety scoring.

So there are the four criteria points or categories. And of that safety one, what you're taking into account are the number of crashes, the severity of the crashes. DOT has a metric for crash severity. They have a safety crash risk score that kind of combines the two of the number of crashes and kind of basically the proportion of them that are serious injury, fatal type crashes. And then they have another mechanism for measuring the benefits of those safety improvements. I don't have that off the top of my head of how quite they calculate that. But it's largely kind of a measure of number of crashes and how severe crashes tend to be along that segment.

So the benefit of these road projects as far as enhancing evacuation, that's not factored at all into these discussions?

Currently, evacuation routes are not a metric in the safety scoring. I know that it has been discussed. There is a body referred to as the work group that tries to fill in the gaps of what the STI law leaves either vague or untouched. And that has come up in several of these worker discussions of how to account for evacuation needs. One of the most difficult parts being it's not the same statewide. And for a lot of these scoring factors, they're trying to make them applicable statewide. Those of us on the eastern side of the state maintain that doesn't make it not a problem. That has not been solved yet.

OK. Thank you for that. And one more question. So on Yacht Drive, should we embark, and we find additional some grant sources, and we embark on the Greenway, does that preclude us from working with the RPO to be included in the scoring mechanism? No. We can do them. Potentially, we can do them at the same time.

Yeah. And it would, yeah, we'd have to check more specific details. But that wouldn't. If you started on your own, that wouldn't mean that you can't come back to this process or that we couldn't find a way to do both at the same time. We just need to verify, you know, which kind of what the eligibility limitations may or may not be. But no, I wouldn't rule that out immediately. Thank you, Sam.

If I may, Sam, I ask you about this briefly without forewarning you. In 2022, our town council was told the Regional Transportation Board voted to include the multi-use path in the North Carolina Department of Transportation priority list, which received the highest score from North Carolina DOT, and the state will partner with Oak Island on sidewalks. We set aside $150,000 in the budget in 23-24, and we have yet to touch it. I just heard you say If we would agree to do an overmatch, that may hasten the process. Where are we right now on sidewalks on Oak Island Drive?

So I believe the project, the Maltese Path you were referring, At that time, it was on the north side of East Oak Island Drive from 46th to 65th. That was the project that was submitted. And at that round, it was the highest scoring bicycle and pedestrian project in Brunswick County. Once the town moved forward with constructing the sidewalk from 46th to 56th, we then, in this latest round, submitted a project to do the other, essentially half of that through this kind of town center area to match as a sidewalk. Yes, sir. We did not, and this might have simply been a dropping the ball on my end, include any overmatch from Oak Island in this round of scoring, which is something that if the town still has money set aside for that corridor, We would absolutely revisit in the following, in this next round, when we submit projects again. But as of right now, there is not a funded project for a multi-use path. But the door is not closed. The door is not closed. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir.

Any questions? So, Tom, your last little thing was a little update, if we could.

Yeah, just, I know it's a DOT guy answer. But if you happen to have talked to anyone, I know, Just with summer thankfully coming to a slower close, hopefully that intersection can survive a few more months. But I'm not sure it's even a few more months. So if just you have any update to share.

And can you clarify which intersection specifically you were meaning?

The right at Midway where that overpass would be coming in.

I don't have the NCDOT project update in front of me. I want to say... I don't have a good guess. Because I remember it might have been end of 27 that they're hoping that this widening the full corridor should be pretty wrapped up. I would say don't quote me on that, but I just said it in a public meeting, so I guess you have to quote me on that. I will double check, and I can follow up via email on the most recent DOT project update I have on that corridor. Great. Sorry, that's the best that I have for that one right now.

You mean you don't know every date on every project? I really am trying. I'm trying. That's OK. All right. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. See you.

Thank you.

All right. We have one last presentation from Police Chief Morris on our update on the no-wait zone pedestrian safety initiative.

Good evening, Mayor, Council. Just before I start my presentation, I want to just take a moment to Talk about Dr. Millard's presentation. That was an awesome presentation. My wife and I, we just walked that path about six weeks ago. And it's absolutely beautiful back there. And there's some of those places back there. It's just picture perfect. It's really a gem that's right here in our backyard. So that was a great presentation. I'm glad that's a great cause that he put forward there. It's very, very good. So as you guys know that we've worked on establishing the no-wake zone campaign throughout the summer. So we've come up to the conclusion, come up to the end of the year, and we're going to run it for another week. But we're at a point now where we feel pretty good with it. Just to recap just a few things about why we started. The Yacht Drive is the shared corridor used by vehicles, pedestrians, LSVs, e-bikes, residents, visitors, commercial traffic. And there's always been, for years, raised concerns regarding drivers' behavior, the speed, pedestrians, and the bicycle safety, and integrating those all together. So in response to that, we launched the No Wake Zone campaign to promote a safer yacht drive for everyone to use that. And our goal, not only the police department, but our community, the town, was to improve the safety through education, awareness, community engagement, and then have our police officers have a visible presence on yacht drive throughout the season. Prior to we stuck we started We developed these signs that I think everyone has seen on yacht drive on other areas We put together put together bicycles the walkers the LSVs and Then we launched our campaign on May 22nd down at Veterans Park where we had great community participation. We probably had 60 or 70 folks to show up. It was a great, great turnout. Our residents volunteered to display the signs in their yards. They signed up for the signs, and then we later developed delivered them and put them in their yard. And I think overall it was approximately 80 signs that we put out on Yacht Drive, Northwest First, around 40th Street for the LSVs. And once also the police department each day from 7.30 to 9 a.m. had a presence on Yacht Drive. and also from 6.30 to 8 p.m. on the same day because we felt like that that was our highest time that folks utilized Yacht Drive for their activities. And like I said, the other focused areas were 40th Street and White Lane, Northwest First Street. And when the police, when we had encounters We had rack cards that we passed out to educate the walkers and the folks with LSVs and cyclists once we encountered them. So we'll start with just a few numbers. There's been, as a presentation, 101 days of our activity. And as you can see, the May, June, July, and August You can see the walkers, the LSVs. Special note up here on the top left is the walkers at 134 contacts that we made. Then it goes over to June, then July, and then August. So you can see the decline, the rise, and then the decline back again for each month. Just a breakdown of that. So that's going to be a total of the police department made 633 safety contacts over that course of 101 days. So importantly out of those contacts, 322 of those were people walking. that we come into contact with and educated them, whether it be which side of the road to walk on, whatnot, walking a dog 322 times. Also, bicycles came in second place, where we educated 93 people on bicycles and then 69 LSVs. The construction, the lawn vehicles that park along Yacht Drive, we addressed 25 of those. And then our citizen contacts, that's just when we run across someone and we just talk to them during those designated times, either morning and afternoon. So I felt like that 633 would give us a good snapshot of what is going on on Yacht Drive. And I've had a countless number of people tell me, I didn't realize I was supposed to walk against traffic. So just reaching out, that education component, I think made a huge difference. I tried to ride yacht drive almost every day in the mornings and then sometimes in the afternoon in the mornings. We started off a little rough. And as the days went along, folks, it just kind of changed. And I think if you ride down yacht drive now at 7.30 in the morning, Most people are walking against traffic. The bicycles are riding correctly. So I said all that to say this. We couldn't have done this alone. So our community stepped up when we asked them to. And they've done what we asked them to do, put signs in their yard, talk to their fellow residents, talk to our visitors to reach where we're at right now. And significantly, 51% of all of our contacts were people walking. So our accident reports, and this is specifically for Yacht Drive. Looking back at 2025, there was a total of eight accidents along Yacht Drive, and you can see the summaries there. One was a vehicle in a trash can, three vehicle in mailboxes, three, we had three LSV rollovers. And those rollovers were coming off the Northeast Street. They were always turning, and they tip over. That's where those came from. And LSV in a mailbox and LSV with property damage. Then you look over. Well, that should be 26. And then the green is 26. That's a mistake. I don't know what happened there, but it should be 26. The green is in 2026. We've got five vehicles and one LSV for a total of six accidents. And you can see the crash summary. We had no rollovers, which was a positive. Vehicle, one of them was a vehicle and vehicle in a driveway, a vehicle versus a Street sign, a vehicle and vehicle property damage only, and then vehicle versus a mailbox, and an LSV versus a stop sign. So when it comes to LSVs, I think we made some progress there. And I don't want to attribute all this to the no-wake zone, because some years are higher than lower. They just fluctuate. That's just the numbers of how they've shaken out this year. So what we learned and some takeaways from talking to the residents and talking to the officers that patrolled, myself, is of course it's a shared corridor with many different uses. And we all understand that. And the pedestrians represented a significant portion of the roadway safety. Roadway safety is more than just vehicle speed. You have different modes of transportation competing for a certain length of a road or a certain width of a road, which inherently there's a safety issue there. So that's what I mean when I say a roadway safety involved more than vehicle speed. Education and officer visibility provide opportunities for meaningful interactions and I think a balanced approach is needed as we move forward as education, appropriate police visibility, monitoring, and a long-term infrastructure considerations all have a role in improving the safety along Yacht Drive. And moving forward, we're going to remove the signs by October 1st. I don't want to leave the signs out because then they'll just become part of someone's yard and people don't pay attention to those. What we'll do is we'll regroup and look at it next season and see what direction that we want to take. But we're going to take up the signs by October 1st and we will pick those up. No one will have to bring them to the PD. And continue our education and awareness. We'll continue to monitor our crashes and complaints, our speed. And of course, in the police department's annual report that's posted online, you can see all of our statistics. It's broken down year by year. The year 2025 has been uploaded a few months back, so it's there so folks can, if they want to look at it a little more in depth in what's here. You can look at that and then maintain our police visibility on our identified needs. And then as always, I think we should continue evaluating the infrastructure improvements. Some things that were discussed right before this presentation to enhance the safety of all of our users. So overall, I think that the no-wake zone will continue. And I think that was it, did it fix everything? I don't think so. No, it didn't fix things. But did it make a difference this summer? I think absolutely. I think it did make a difference this summer. And it was well worth the money spent, well worth the time and effort that we pushed forward. And I just can't thank the community enough for just rallying right there with us and supporting us. When we're not there, someone was there being our voice, which made our job much more effective. So that was very much appreciated from the police department. And I think that's it. If some folks have got some questions.

We ought to say it was a great job done. And going down that road as much as I do, there was an obvious difference within a month of this starting. Right. There was a difference. Thank you. Any questions, folks? No?

All right.

As always, job well done, sir.

Thank you, Chief. Just an informal update on the DOT project. And I'm not speaking for DOT. This is very informal. July 2027, that this project between Midway and Southport, the widening should be finished. Now, that's informal. We'll hold you to that. Yeah, we'll hold you to it. Thank you.

Okay, that concludes our presentations for this evening. That brings us to the next one, which is an adjustment in the approval of the agenda. Do we have any adjustments requested of the agenda? No adjustments. All those in favor of the agenda to proceed as going?

I'll make a motion to approve the agenda as presented.

Thank you. Second. All in favor? All right. Well, that brings us to the public comment portion of our meeting.

Yes, sir. I just have one person signed up. Glenn Baker.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Glenn Baker and I live at 110 Northeast 16th Street. And I'm here tonight to advocate for fiscal fairness, public safety, and the most importantly, the protection of our residents living on fixed income. Oak Island is home to many retirees who choose this community to enjoy their hard-earned retirement. But rising inflation, higher property valuations, and daily cost of living increases are putting immense financial pressure on these neighbors. The town must not raise property taxes on our fixed-income residents. Instead of turning to local homeowners when municipal budget demands grow, we must capture the commercial revenue we lose every day. Right now, I've identified three uncaptured commercial activities that are straining our infrastructure without paying their fair share. One is unregistered short-term rentals. Unpermitted short-term rentals function as full-scale businesses in residential zones. They generate heavy trash, parking issues, and calls for emergency services, yet dodge local registration fees and room occupancy taxes. We can solve this by adopting an automated short-term rental compliance software. This technology cross-references online listings on Airbnb, Vrbo, and other entities with county records to automatically identify unregistered hosts. In coastal North Carolina towns, this software pays for itself in under 90 days through back taxes, protecting our local budget without touching property taxes. The other one is off-island vehicle delivery fleet. Outside companies drop fleets of golf carts or LSVs or UTVs directly at vacation homes. They profit from our town-maintained roads without local storefronts, without paying local business taxes and without council review under section 10-35. We should institute a mobile commercial delivery permit, require physical town rental decals and windshields for easy police enforcement, and charge fleet fees to fund road repairs. The third one is commercial beach delivery and setup services. Out of town, Vendors setting up commercial beach cabanas, chairs, and equipment rentals profit directly off of our publicly maintained beach strand without paying commercial right-of-way use fees. Implementing a commercial beach vendor permit ensures these commercial operators contribute directly to beach maintenance. In closing, requiring outside businesses and unregistered hosts to pay their fair share levels the playing field. funds our town services, and ensures we don't force our fixed income seniors to subsidize outside commercial profits. Thank you for your time. All right. Thank you.

OK. Brings us to council reports. Chasey, I believe you started last time. So Tommy, it's your turn.

I'll be brief. I just want to thank staff and all our volunteers for this past weekend. rain or shine I think everyone enjoyed themselves it amazes me how much time staff spends outside of what I would call normal business hours and does it with a smile on their face and it I think makes residents lives better it makes our tourist lives better and I want to thank all of them for their dedication for making our summer a great one

Thank you, Mayor. I have a couple things, hopefully all for the good of the order. On September 28th, our new town manager will begin work here, and we all anxiously await her arrival, and we're excited for you all to meet her. But tonight, I want to say a huge thank you to Kent Jackson, our assistant town manager, who has been our interim town manager since July 1st. Kent willingly took on this additional duty while still fulfilling his regular role of assistant town manager. He's done an extraordinary job keeping the town on track with all the initiatives that we have in process. He's had some tough decisions to make, and he has made those with strong leadership skills. Kent, thank you. I'm extremely grateful that you're a part of our awesome Oak Island team. Secondly, I want to give a shout out to our legal counsel, Lydia Lavelle and Bob Hornick with the Brough Law Firm. They continue to do so many things to help this town. When we brought them on board, we were way behind in so many, so many things, and they have worked tirelessly to catch us up. They help us not only on a daily basis, but they've done extra duty during this interim period. And our citizens have no idea all the things that they help the town with. So we're very fortunate to have their wise counsel and their expertise. And so thank you to you, Lydia, and to Bob. The last thing I want to speak about is a project that's been on the town's radar for nearly decades. 20 years and even more recently in 2022 in the last few months. And I know I've seen the emails that my colleagues and I have received just in the last week with folks asking us to vote against the Williamson tract. I want to tell you that we do not have a vote for or against the Williamson tract. That decision has been made in the past. Our responsibility as a council at this point is to try to come up with a development agreement that is in the best interest of the town and its citizens. And so that is the only thing that we have left to do is work on this development agreement. We are working on it. But we do not have a yes or no vote on this development. Thank you.

As Councilman Brown said, I want to thank the staff and the town for our weekend's activities. Friday night movies was, I've heard nothing but good things about that. Sunset on Summer was a wonderful idea, but Mother Nature put on her own fireworks display. I told the fire chief that our fireworks were nice, but that lightning show was unreal. You can't fight Mother Nature. I did go to the PAR III Advisory Committee meeting and was told that August was so unbearably hot that the financials for revenue at the PAR III course was down. But the good news is that the greens are looking so much better. They've had a two-month program to enhance the greens. That's now been completed and was told the greens look so much better. October 3rd, there's going to be a beach preservation group is going to be doing a beach cleanup meeting at the cabana at 8 a.m. And they announce this every time they do it, and one or two or three people show up. It sure would be nice if 15 or 20 people would show up. at 8 a.m. October 3rd at the cabana, 15 minutes to help them clean up the beach. I also had written down that I wanted to say hats off to Kent Jackson for such a, he kept the boat going down the river. Since July 1st, we've had tough decisions to make, all kinds of questions to ask, and he had the answers. And Kent, I do thank you very much for a job well done, sir. Thank you. SMI report.

Okay. Mine's very small. Great summer. Extremely hot. I had the opportunity to go to the municipal fire chief's meeting with Chief Price and it's very interesting getting to go and talk with different municipalities and the things they're going through that are different than us and how much is the same. It's great. These guys are so dedicated to their craft and what they're doing and the cooperation and community that they have. We're looking forward to it. We have another one coming up next week. So we just keep moving that one forward. And it's amazing what our police and fire department does here. They're just top notch. So, but thank you.

I want to just reiterate what Councilman McHartner said about the Williamson track, that we just say no campaign. We can't say no. It's here. All we can do, though, is to put as much teeth as we can into a development agreement to protect our community and to protect all of you. So please rest assured that this council is working diligently with our legal counsel to protect everyone's best interests and to maintain our quality of life. Thank you.

And last but not least?

much like everybody else sunset on summer was a great event um i'm excited for summer to kind of wrap up and us to take our island back and enjoy it um i was hoping to share an update from the abc board um today but we they have moved their meeting till next week they're going to be talking with the architect about how to move forward with what project or what land they purchase and um I'm excited to be involved in that decision. But other than that, I don't really have anything else for this month.

All right. Great. So that concludes the council reports. That brings us to our next item, which is our consent agenda. We have three items on the consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda?

I make a motion to present the consent agenda as presented. Second. All in favor of the consent?

Passes unanimously. I'll go to the committee appointments. That's what they're all filling out right now. We have appointments to the Park and Rec Advisory Board and appointments to the Business Advisory Board. One unexpired term ending in March of 2027 for the Parks and Rec. And for the business advisory, we have one unexpired term ending September 2027 and four terms expiring September of 2029.

Mayor, this will be easy to report. All four applicants for the Business Advisory Board had unanimous voting to appoint them to the regular terms. And the applicant for the Parks and Rec Advisory Board, Mr. Rokes, also had unanimous appointment.

All right. Thank you very much. Congratulations and thank you to those who were appointed we appreciate everything you do for us and this down That brings us to administrative reports Thank You mayor and council so preparing to respond to uncertainty is

probably the most challenging thing that staff does on a day-to-day week-to-week basis and That was on full display this past Saturday I appreciate the comments that have been made and I'll add my congratulations and appreciation to all the staff who were involved. The culmination of the thunderstorms and the stage we were at with the event, a lot of skills were used that may not be evident, but it was an amazing job of protecting everybody, and letting the celebration continue. So great work there. Before I get into the slides, I have a few additional updates that have come to me. Most favorably, this afternoon we received our second FEMA reimbursement for Hurricane Matthew, the amount of $5.5 million dollars. That was great news to receive. We won't proclaim it the last one, but it is the second one is my understanding. So that was great news. This evening actually started at 4 p.m. this afternoon. The United States Marine Corps is conducting some training exercises in and around the Cape Fear Jetport. I'm sure Mike will be putting some information out about that for the community for awareness if they see or hear some unusual noises, sights. That's happening 4 to 11 p.m. this evening. Last Wednesday, Chief Morrison and I attended an incident management update with NCDOT. Incident management is their program for kind of all hazards preparation for how to evacuate. uh... those sort of things so that was uh... very informative uh... an outcome of that meeting uh... chief morris and assistant chief cook have been named to the brunswick county incident management team so uh... that just another example of how collaboration partnerships uh... kind of pay off so uh... so uh... move on to the other updates So next great news, I want to welcome Jody Maynor tonight as our new finance director. Jody is here with us. Jody, if you want to come up. Thank you, Jody. Thank you. I had the chance to meet her in the office last Thursday, but I did want to let you meet her tonight and let the public meet her. Extremely excited to have her. She is an accomplished finance professional. She's served with the Brunswick County School System. She also served at Sunny Point in that setting. Very excited to have Jody on board. So if you want to say a couple words.

I appreciate the opportunity. I've worked really hard to to get to this point I'm looking forward to working with everybody and Working with the budget and learning all of the different things It's a lot and but I'm excited and looking forward to the future Welcome

Next, so we have talked quite a bit about the boards and committees. So there's been a lot of work on the handbook. I think it was the May 12th, the sixth edition has recently been kind of compiled and confirmed as being a fair representation of the work, an accurate representation of the work that has happened up to this point. We have staff liaisons that have monthly meetings. And we're working on onboarding training for new committee members. But we also want to talk about enhancing coordination. So in the handbook, one of the roles of the staff liaison is to work with the chair and the vice chair to have quarterly meetings uh... between the mayor and the uh... boards and committees So that is something that needs more definition because, as you know, including the PAR III subcommittee, we have a total of seven, I think, boards and committees. So if you kind of do that math, that doesn't really work. So I just wanted to kind of introduce... of thoughts uh... that has been discussed at our agenda meetings about potentially having coordinated training between some of the boards for instance environmental uh... the environmental committee uh... the business advisory board parks and rec advisory board are the primary examples of boards that have similar or related topics. And it may be advantageous for those groups to occasionally have meetings together in different combinations. So that is a concept that staff is considering. would invite and appreciate council feedback and input on as we are trying to put together a process to make these quarterly meetings between the mayor and advisory boards happen. So that's something that we're working on. A strategic plan, Hallie had sent an email out. The strategic plan is now available on the website. It's pretty easily located under government tab and the administration page. The public can go directly to the strategic plan and view the items, the projects, and the current status and updates. Brunswick County the beginning of last week. I believe it was they went to their stage one voluntary water restrictions So that is that's the current state with the county and water conservation Burn ban continues to be in effect going all the way back to July 13th. I think when it was originally put in place and So tonight I'm going to talk about a few projects that we haven't highlighted or updated in recent meetings. One of those is there's been a project description for an additional canal crossover at Southwest 6th Street. Earlier this year we did have a preliminary cost Opinion done for that it is extremely high cost Probably in excess of 1 million dollars all told to do that project so We're continued to look for grants upcoming in 2027 and look ahead to next year's budget for you know how we might be able to accomplish this project Fire Station 1 was a priority project in the current FY26-27 budget. We put out RFQ, Request for Qualifications, in July, and those are due back on September 15th. And Chief Price and I will review those proposals, and we anticipate being able to make a recommendation in October for the design portion of the project. So that's the update there. This is a little different. So our mainland wastewater facility is a non-discharge facility, but the permit has to be renewed in five-year increments. So we're in a renewal period. The application package is complete. I received it last week and So I'll be signing that and we'll be submitting that to NCDEQ later this week for a new five-year extension. The PAR 3 comment here is the PAR 3 is included in the permit as an available location for future applications. to use essentially reclaimed water for irrigation and so forth. So that's why PAR III is part of that permit. Paving continues on the west end. As far as the work is done, they're about 50% complete and their contract ends in November. I anticipate they'll finish well ahead of that November date. And some of the great images that Mike and his team captured from Saturday's sunset on summer and also the movie night. So cameos by some of our town staff there. Good time was had by all. And here's some of the website statistics. Mayor, that's my...

story tonight. Any questions?

Kent, just one. We spoke about this earlier today. So we've got two town-owned parcels of land on Elizabeth Drive that are currently being marketed. Unfortunately, due to the advice of our town realtor, they're not being listed in the multi-listing service, which means nobody knows about it. Nobody in the community knows about it. None of the realtors, developers, I mean, nobody knows about it. And I did some research and found other towns and municipalities in the state of North Carolina that you can follow the general statute and still put in the multiple listing service. There's absolutely ways around that. Because if we do not get this in the multiple listing service, I am very concerned we're leaving money on the table. And the offers and bids that we do get for those properties may be insufficient due to what the value of those lots really are.

Okay, thanks for keeping that in front of us. I know that the town attorney is doing some additional investigation and research into those examples that you cited and how that might relate to our properties. I did learn just this afternoon that LoopNet is a site where those properties are advertised. And there's another I can't recall. But point taken. We'll continue to search for an opportunity there. Thank you.

Ken, if I may, thank you for your report, sir. You mentioned Southwest 6 crossover. And of course, people on the other side of Middleton Drive, they have to come all the way to Middleton to get to the beach. They don't have any crossovers on the West End. Are you implying that that priority is moving higher up on the list?

I don't think that's my, that's not my message. I'm just, it's a, it's a, it's kind of a, current status i mean you know we are this is something that and we're continuing to gain you know additional information where it lies in priority certainly we're working as far as pedestrian projects some of our top priorities or uh... the additional projects on east oak island drive for the traffic signal In the future, a pedestrian crossing at 58th. Those are our top priorities. But this one is in the mix. It's not necessarily an indication that it's rising in priority. It's just being further evaluated.

I know that two years ago, we balked at the estimated price would be maybe a half a million dollars a couple years ago. And now we're getting the sticker shock that may be in the million dollar range.

These are the sorts of questions that when we update our strategic plan next year, because I'm pretty sure that crossover was in our current, I think it was explicitly called out. Or when we get to our budget meetings. Or, yeah, most importantly, yeah.

And when we did have the budget meeting, it was actually the decision, well, discussion we had was not going to be in the 26-27 budget, but it would be in the 27-28 budget for discussion.

Right. Kent, I just want to thank you for mentioning the potential for joint boards and committees meetings. Just this afternoon, the mayor and Mayor Pro Tem and I met with the chair and vice chair of the business advisory board and Part of that conversation was they said, we really wish at some point we could meet with other boards and find out what's going on, what other folks are working on. And so I think that's a good idea, and I hope you'll figure out a good way to do it.

Certainly, yes, and that kind of evolved from a comment and conversation with Council Member Brown at the agenda meetings last month. So we've been kind of tracking and trying to align that with the handbook actually getting completed and so forth. Actually, Council Member Brown's comment about strategic plan reminds me We have started the staff portion of the strategic plan update. Starting in mid-August, we started having meetings with the different department leadership to review the current strategic plan and talk about what would be different in the update and we have one department left to do and then we'll be able to compile a comprehensive update from the department perspective. Then that will allow us once the new manager is on board to, you know, then decide on the approach for the council and public participation.

And just to supplement, Councilwoman Kartner, yeah, I've been talking to Kent about that idea for a while. I know Paul and Bill would love support possibly from, say, the Business Advisory Board on how to get monies for some of their viewing docs. And when the EAC heard about possible educational opportunities along Big Bend, just organic ways to collaborate and just make it easier is, I think, absolutely a great strategy.

Okay, thank you.

That concludes administrative reports. That brings us to the old business. This first one is discussion of the proposed rezoning.

All right, so tonight we're not discussing the rezoning cases themselves. This is more so staff looking to town council for direction on these rezonings. So two general use rezoning requests were presented to the planning board in June for the 801 Ocean Drive and 705 Ocean Drive parcels. So that's going to be the pier. and then the 801 event center. Planning board passed a motion to deny the general use rezoning request, but continued the discussion at the meeting considering possible conditional use rezoning. And so like I said earlier, we're just looking for direction on how council would like staff to proceed with these requests. So looking at those two options, general use rezoning, you're looking at all uses allowed by right or by special use permit in the proposed zoning district. So in this case, the community business CB zoning district. The boards do not consider or cannot limit the decision to specific uses. So even let's say in a hypothetical if an applicant said, I know I'm changing this general use rezoning to CB, but really I'm just going to build a store. You can't take that into account. You have to take into account all uses allowed in that district. For a general use rezoning, no master development plan or site plan is required with the approval process. Later on down the line when they get ready to build, of course we'll have to do that, but for the rezoning, They will not. Conditional use rezoning, the board considers specific uses proposed by the applicant. For our ordinance, a master development plan is required, and specifically our ordinance says that that master development plan has to be sealed by either a surveyor, an architect, or a convener. So there is some cost associated with it because those plans have to be prepared. Additionally, it requires a public input meeting. This is a separate meeting from planning board or town council whereby a presentation is done kind of explaining the project and then the public is given opportunity to provide comments or share concerns. All of that is compiled into a brief report and then that would be supplied with the application when it goes back to planning board and town council. And that's all I have, it's pretty short.

Okay, so you're looking for direction from us.

Yes.

On how we would like to proceed with this. Comments, thoughts?

I've started a few times.

I just have a couple of questions that probably isn't the direction you're looking for, but just for my benefit. Did planning board deny our request unanimously?

That might be a good question for Lisa. I cannot remember offhand.

I can look it up while we're in here. Take me just a second if you want to.

Just to make, because I don't want to see this on Facebook. When I discuss anything on these two parcels tonight, I am not including the peer proper. I just want to make that crystal clear. I will not vote to sell, change, alter, access, or somehow not keep the peer proper, town-owned, protected, conserved, I want to just make that crystal clear right at the beginning of this section.

That has been put forth by all of us as well. OK.

Thank you. Hopefully that'll give it the evils.

Stop the Facebook deal. All of us want to keep that amenity for the people. And unless Councilman Cardiner had a few?

Go right ahead.

So I would like you to maybe help us understand if there is a third path. and what the steps would be for that path to create a new district altogether. It sounded like, in my opinion, the reason the planning board did not approve the general use for CB was because of the volume of by-right uses. And while maybe at the end of the day, no one's going to build a gas station right there, things have happened in this town that I'm sure many people up here said, oh, that'll never happen, so move forward. So if I don't, my position as a conditional use rezoning is not of utility to this board because And I know we have never voted or really talked about it in public. But as I understand, I don't believe this board is looking to redevelop those two lots itself. So if a conditional use was, in fact, awarded to the town after spending staff time and resources to put together all of the items that are required of it and sells a piece or the entire complex, the new owner would have to do the exact same thing. So to me, that would be a waste of time and money. So is there a third option that we could create? A boardwalk district, you call it whatever you want, where similar to the exercise that the planning board started is we would go through buy right uses so that should this board or a future board decide to sell one parcel or both parcels, we have at least been able to say we've begun the process to ensure the uses align at least with how the five of us vote and also stop what I believe, and I won't speak for the rest of the board, but at least one of my big items is there aren't going to be 10 giant homes built there if one day a piece or all of it is sold.

Yes. I mean, you could create another zoning district. The benefit being that if you're aiming to create the new zoning district and then rezone it to that new district, you are not having to do the master development plan and public input meeting, but you are still sort of doing the same thing that conditional use rezoning does, which is specify specific uses that you want in that area. You're just not having the site plan part of it.

But so do we have a process where we could create a new district in our ordinances? Would it be direct planning board? The desire of council is to complete the exercise, which it seemed like they attempted to start, If you're looking for direction, that's what I need the information.

I believe it would follow the same process of a rezoning. It would be brought before the planning board and then go to town council. Lisa might need you to check in if some sort of public input meeting might be needed. But offhand, just looking at our ordinance, I don't know of anything like separate and a special process that's been designated for that purpose. To my knowledge, it would follow a similar process as a regular rezoning.

I'll let someone else speak because those are my initial question Taylor From time to time we say The 801 complex has been a financial burden to us And from time to time people say we need to get rid of the 801 center and not be in private enterprise If we do want to go down that path I Is putting conditional zoning on it, is that making it over-regulated where it's more burdensome for somebody to purchase it?

I'm not sure if more burdensome, but it limits what can be done there, and depending on how many uses you approve, it could severely limit it. So if, let's say, you only said you wanted restaurants and event centers, only someone who is interested in doing one of those two uses is going to be interested in that property, unless they are also willing to maybe go through the rezoning process again and redo it.

And you said there would be more expenses if it was a conditional use. Can you walk us through what those expenses would be?

The town would have to hire a professional, whether that's a surveyor, architect, or engineer, to develop a master development plan. for both of those parcels. I think Kent had a roundabout number for that. I'm not sure how exact that is, but it would be a few thousand dollars for sure. How many thousand?

The rough estimates I had were 15,000 range.

If we had general use Could we put stipulations in the general use conveyance?

No, sir. Not for the rezoning. Now, I'm not sure if you could explore like a deed restriction or something like that. But for the rezonings, you can only do conditions of approval with a conditional use rezoning.

So at this point, you're not asking us to vote on anything. You're just asking us for guidance to take back to the planning board to pursue further.

Yeah, I want you to tell me what to do.

Mayor, if I may jump in. I did get the answer to my question, and I had a couple of questions. The answer to the question is planning board unanimously denied our request. This is really simple for me. And the sheet that you gave us with CB and CR districts side by side in the table of uses and what's allowed and what's not. I don't know if council's concerns were conveyed to planning board, but I remember us sitting in a budget meeting and talking about the reason we wanted to get this out of the CR district is because we didn't want mega houses on those lots should somebody buy them and tear down the buildings. Well, under CR, houses are permitted. Under CB, they're not, period. Not under any condition are they. And when I look through here and do across each use that's allowed, there's not a whole heck of a lot of difference between CB and CR because we purposefully put the planning board through an exercise to take away the P's and the S's and make them PS's and SS's. It's real simple for me, folks. I'm going to support going the CB district, not the CR district. That would be my vote to give. Not doing the conditional use. Not doing the conditional use.

That's crazy. I agree with that. That's what I would like to do as well. The longer we wait. It keeps pushing back that window. And should we decide to sell the 801 center, the longer we wait, the more contracts they're going to continue to book. And we've got wedding events booked until October of 2027. So we push this back, and we establish a new zoning district, which is interesting. My concern is we're going to be a year, 18 months out before we can really do anything. I think CB, we've got plenty of protections that are in there. And the biggest fear, again, that I have, that we all have, is that Eisenhower, John Hamilton, they have an opportunity to buy it, they're buying it, and they're putting up 13-bedroom, 13-bath houses. And that is not what the community wants. They've asked us to help protect them from that. And I think this gives us the protection they're looking for. In addition to ensuring that we continue to benefit from the commercial tax base that we're getting from that facility that's over there.

And because it's already gone to Planning Board, if you choose to hear it, it can come back to the Town Council as the proposal of a general use rezoning at the next meeting.

And as far as cost goes, there's no associated cost. If we do the conditional use rezoning, we are talking about roughly $15,000 and some public hearings. If we do the general use rezoning, there is really no cost involved to the town for that.

We briefly, in our two-on-twos, discussed the dwelling attached to a business. So we changed this. I mean, it's already in the CR, but a CB. And we have a small ice cream shop with a window surrounded by, is that no longer a dwelling attached to a business, a business attached

So me and Lisa did some digging earlier. There actually was a definition passed back in 2024, but it's just not currently reflected in Unicode. But the definition says predominantly the business is the predominant use. So that does kind of avoid that situation.

And it's also the use is PS. So we have an opportunity in there to.

To beef up too. But we'd have to know what the S is.

Well, you have to look up the law to get supplemental.

That's what I mean, to see if we could add that definition to it if it's not memorialized.

But it's allowed in both of them.

Right. But no, that was my point, is wondering if there is any of these items that defeat our concern around residential. Gotcha. That was the one that jumped out to me.

I think the disappointing thing is that we talked about this back in April.

We're just here.

And we really wanted to get moving on this. And we thought it was going to happen quickly. And I'm disappointed that it's September. Planning board didn't even meet in July and August. We haven't seen this for the first time now. We've lost almost six months. that we were hoping to move or do something with that property. I'm disappointed.

Well, I'll give the planning board credit that the exercise they did do, I think, was in good faith, whether it was a lack of. To me, the ultimate question is, do we decide today whether we're selling 801 and the pier complex in its entirety, or do we start step one, which is we create either through existing zoning districts, or conditional use for zoning, or a new zone altogether, to start addressing concerns that could get us closer to a majority to decide to sell 801 and or the complex as a whole. If at our budget meeting, at the first meeting after, we sat down and as a five sum agreed to start the process of selling the complex as a whole, I think the direction to planning board would have been a little more clear. If I recall the meeting, Lydia was struggling not in a poor way, but there was the worry about, well, do we have to worry about how the peer itself is going to be maintained? There were a lot of other ancillary conversations, I think, driving the way in which they conducted their questions and denial. Whether it comes back again as a unanimous denial, I can't forecast. But I do give them credit for asking some questions that hopefully when we go back and review that meeting again, and I guess you said it won't have to go to them again, those questions can help inform us of the risks that, if we haven't already come up with, can help drive our decisions on selling both, one, the entire complex as a whole.

So if I could, I think that I agree. But I think the discussion tonight is not about selling anything. It's simply about rezoning. So if we could limit the discussion tonight just to rezoning, and should we decide to rezone it to commercial business tonight, then at some point in the future, we could pick up discussions about what the future of those are going to be. I don't want to lump them together right now for the purpose of this discussion.

But I think the onus is on us to put it on the agenda to have that discussion sooner rather than later.

So do we wish to do a motion tonight? I don't believe we can. Can we? We cannot.

No, sir. If there's just a consensus for council to move forward, we can schedule the public hearing for the rezoning for the October agenda.

So we can do that for the next meeting. Public comment. Okay, sorry. Public hearing. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Got it. Questions? Is there anybody opposed to going the CB route rather than the CR route?

I think there, I hear, I would have, I see what the planning board did, but I see a dozen more ways that we can continue, and I agree with Councilman Trulow that I don't want to get into the sell or not or which piece, but I think there are other opportunities for us to continue to steer any sale and future development to address some of the concerns that planning board brought up. So I'm comfortable with the litany of buy-write uses that CB allows for that maybe planning board in their discussion had issues with. So that's a long way of saying yes, I'm on board.

Any other questions or concerns on this? Okay, so we'll move that up to the October meeting.

Okay. All right, and I think I'm also next. Okay. All right. The next presentation is for a business license request for a recreational vehicle business called High Tide Power Sports. So Dustin Owens is applicant and owner of the business, is requesting the approval of a business license to operate within the town. The business is proposed to operate seven days a week between 8 AM and 5 PM. All new TVs are proposed to be stored off-site and will be delivered directly to customers for short-term use while on vacation. And I should note, when I put in the hours of operation, that's for the business itself. Of course, people who are driving around could use them any time. All vehicles are registered in Oak Island. And they project to maintain an inventory of about 5 to 10 vehicles in their fleet. So some regulatory compliance. Our local ordinance, so section 10-35, requires business license requests, which propose the operation of any motorized recreational riding device, whether for use on land or water, be heard before the board and issued at the discretion of council. Some state compliance. State statute 20-121.1, operation of a low-speed vehicle, mini truck, or modified utility vehicle on certain roadways makes certain UTV street legal on roads with a posted speed limit of 55 miles per hour or less when modified with the specific equipment. And then that's just our suggested motion language. And I think Dustin is here, if you have anything.

Welcome.

Thank you, Mayor.

All right, I'm sure people are going to have a bunch of questions for you. For change, I'll actually start my questions.

OK.

I know that in your business proposal you talked about the minimum age to rent would be 25. Yes, sir. How about to operate?

Same, ran and operates 25. 25? Yep. Okay. So legally, 16, 18, they're able to operate it, but I'm going to have some pretty strict guidelines across the business and a zero tolerance policy, so it's going to be a 25 minimum to operate.

That's a big thing because a 16-year-old's getting there, they drive a little different than a 25-year-old.

Exactly.

And my other question on them is noise. Is the muffler system on them?

So all mufflers are factory emissions. They do get noisy when you add exhaust and tunes and all that. But factory emissions, they operate and sound goes off a decibel. So the decibels off a UTV is about the same as a pass and pickup truck. So it operates about the same noise level.

Because some of them modify them and they're just brutal. That's not what we want.

Yeah. I live on an island. I don't want to hear that either.

Other questions? If I may ask, just to clarify it. Yes, sir. and you quoted the state statute, you will be in compliance with all the dimensions, the height, the speed capability, what have you, all the headlights and seatbelts. You'll be in state conformity.

Yep, so it will go through actually like an inspection, like a vehicle will. Same thing every year, go through the process, tag and title, everything's going to be legal with the state of North Carolina. So everything goes through the right steps.

OK, thank you. And in your proposal, you said you would have a million dollar insurance.

Yes, sir. Minimum.

And an opportunity to buy additional rider, if?

Yes, yes.

I don't have any other questions. Thank you. Yes, sir.

So you just told us that you will limit rental and driving 25 year old people. Yes. Once you drop that cart off on this island, how can you assure us that only 25 year olds are going to drive?

Well, that's the process. We're going to basically a very, very thorough contract that are going to sign, you know, and if they disobey it, then, you know, that's a zero tolerance policy and it's going to be complicated.

And how are you going to find out if they disobey it?

Well, that's about the same as driving a golf cart underage, so it's kind of one of those ordeals where...

So it becomes our responsibility then to police the rules that you're setting.

Yeah, well, it goes along with all vehicles and such. So it's just one of those things that we're going to have those guidelines in place. And obviously, if they are underage or whatever, then it's going to be taken on the spot. We're also offering GPS tracking on everything. So any out of control speeds or anything like that, we'll get a notification right away. And that's a zero tolerance as well. That'll be picked up.

Yeah, I could. So I want to ask you some of the statements you made in your application, I thought were fairly strong, that you said the benefits of our equipment are a much safer option for families because they're reinforced cage more so than LSVs. Yes. So is that true?

opinion or is that something that you can based upon oh that's fact yeah so they they're made for more of like a their own road or you know farm equipment or off-road so they are reinforced with durable Cajun versus just your standard poles that hold up your your LSD roofs so and with that you have your full seat belt system six-seater you got doors windows it's weatherproof just open opens the door to like a more of a selection for you know, transportation across the island. And it's not going to be for everybody, but it's just going to be an alternate option for somebody that, you know, a family of six wants to get in and have that. You know, it's an option.

So I did a little bit of research after reading that, and what I found was that consumer product safety commissions actually said the opposite. And they said that... Subliminal oversteer is an unstable condition for UTBs that can lead to rollover, especially given their low rollover resistance. And this instability can occur on level ground and especially on pavement. And a lot more in here said that these UTBs are really made to be off-road. They're not made to be driven on the asphalt.

Yeah, and that's an easy understanding, but it's really in how it's presented and how it's used. So in this environment, 35 and we have a short stretch of 45, you're not going to have those incidents. It's more or less like a smaller version of a Jeep Wrangler. Those are kind of prone to rollovers and off-road use, so same concept.

So do you feel the business that you're applying for, that is specifically targeting tourism, correct?

Yeah, give or take.

Yeah. So I think that when I have talked to a lot of people in the community about this, we think about, before we give a business license, that we need to look out for the benefits to our residents, to our community.

Absolutely.

We had 100,000 people here on July 4th weekend. Right. And that's my opinion. That's plenty of tourism. We don't need to do anything to encourage even more tourism. Several months ago, there was a banana boat rental company that decided they wanted to do that here in Oak Island. We denied that. So if this is just going to feed yet more tourism at the expense of our community, I'm trying to figure out where's the benefit to our residents if we approve this license. And I cannot for the life of me figure what that is.

Yeah, so it's going to be, I mean, there will be rentals in off-season, and one thing that I plan to offer is more of like a monthly rental for residents who just, you know, want to have a more of a, it's because it's climate control inside, so it's just another option. So, and with that, I mean, it'll be catered to tourists, but it's not going to be, you know, I'm not going to project that and try to bring in more tourists just with it. The primary idea of the whole business is to be more of a golf cart and e-bike business with just a few select of the subsides and just as an alternate option.

So you just said something about, so right now you're applying for the UTV.

Yeah.

So the plan for you is to go into the golf cart, e-bike?

Yeah, just a little bit of everything. It's like just a selection of vehicles for everyone. or transportation across the island.

Any other questions? Yeah, sorry. If I missed it, how many vehicles was the current

So the idea for the cyber side is probably more or less just around five, not a lot. And that's going to take some time to generate that to really build that to that. And then storage is going to be off-site. But all vehicles will be registered on the island and delivered. So eventually, a standalone location business front would be ideal. But just with the small fleet, it's not really ideal right now.

So five, they'll be registered. in the town of Oak Island. Because I hear Councilman Trullo's concerns. And Lydia, this is where I get lost around what conditions we can place. you know, where will you gas up these vehicles? Will it be at an Oak Island gas station where, when they need work, is there someone in town who can be your body shop giving jobs and work to Oak Island? And, you know, Lydia, to the extent the answer is yes, I've got my guy at Boys Under the Hood, can we... place conditions like you must use reasonable efforts to always, when you are the one filling up tanks, fill up in Oak Island, when it has work, needing done to the extent it doesn't break down right next to wherever you're storing it. You bring it to Oak Island to get repaired. Can we place restrictions on number of vehicles so that should this boom and he wants to buy 20 more, the original business license is for five? Can we place limits on rider age and other things that I imagine would be more strict than state law. What are the bounds for the conditions we can place on this license?

You're authorized to regulate vehicles on roads that you are responsible for, kind of like how you do A few months ago with golf carts, you said here, not here, whatever. So you do have a degree of discretion. Now I want to ask Taylor if she has any insight anymore into the conditions on businesses. And I'm double checking the code, but it seems to me when you all are the ones granting the business license, at your discretion, you're able to come up with agreed upon conditions with the applicant.

And he can obviously reject them and they're not okay. So it is a okay coming. Yes. All right So when it comes to the safety and chief you can shoot me a dirty email after this meeting Where where do you and chief price stand for? You know, you know if one of these vehicles gets hit by a car I imagine you may do a little bit better than your if you're in an LSV, but I the speed in which these can go are quite a bit more than an LSV. So being the receiving end of an accident, it may be safer. But in terms of doing damage, running into another car or individual, you sort of lose me there. Is that sort of the balance that we have to appreciate? Or do we take into account, to Councilman Chulo's, if this truly is a tourism-driven business, The areas on the island where you can really speed up to 50, 60, 70 are very limited. So if you've got some grandkid coming off season and they're on yacht, they absolutely could do some damage. But to the extent having the ability to reach those speeds for the majority of when they may be rented out is very limited. Is this sort of how you would evaluate determining whether you agree with if they're safer or not?

I think I'll put this into perspective from an LSV standpoint. I think the side-by-side UTV is going to be a little safer due to it has a roll cage, more so than an LSV. However, it doesn't reach the level of a truck or a standard vehicle. So it's somewhere in between there, as far as the safety aspect goes. So one thing that I do want to weigh in, something that you had mentioned, Councilman Brown, was We tried several years ago when we had the LSVs to further regulate those because right now our LSVs, we require them to be registered with the state of North Carolina. My question to our police attorneys was could I over-regulate that? Could I make them come by the police department and get a permit specifically for the LSV rental companies that were off island that brought LSVs here so I could educate them. Their answer was no. I cannot over-regulate them if we require them to have a North Carolina license plate on them. It's just like a car, just like a vehicle. We can't over-regulate that. So that was the direction I had got several years ago when I crossed that bridge. Thank you. If I may.

I want to address three or four things that's been said. Councilman Brown expressed concern someone going down Yacht Drive 50 or 60 mile an hour in a side-by-side. I don't think you're saying we should also ban cars and trucks from Yacht Drive because they also are going to go 50 or 60 miles. This is much ado about nothing. We have the reputation of not being friendly to businesses that want to come to Oak Island. A man's come in here and said, I'm going to comply with every state regulation. I will do exactly what the state requires that I do. And we're still trying to over-regulate him. Cars drive 50, 60 mile an hour. His side-by-side can maximum 45.

They alternate just depending on the size.

His documents say 55.

They can operate on 55 and under.

55? They are legal in the town of Oak Island. Golf carts are legal. Corvettes are legal. Trucks are legal. Side by sides are legal. Now the only difference is somebody wants to rent side by sides. And we're trying to figure out how to chase a business away from coming to Oak Island. We're not going to make a million dollars worth of tax revenue off of it, but we're going to get the reputation of saying, we have a red carpet. Please bring your business to Oak Island. I don't think we need to make this man jump through any more hoops. He's going to comply with every law that the state requires him to comply with. It's a Pandora's box if you start getting upset at Corvettes and trucks and nice cars.

The difference for me in this situation is what benefits our residents and what doesn't. And I will welcome any business to this island who will benefit our residents. I have received several emails and a call this past week since the agenda came out that said, please do not allow these vehicles on this island. We already have people who own them here, and they're a nuisance. They're allowed. Please don't allow this. And if it were a business that benefited the residents of our island, I would support it 100%. But I'm tired of these itinerant businesses coming on our island.

Let me, if I may, tell you how it will benefit the people of Oak Island. And that is always my first concern, is in the best interest of the people of Oak Island. It's in the best interest of... Shagger Jack's. It's in the best interest of Old Bridge Diner. It's in the best interest of every restaurant here to say more tourists are coming to town because Oak Island has one more amenity for them. I'm in favor of walking on the pier. It's free. People come because they can walk on the pier for free. They can go to the concerts on Friday night. It's another amenity. This gentleman's wanting to rent them a side-by-side. Restaurants will be happy that somebody from Raleigh brought their family to Oak Island because they can rent a side-by-side. Overregulation is not a good idea.

Can I add something?

Of course.

So just to your point about how it benefits our residents, they're not going to come just to rent a side-by-side. They're coming to the beach. This will just capture more of their dollars while they're here. And that eventually, there was a little beach chair company that came to this town. And people thought, oh, well, how is it going to benefit? Well, now it's grown, and we employ how many people? We generate a ton of sales tax revenue. So while he may not generate a ton of property, and we're going to get his property tax, If we say yes, if not, he has, and this is the elephant in the room, he can go across the bridge and open a business and deliver them over here and we get none of the dollars. So his little dollars today in five years could be more golf carts or whatever. I mean, our business has evolved over the years. I have a hard time. The same people that want to say what's in it for the residents don't want their taxes to go up. But yet here's a little drop. It's a drop in the bucket into our tax base. We can't have it both ways here. And he's trying to do it the right way. He could be doing it. And I'm not going to say it's the wrong way, because we leave the doors open. He could do it and register them like there's a golf cart company here that they're all registered in Charlotte. And we don't want to be bothered by golf carts. And now he's given people an option to be, in my mind, a little bit safer, can actually go the speed limit. And here we're arguing that with him again.

I think this is a perfect example of a issue that there is, in my opinion, a very middle ground that we as a collective can come to an agreement with. We have a law that passed. in 2021, I believe, a handful of these vehicles are on our streets now. The first instance of it moving into the commercial area. There's an ordinance on our books that has highlighted this type of business brings additional risk. To me, the purpose of this license is not for council to decide, you know, I enjoy this activity, I enjoy this Offering service or goods it's to find ways to address the risks of these unique types of businesses if we place conditions based not on anything that we've said today, but solely the applicant you have to be 25 to rent it you have to be 25 to drive it currently limited to five vehicles it's registered in Oak Island and in One year, he comes back and says, I want 10 more. We can come up with more conditions, or some of us can say, five is where I stop, 10 is where I move to. Heck, maybe his competitor comes in and drives him to a different focus. The LSVs and the electric bikes are the more popular items. I don't want to shoot this down and then, you know, some side business to Councilwoman Bynum's point finds a way in without going the correct way. So I intend to vote in favor of this with reasonable conditions that are tied specifically to what the applicant proposed.

Mr. Brown, if I may interject, sir. Instead of five, he put in his proposal five to ten. Let's not tie his hands. Let's go with ten and the other language you've mentioned.

Are you OK with five tonight? I mean, Taylor, help me appreciate, does he submit, is there a monetary piece to the business application? And to the extent his business evolves, changes, increases, he has to come back to the extent that, I mean, I guess if he doesn't meet the conditions, his license is revoked. And so he would have to either amend it or ask for a new one.

The permit price is the same whether he's got 5, 10, 15. It's just a business license.

And you would have to come back to us if he was no longer meeting the conditions of the original license?

Yes, if you do place conditions of approval on it and he's no longer meeting them, then yes, the permit can be revoked and he'd need to start over.

Okay. I wouldn't quit my day job if I could only rent five.

What would be, let's ask you, what would be a fair number that you think you're going to start with?

A fair number is probably, honestly, five. Those things are a lot more costly than a golf cart. Some of them are priced the same as a truck or so. So the money, to be honest, is really not there. It just gives an alternate option for transportation. And if somebody doesn't want to rent a golf cart, it just gives them a safer look at getting around the island.

It's a start. It's a beginning for you.

It's a start, yeah. So like I said, five is fair. That's more than fair, I think.

All right. So I'll make a motion to approve the business license with the following conditions. The vehicles continue to be stored off island. It's limited to five vehicles. All five are registered in Oak Island. You have to be 25 to both rent and drive the vehicles. And then to the extent any of this is enforceable, you'll use your best efforts to fill these up in town gas stations. And to the extent you're able to utilize one of our body shops, repair shops, you'll patronize their businesses as well.

Absolutely yes, and I mean the idea to for maintenance on them is to offer jobs So you know if I could have one or two positions open up to where I could bring you know help from somebody on the island I mean that's all for an employment for residents as well, so Okay, do I have a second I'll second it all those in favor discussion discussion when I think about

So back in September, we received a report from the state on the retail and service marketplace snapshot in Oak Island. Things that are lacking here for retail and services are furniture, home furnishings, appliances, home centers, paint and wallpaper, nursery, garden center, and farm supplies, cosmetics and beauty supplies, women's clothing, family clothing, shoes, jewelry, luggage, and leather goods, sporting goods, hobbies, toys and games, books, used merchandise, and full service restaurants. And I applaud you for what you want to do, but UTB rentals are not on the list. Banana boat rentals are not on the list. And vape shops was not on the list. I mean, this is what our community is asking for. This is not what our community is asking for in the business that you're intending to promote.

Well, it's not like a familiar business around here. So I feel like it's new to the eye of a lot of people. They're not aware of what the opportunity or what it could bring. But yeah, it's not a common thing that you see. So it is fairly new.

Any other discussion? Okay. We have a motion on the table to approve with conditions as set forth. All those in favor? All those opposed? Motion passes 3-2. Thank you, counsel. That does conclude our business this evening, correct? All right. Do I have a motion to adjourn?

I'll make a motion to adjourn.

Second. All those in favor? We are now adjourned. Thank you.