City Council - workshop

Brock, we good? All right. All right, good afternoon. I'd like to welcome everyone to the August 10th, 2026 workshop. I'm Mayor PJ Conley for presiding over today's workshop. First, I'd like to call on our city clerk for the roll call.

Thank you very much.

We'll now move on to approval of the agenda. Any more changes? No changes? All right. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda?

So moved. Second.

All right. Motion's been made by Mayor Pro Tem Foreman, seconded by Councilmember Jones. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay.

move on to new business number one thank you mayor item number one is an overview of the relationship between the city of Greenville and the housing authority for the city of Greenville and assistant city manager today Alexander will come forward to give presentation good afternoon mayor and City Council

As the city manager said, I am standing before you today to provide an overview of our relationship with the housing authority of the city of Greenville. And so just want to kind of set the stage in terms of why we're here. The city has seen a large influx in complaints that have required a lot of involvement from city staff to ultimately get to a resolution. And in June of 2026, we actually received correspondence from the Department of Housing and Urban Development regarding some noncompliance with inspections dating back to 2024. These were life-threatening deficiencies that could lead to a high risk of death if they weren't resolved. And we were able to get confirmation from HUD in July of this year that the Housing Authority is now in compliance with all of those outstanding violations. Based on that background, in June, City Council requested that we provide some information about our relationship with the Housing Authority and how Um, there might be some overlap or how we collide. Uh, they wanted to, um, learn about elevated concerns regarding substandard housing conditions, and also wanted to talk about tools where we could mitigate maybe some of the issues we were seeing and how we might be able to get more involved to get our arms around that. Um, so just want to kind of set some, um, foundation in terms of the purpose of the housing authority. It is to promote safe and sanitary public housing here in the city. The Housing Authority is a creature of statute and local resolution. So Chapter 157 of the North Carolina General Statutes really lays the authority in terms of this particular allowance. And so within that law, either the city can run the Housing Authority, the Redevelopment Commission can run the Housing Authority, or we can have an actual Housing Authority. And so in May of 1961, the then city council adopted a resolution creating the housing authority. It was a 3-2 vote amongst the council members at that time. And there have been some subsequent resolutions that have come out from council solely increasing the membership on the board. Now we're up to seven members. Another layer in terms of the Housing Authority is the oversight from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. They provide the majority of the Housing Authority's funding to be able to function. They do have some regulation over the Housing Authority. I mentioned the INSPIRE inspections at the beginning. And then they've got some regulation over their programming that they're implementing for the residents. Some additional information about the structure. They do have a seven-member board. As I mentioned, that board was created by the city council. City council is selecting or appointing membership based on a rotation. Their board members are eligible for a single five-year term. This was a recent update in our rules of procedure, the council's rules of procedure, in February of 2024. Up until that point, they were allowed an unlimited number of terms and we were seeing people sit on the board for multiple stints, many decades in some instances. So like I said, that rule did change in February of 2024. There is one exception to the rule in terms of the authority for the city council to appoint, and that is the resident commissioner. They are first elected by the resident council, which is solely run by the housing authority. And once they are selected, then the city council moves forward with appointment of that particular individual. A commissioner cannot be a city official, and that is by state statute. Once they are seated, they're then responsible for hiring a qualified executive director to really be able to handle those day-to-day operations. And as of right now, their board of commissioners meets monthly. It's the last Tuesday of each month at 6 o'clock. So a little bit of background about the residence council. As I mentioned, this is facilitated completely by the housing authority. The city does not have anything to do with this particular body. At this point in time, it is not operational. Each, like I said, resident commissioner is elected by this particular body. The term for our current resident commissioner expired in 2025. And we requested for a nomination for an additional resident commissioner and as of today we have not received that nomination. And the current commissioner is holding over. They're in a holdover pattern unless and until somebody else is appointed and sworn in. Their membership includes people throughout their communities. Everybody who is named on a lease as a head of household is a member of this particular body. and they're able to vote. And then outside of that head of household, those are non-voting members, but they still have a voice in terms of that particular council. These are just an overview of the initial goals of why the Residence Council was created. To be able to create employment opportunities, promote job training, education, healthy lifestyles, provide an opportunity for public housing residents to learn skills and the operation of businesses, foster pride in public neighborhoods, and then combat community deterioration and juvenile delinquency. Like I said, these were just the foundational goals in which that particular council was created. There's one other major component in terms of how the Housing Authority operates, and that is through their Greenville Housing Development Corporation. It is exactly what it says it is. It's an opportunity for them to hold a nonprofit that is intended to assist homeowners, homebuyers, and renters to be able to acquire and retain a home of their own. But I think one of the core principles of this is it allows the Housing Authority, the Development Corporation, to borrow money. without it working against the actual housing authority such that it's a liability in debt. It gives them coverage, essentially, for them to be able to go out and get money, loan money, what have you. So in terms of their portfolio, this information is provided to their commissioners at each of their monthly meetings. Based on their most recent report that they submitted to the city, they've got 714 units in the public housing portfolio, about 156 units in their non-public housing portfolio, 920 units with private landlords. Those are their HAP contracts where they allow for private landlords to be in the business and provide housing under the Section 8 program. and then 110 units for project based rental assistance. So typically you see those when you've got these large development projects and they attach vouchers to units, allowing low moderate income individuals to stay in those particular units. As you can see, they've got a large portfolio. A lot of their properties are in need of significant repairs. They're dating back to being built in the 60s when the Housing Authority started in 1961. And so a lot of them unfortunately are dealing with substandard conditions and they do not meet the minimum housing standards that the city applies through its ordinances. As of right now, we've got 43 active cases. They're initiated throughout many of the neighborhoods. A lot of them tied to AC issues, electrical issues, smoke detectors, leaks. Pest infestations mold, really issues that you see across the board in terms of what they have going on. So kind of shifting gears, I wanted to give, like I said, that foundational background piece to talk really through the regulation and the authority. And as I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, the core authority for the Housing Authority comes from Chapter 157 of the North Carolina General Statutes. And they've got about 30 or so powers that are laid out within that statute. And I've gone through, and you'll see them in the next few slides. I'm not going to go through each of them in detail, but I will highlight some of them. And so first and foremost, investigate into living, dwelling, housing conditions and into the means and methods of improving such conditions. That's their core, one of their core principles. Determining unsafe and sanitary dwelling or housing conditions. exercising functions for housing projects, so they should be in the business of development to be able to provide affordable housing, low income opportunities. They've got the ability to construct, improve, alter, all those things that come along with development. Arranged cooperation with local governments. I've highlighted this because a little bit later in the presentation I will make mention of a cooperation agreement that we signed with the Housing Authority in 1961 when it was initiated. that really deals with us cooperating for public infrastructure, public services, land use, what have you. And then the other bullet I'll highlight, that's really tied to them making information available to us in terms of conditions existing which are dangerous to public health, safety, welfare, morals, what have you. And so like I said, they are required to provide us with information regarding those types of conditions when we request it. In terms of, I mentioned development, they're able to conduct property transactions and then they are able to exercise a slew of administrative functions along the lines of making bylaws, borrowing money, they've got subpoena powers, they can sue and be sued. So all those really administrative functions that come along with you running an entity or organization that's really quasi-judicial in nature. So in terms of where the city fits in with the housing authority, first and foremost, the city council liaison is appointed after each municipal election. This appointment is made by the mayor. The current liaison is Mayor Pro Tem Foreman. We engage with residents who are experiencing challenges with their housing conditions. As I mentioned, the many issues with AC, heat, we've gotten a lot of complaints recently about bills and rent statements, mold issues, pest infestations. And we really are in the business of trying to work through solutions for those particular clientele, because first and foremost, they are members of our community. and they deserve the same access to resources and assistance that anybody else in the community would be eligible to receive. So when we get calls, we really do try to pass that information along to their boards so that we can raise some awareness and ultimately get to a place where we can get it resolved in the best interest of the citizen. I mentioned the cooperation agreement earlier. Like I said, the original was signed in 1961, really dealing with public infrastructure, public services. We have since had three or four amendments solely tied to increasing the number of units. So I think we started with about 225 units in the 1961 agreement, and they steadily increased over the years as they continued to build public housing neighborhoods. And so that is, like I said, that is the one thing that was changing amongst all the amendments. And ultimately, like I said, the last amendment was in 1981, I believe. So we have not evaluated that agreement since that time. We meet as managers as necessary. So with their leadership team and the city's leadership team as things come up, we, like I said, we'll schedule meetings, talk through it, see if we can't find a workable solution. I typically attend the monthly board meetings alongside Mayor Pro Tem Foreman just so we can stay in the loop, provide information both ways, and really be able to keep our finger on the pulse in terms of what's going on at the Housing Authority. I've mentioned code enforcement. There's been a lot of engagement in that particular arena recently, especially with that notice we received from HUD in June. increased awareness for us when the feds reached out to us to let us know what was going on. Affordable housing development, our most recent development would have been the Arlington Trace where council actually had to approve bonds for that particular project. There are project vouchers connected to that development as well. And so we are having additional conversations now in terms of some additional affordable housing development that we're trying to move down the pike. We approve their consistency statements. They're required to be in line with the city's annual action plan and five year consolidated plan. And so their plan has to come through us in terms of us signing off on it to say that it is consistent with what we have laid out in terms of housing. And then the last piece up there is actually it's bond issuance. And like I said, the most recent one would have been for Arlington Trace. And that all comes through city council. Some additional involvement. In 2024, I did an extensive evaluation of the support that we were providing to the housing authority. just to understand what types of in-kind services we were providing them and be able to attach monetary amounts to it. The largest piece that came out of this is within the cooperation agreement that was signed in 1961, there is some language in there that has been interpreted to be able to provide refuse services at no charge to all of the housing authority's units. That has since been reinterpreted, and we're evaluating that, but that's costing us annually around $163,000. Costing us around $163,000 annually in terms of us providing that particular service to them. Information technology services, they use our fiber systems, our telephone lines, and they're paying for it in some instances, but it is not at a cost that would be more expensive because they're tacked into our particular services that we're providing.

When you break down the refugee services, is that individual services for each of the units? Or is this a larger complex where we're offering dumpster services? And typically, those tenants, do they still get individual bills for electricity for those units? so essentially it's just saving the tenants money it's not really being a benefit to the I mean I guess the tenants I mean the housing authority will benefit because they can I guess advertise that they have unless the housing authority were to choose to pick it up on behalf of their tenants but typically it's not like they would be charged directly for that fee that's being passed along to the people that are living in the actual units

In terms of public safety, there are two officers that cover the Housing Authority's neighborhoods. The city covers the cost of one, and the Housing Authority covers the cost of the other. They're roughly about $80,000 per officer. One of the other angles is the Shot Spotter. We recently renewed that contract, and the Housing Authority is paying about 25% of the total overall cost. And that's roughly about $65,000, $66,000 that they're paying for that cost amongst the city, ECU, Housing Authority, and then Pitt County Public Schools. So it's four individuals or four entities that are helping to cover the cost of that particular contract. They've got access to our fuel station at our public services complex. They pay the same cost that the city pays in terms of being able to fuel their vehicles. And up until January of this year, they were using our health insurance. And so they have now gone out and secured their own plan in terms of that particular component. So with all of that information, one of the big things that council requested was for us to be able to evaluate any additional places where we could provide some oversight and be able to keep our fingers on the pulse. And so statutorily, out of chapter 157, there are a couple of angles that I want to provide you all for consideration discussion for us to be able to determine what next steps look like. So first and foremost, the statute requires that they provide an annual report. And I will say that the annual reports have been fairly consistent. Um, they're filing those with the city regularly. There was a time in 2008 when their board at the time voted to in the practice of coming before council and just simply submitting a written report. Um, and so like I said, they've been consistent in submitting those reports. Last report we received was in 2025. Um, and we anticipate receiving another one in September, October of this year in terms of their annual activities. I've talked a lot about the cooperation agreement. This is another opportunity that we have, and that is to look at the language in the cooperation agreement. Like I said, it was first signed in 1961. So being able to look at that agreement and adjust accordingly for where we are, make sure we have the appropriate interpretations for how we're implementing activities between us. Some of the other examples in terms of those amendments, I mentioned that it of course included increasing the number of units. But it allowed for the making of loans and the facilitation of the rehabilitation program. And that facilitation of the rehabilitation program came up in 1981. That was one of the reasons for that particular amendment. One of the other statutory allowances deals with the budgeting and accounting piece. And essentially the state law provides that the housing authorities, budget, finances, all of those activities can function as a public enterprise of the city. And so what that would look like is all of their finances would essentially be running through the city and managed by our financial services department in terms of budgets, spending, what have you. And so we have evaluated this provision, I think there's absolutely additional room to evaluate further to see what that would really look like logistically. But that is, like I said, one of the allowances that's written out in the state law. Removal of commissioners. This particular authority belongs solely to the mayor. And the mayor would be permitted to remove a commissioner for inefficiency or neglect of duty or misconduct in office. Those particular terms are not defined in state statute. So we would apply an ordinary, reasonable person definition to what might qualify. I see y'all giving eyeballs. For what might qualify in terms of those particular definitions. The only key here is that we would follow the statutory process that is laid out. And essentially it's a due process procedure that you would have to follow in terms of the commissioner being made aware of what the charges are based on a set timeline, and then giving them an opportunity to respond. In the event they do not respond, it's considered acquiescing to whatever the allegation or charge might be, and ultimately subject to removal. I know of one instance decades ago, where this actually came up, but the individual ultimately was not removed. And that charge was actually coming from the Housing Authority Board. They were requesting for somebody to be removed. Like I said, I was not aware of or could not find any other instances where this statutory authority has actually had to be utilized. And last but certainly not least, this is really the nuclear option. And that's to be able to abolish the housing authority. We created them. We've got the authority to abolish them. And it's a matter of simply following the procedures that are laid out in the rules. And so if that became the case, either the city would have to take on the responsibilities or a redevelopment commission would have to take on the responsibilities. And another option is a council of governments to be able to take on the responsibilities of the housing authority. And I think for this one, you're in a place where it's just absolutely egregious. This is probably not the first step. But it's an option. It's a tool in the toolbox that is out there. So with that being said, I want to give council an opportunity to discuss, provide any feedback for any tools that you all might be interested in or any questions that you might have regarding our relationship with the Housing Authority.

So the 714 units, the monies paid to rent those are paid to the Housing Authority, am I correct? That's correct. And that's their operational budget in addition to any grants they may get from the federal or state government?

That's correct. They're running a business.

And when we say they give us a report, what's in that report when they give it to us?

It typically consists of their activities over the course of the year. So a lot of times they're talking about capital improvement plans. They're talking about their portfolio in terms of how much... Right, yep.

Well, did their 20, and you may not know the answer to this, but did the 2025 report they gave to the city council disclose all these bad housing issues they had? No. So is that an innocent mistake? Is it neglect or is it intentional? Do we know that answer?

I would say, Council Member Robinson, that those deficiencies when they came to the city staff is what really raised this to a higher level. That's what my concern is. Because clearly over the last two years, the city manager's office has spent a lot of time addressing some of the deficiencies that are happening within the units i know council member foreman has also spent a lot of time with with with contacts we got it's got to the point where when we have those efficiencies we are we are alerting the full entire board to make sure that not just the the administrator knows but the full board does but when we receive the deficiencies that dated back to 2024 that's where we asked for the information to so that we could dive into it to the point that we have opened up code cases amongst all the different neighborhoods. And where the rubber hit the road was in the last report from HUD, they basically gave the housing authority like three days where they were going to suspend several million dollars in capital funding.

But I guess what I'm really, not the city, what I'm getting at is, number one, there should be a mechanism for the tenant to complain to the housing authority for conditions that are not up to par. And there should be a protocol for the housing commission to deal with that problem, just like a landlord would deal with the problem. And then there should be okay, we dealt with it. So it doesn't backlog to the point where it catches so much attention, the federal government comes in and all of a sudden, we're having to go do some of the work that the housing authority should be doing. So I'm kind of, you know, my standpoint from here, Castleman Foreman said and other things about all these horrendous complaints that got to the boiling point is that I think we really need to take a hard, close look at the housing authority and look at the financial side of what they're doing and look at the protocols they have in place because none of these problems should get to the level they got to. Again, we're dealing with people in these conditions that all those kinds of problems unacceptable and quite frankly the picture that's being painted for me to look at is like the housing authorities doing nothing i think that when i say doing nothing they didn't do anything for two years because it got that bad and i'm not this is not anywhere on the city because we're having to clean some of this mess up but i think it's so much like we need to go in and have a house clean like what's going on financially are your books in order are you spending money wisely i mean When the money gets doled out, we have to have some accounting back in this report that doesn't even talk about that. And then number two, I'd like to know about the protocols for how complaints get received, how a tenant can complain, what's the timeframe for trying to fix that problem, and if the financial side is not there, what do they do to try and mitigate that? Because if somebody's getting a bunch of money from the federal government because as many problems as it seems like they've had, I mean,

this were an ordinary business and people had already been fired and gotten rid of a long time ago i think and i think one of the tools in the toolbox that miss alexander went through is the ability if council would like for us to pursue more information about this is what it would take to actually transition thousand authority to be such as an enterprise fund of the city where basically the city would maintain that fund budget that fund control the revenues the expenses coming in and out of the door that would give more oversight and give more input into those day-to-day internal controls with concerns to not only the work orders of what you speak of is the processing workers how they are handled but also a major component of their financial operations is the rent piece and in we we have many examples of how there's a significant amount of confusion, and how rents are applied. And, and how payments are applied to individual accounts that make it very difficult for not only the tenants to understand what their balances are, but even from the outside looking in the city of Greenville being able to understand those. That's why that that ability is in the state law is to allow the city to have more oversight into the financial operations. And if it would be the will of the council, we would look further into that to see what that would include.

First, I'd like to go in and just look and see what the problems are. I mean, we know what the symptoms are, but what caused those symptoms? I mean, you know, get in there and I'm like, did you have a protocol for addressing complaints that the tenants knew about? And then once it was received, what happened to that complaint? Who was it delivered to to get remedied? And third, if there was a money issue, how do you deal with that? I may be wrong about this, it doesn't sound like any report. We don't have enough money to fix all these issues, that's why we haven't fixed them.

And that's where it's unsettling to have HUD come in and say we're one step away from from freezing and taking away all your capital funds, which I don't want to believe was up to the tune of like... Five points. Five million. That's embarrassing.

You know, we're not the ones doing it, but we have oversight. We're forming new nickels and pennies. I'm just going back from a practical standpoint that, you know, if I were in the private business and had 714 units as a landlord, I mean, that's a lot of units and you've got to be organized. You would have a mechanism to collect the rents and have a way to deal with the complaints. Otherwise, your tenants, you lose business because your tenants that were in the real world could leave and go somewhere else. But these tenants don't have that financial ability.

And I'm going to interject real quick because, Liz, I appreciate everything you just said because you have described everything I've been dealing with for the last two and a half years. And that is more than 714 units. That's 714 families that have been, most of them living in substandard conditions. And we do not have answers about financials. There's not been a lot of transparency. As it relates to your question about the work order process, I've been questioning that for over two years. It is a paper process. The citizens fill out a paper form that goes into some kind of abyss. That's right. They do not get any type of written confirmation that the form was received that gives any timeline of how things might be remedied and then any follow-up. to see if it was done, you know, to any satisfaction or if it was brought back up to standard or code. In addition to that, there is a great deal of fear factor there. We're dealing with some of the, and I would say the, people on the lowest socioeconomic rung of the ladder in our community. That has been aiding in the process of us dealing with homelessness in our community. Because when these families, lose housing, they don't have anywhere else to go. That's why I've been so passionate about it. And so we have got to take the reins in some type of fashion because people are struggling and suffering, families and children. When we talk about the crime rate and things that we're experiencing in our community, that is a byproduct of that. That's a byproduct of that, when they're housing and food insecure and living in these conditions. I've taken Michael out. In 2024, I realized that I was putting so many hours every week into answering housing authority calls that me just sharing information was not going to work. So I personally started pointing them to the city. so that city management would feel what I was feeling. And this is how we got to this place because all of us have been putting in work monthly that other people are getting paid for. And I would complain about that, yes, because it has taken a lot of my time, but what hurts me the most is that I know from what I have seen and felt, and so has Council Member Jones, that these people are struggling and suffering, and oftentimes inhumane conditions. And yes, there's a limited amount of capital improvement funds that are allocated each year. However, if you're very intentional in how you use capital improvement funds, then you can fix things in a rotation, fix a certain number of units, move people into those units, fix the next section of units. If things have been managed in some type of fashion with some level of intent, I think we would at least be in a better place. We might not be in an ideal position, but we would be in a lot better position than what we're in now. And this is not right. What goes on in the Housing Authority impacts the entire community. And so we have a responsibility, and I'm saying this to everyone, I asked them to do this overview because I wanted all of us to be abreast on what's going on and what our citizens are struggling and suffering through. But you hit every single point in your questions.

So with that being said, Council Member Foreman's comments, I would ask Council if the thumbs up for our Financial Services Department research further the what it would what it would look like with it for the house authority to be an enterprise fund and as a part of that would probably be a very strong financial review of not only their finances but also of their procedures their internal controls related not only to work orders but also to the application of rent

a critical analysis of their operating procedures.

And that may require, I will direct our chief financial officer, Jacob Joyner, to start putting the thoughts together of what that would look like. It may require an outside review of the financial statements and the internal controls. But I think this is, I would echo those of council, I think we've got an obligation to To the citizens of those communities because first and foremost, they're not they're not citizens of the housing authority there Absolutely So we owe the same amount of due diligence For for those individuals as we do anyone else and that would be the first step to bring back an overview of what that would look like On to the next item, we have a second item, is a code enforcement update. I'll hand it over to the city manager.

No, switch it out.

Oh, it's pouring down rain.

All right, so as City Manager Cowan said, this will be an update on our code enforcement. And so just some background, a staff last came to you all in May. to talk about a new direction for our code enforcement division and laid out a plan of action in terms of what that would look like. Simply based on council's goals and priorities that are enumerated here, proactively enhancing our community engagement most importantly, building a thriving and attractive community by creating meaningful access to affordable, habitable, and quality housing for all citizens, and then make Greenville a destination community and place for all people to call home. So, like I said, moving forward with those goals and priorities in mind, we presented an action plan to you all that was essentially based upon three prongs. Proactive compliance and enforcement, outreach and education, and then case management. So really working towards getting to a place where we are consistently addressing our minimum housing issues throughout the city. So this is just the three prongs. Within that proposed action plan came some short-term goals focused on evaluating our city ordinances, building out and implementation of updated technology solutions, training and development, some outreach and engagement, and then we sought some opportunity for council direction. Additionally, we had some long-term goals that came along with the plan of action to really get us to a place where we were evaluating our resources and being able to make informed decisions and getting in a consistent cycle of us evaluating our processes. So we are back today to talk about how we have moved our action plan forward. in terms of the case management piece with our technology. We have completed our evaluation of our city code of ordinances. We are looking at moving forward with our outreach and engagement. And we have also implemented an additional initiative really focused on vacant and abandoned structures and being able to overlay those with public safety issues to be able to start cases and move those along to clean up some of the blight in the community. So first and foremost, with our case management piece, one of the biggest pieces of this is the technology piece. And so we have, like I said, moved forward with evaluating that. I do have William Mills who is in the room. He is our assistant director with our community and development services department. And he has worked very closely with our teams and the use of Intergov. We've got a system internally that we use called Intergov. to really get that to a place where it is enhanced, our workflows are updated. What have you, I'm gonna switch to the next slide, yeah, to make sure, okay. All right, so make sure our workflows are updated and then really being able to implement some automation for those system functions to create more effectiveness amongst our teams and more efficiency. Along with this came the deployment of tablets that our officers are now able to use in the field to initiate cases. versus them having to come back to the office and really do that administrative piece, they're not able to do all of that in the field. Start the case, take the pictures, log any necessary information in terms of contact, what have you, like I said, on site with the violation. Another important piece that comes with case management is the reporting piece. And so I do want to acknowledge the request that council made in May. for you all to be able to receive monthly reports as it relates to all of our cases in the system. And so we have moved forward with some significant data cleanup in terms of our Intergov system and then recognizing that that is the reporting is really tied to us getting Intergov up and running efficiently. So I do know that the team has had meetings today and within the last week with Intergov to really get those workflows written how they should be written and be able to get to a place where we are implementing those so we can get to consistent case management and reporting. This is just a snapshot in time of reporting. Like I said, we last came to you all in May. And so I want to point out the June and July piece in terms of the minimum housing and that there has been a significant increase in terms of the case loads as it relates to that particular case type. And that is really attributable to three instances, one being what I mentioned earlier with the Housing Authority and that notice we got from HUD where we did a full court press to start cases on all units within certain neighborhoods that were identified within that HUD report. And so that has led to a large influx. One of the other points in time is the vacant abandoned structure piece that I mentioned earlier. And so we have taken about 70 or 80 properties and we have overlaid those with public safety calls for service to be able to prioritize those particular units throughout the community that we can run through the processes. And like I said, it's tied to public safety. So it's beyond just it being a minimum housing issue. We're now talking about breaking and entering, we're talking about drug issues, just criminal activity that unfortunately is continuing to perpetuate the blight in the community. One of the other things is we had a lot of activity around Clubway. A lot of those cases have now been closed out. The three major cases that are outstanding with that are the units in which required some additional activity in terms of bracing those particular properties and they're currently going through construction to be able to repair those particular units so we can get people back in them. So one of the other components for our plan of action was proactive and consistent enforcement. And so with that came the need to evaluate all of our code related ordinances. So we looked at minimum housing, we looked at non-residential structures, we looked at everything across the board to determine where we could gain time. And so that has now been completed. And we are planning to come back to you all in September proposing adoption for that. So I want to talk through some of those components related to that particular initiative. And so overall, these are really going to highlight the major things we evaluated and what we're proposing to change. In front of you all, you do have a notebook that contains all of the proposed changes that you can review at your leisure. and be able to provide any feedback that you might have, like I said, with us proposing adoption at you all's September meeting. So we did general cleanup. We had to verify we were in alignment with our North Carolina general statutes. You'll see an update to the structure for civil penalties related to code enforcement cases, updates to some timelines, and some places we were able to reduce the timelines, some places we had to extend the timeline just based on statutory law. We are proposing an implementation of a 48-hour life safety repair policy, and we evaluated the determination of unfit for human habitation and what that would look like moving forward. And then last but not least, the implementation of a mold protocol, and that would be specific to an internal practice. That's not something that would be written out in the ordinance, so that would be something staff would be implementing. Like I said, just based off an internal standard operating procedure. These are all the codes and the sections that we evaluated. And like I said, in their totality, anything related to code enforcement issues. And so first component, when we looked at the alignment with the North Carolina General Statutes, first and foremost, chronic violators. So what chronic violators provides for is that if we're giving notice to the same property owner, same property, at least three times within the same 12 month period, we can designate that individual or that property owner as a chronic violator. where moving forward, we're only required to give notice and then we're permitted to abate the property and bring it into compliance. Previously, it was written out that we had to actually abate the nuisance that was identified at least three times within a 12 month period prior to us deeming somebody a chronic violator. So this was an opportunity for us to gain some time in terms of how we implement that particular process. Yes, and so typically when we're talking about a chronic violator, we are dealing with public nuisances only. So not tied to minimum housing, it's simply public nuisances. So issues with tall grass weeds, issues with trash and debris, or issues with junk abandoned nuisance cars typically are the types of public nuisances That that we're dealing with and so if we're talking about actually moving forward with abatement It might mean we go out and we cut the grass To bring the property back into compliance. We might go out and clean up the trash and debris that's scattered over property and so that's what we mean when we're talking about abatement under the chronic violators rules and The next one on the list is dealing with the vacated and closed dwellings I mentioned at the beginning. There were some unfortunate instances where we had to increase our timelines, even though we were trying to gain efficiencies, but we had to be in compliance with the state law. The ordinance historically was written out that we could move forward with the process after six months of a property sitting vacant and abandoned. Statutorily, you've got to sit for a year. So that is one of the places, like I said, where we had to increase the timeline. Everywhere else we were able to decrease. Previously it said not less than 30 days and not more than 90. For everywhere that was written out, we have now decreased the 90 to 60 days. And there still might be some flexibility just based on what the, on a case-by-case basis, but the rule, like I said, will be written out not less than 30 and no more than 60 days before we would be able to move forward with our process. Methods of service was another place in which we came into alignment. A lot of places we were doing more than what we needed to do, meaning we were requiring certified or registered mail, where the statute only required personal delivery, first class mail, or posting before we could move forward with any activity. So anywhere where we were able to remove certified or registered mail, we have done that. And so the two I've identified here are dealing with the weeds and vegetation and then abandoned junk nuisance vehicles is where we were able to dial that back. And last but not least, in terms of the appeals method and periods. So we evaluated that in its entirety. And in a lot of places, we had a lot of layers and levels. to the appeals process that weren't necessarily reasonable. And so we have dialed those back to where it's a shorter period of time. I mean, because some stuff is very clear. If you've got grass that's 10 inches or higher, that's very clear. There's not really room for negotiation necessarily. And so now we've got it set to where you might have 15 days to file a written appeal, and that appeal goes to Board of Adjustment. Previously it went through the assistant director, the director, to the assistant city manager, to the city manager, everybody had to check the box. And so we have removed that drawn out process to make it easier, I think, for everybody involved. So I mentioned the determination of being unfit for human habitation. Historically, we have relied on property value and cost of repairs to make this particular determination. And so what we are proposing is a tiered methodology wherein if you're meeting these certain thresholds and the first one up there in terms of a dilapidated structure would require you to meet at least one of the enumerated conditions. And those conditions listed are those that are really dealing with life safety issues. So anything life-threatening, life safety, you only have to have one of those identified for your property to be deemed unfit for human habitation. The next layer would be classified as a deteriorated property wherein you would have to have seven or more of the conditions that are identified before you could designate a dwelling as being unfit for habitation. And then the last tier is less than seven. So a very low level, all you've got to have is violations identified. And so it's not going to result in it being unfit for habitation, but it would be a violation in which you would be required to repair or be subject to civil penalties in the event you did not. One of the other components is looking at our structure for civil penalties. To really be able to ease the implementation of this, we are proposing to go from what's currently a tiered process to a flat fee. But every day's violation would still be a separate and continuing violation. So civil penalties would still accrue. They would just be accruing at a flat fee versus you having to deal with tiers. So better for accounting purposes, better for city staff to be able to keep up and be able to implement. And so you see that the tiers where we currently are and we would go to $100 per each violation. And one note I will make here is this is solely applicable to code enforcement. So there will be some other places still in the code where it'll be the tiered process, not to say we might not evaluate that in the future to level set and make everything consistent, but right now it'll just be focused on the code enforcement sections. One other component we are proposing is that we would implement a 48-hour life safety repair. ordinance and it would require landlords, property managers, what have you, to fix any of the identified violations within 48 hours. In the event they were not resolved, they would be subject to civil penalties. We have evaluated the opportunity of what it would look like for staff to abate and we are trying to stay away from that. We don't want to be in the business of being an HVAC contractor or trying to to be an electrician or what have you. And so the route to go at this point in time would be us applying, like I said, civil penalties and then evaluating on a case-by-case basis if we had to take it further, up to and including requiring the dwelling to be vacated. So I mentioned the mold protocol at the beginning. Like I said, this will not be based in the ordinance. This will solely be something tied to standard operating procedures that our staff would implement within our code enforcement division. We've seen an increase in complaints tied specifically to mold. And we did evaluate a lot of options in terms of what this could look like for city staff to be able to run the ball on this. But it's extremely cost prohibitive for us to be able to consistently implement any type of testing and or remediation. And so what we have decided to do or we're proposing to do is be able to document the mold-like substances that has been identified, taking the pictures, the measurements, identifying the locations, and all of this would go into the code enforcement report and be captured as a violation. The onus would then be on the property owner, property manager to handle the testing, to handle the remediation if necessary. All is, like I said, a part of the code enforcement case. and they would be subject to civil penalties or having to vacate the unit, just like any other instance of a violation, um, depending on the severity for something like that for the landlord to get testing and things like that. So we'll have to evaluate what that looks like. Um, council member Hardy. And so I don't see it being any different than our other cases that we're currently running because there are set timelines in which They have to move forward with fixing it, about going to get a contractor to provide a quote, what have you. And so all of that's happening in tandem. And I would imagine this wouldn't be any different in terms of those timelines that are already spelled out. Because this is just another violation, essentially.

Could we have the test and fall under the 48-hour?

I think that becomes sticky because we're talking about life safety issues when we're talking about that 48 hour and sometimes, I won't say all the time, sometimes it might not be mold for instance. So not knowing what the substance is because typically we're only looking for the source of water infiltration that might be causing the output. I don't know that that would be reasonable.

Could we require the testing to take, at least for them to take a sample and send it off within 48 hours of the case being opened?

I think that's something we can evaluate. But like I said, I don't know that that would make the most sense in terms of how the processes are currently laid out. But we can certainly evaluate that.

Just one suggestion I think would be very helpful. A lot of companies, they do have the resources and they do have the contacts just from dealing with those type of issues on a regular basis. It may be advantageous for the city's code enforcement officers maybe to put together a list of ways to remediate the issues. You know, I just say, like, for us, I don't want to say there's a certain company that we call any time that we have an issue like that, and then we send them out there. They take care of the issue. They're certified. They know what they're doing. They put in the proper equipment. But a lot of, like, individual landlords may not have those resources, and they may just go over there and say, well, I'm just going to dump bleach on the walls. And they could just make the problem worse. And so maybe... And I'll say... The county does that through their environmental health. They'll give out like, hey, we are approved vendors that we've used. And to be honest with you, it's been very helpful for me because if I have somebody from a septic system and one of my vendors that I usually use is not available, then I can go down that list and say, hey, these are other ones. Not all of them might be available, but it gives them an opportunity to remediate the issue so it doesn't fester and get worse, and we have to do more to it because that landlord just does not know how to address the issue. Just a suggestion.

Yeah, that's a great suggestion.

And I appreciate that, because that's my biggest concern with this particular piece, because it sounds like we would be hoping that they would drink some Dew White on an honor system, and they've demonstrated that they don't have any. Oftentimes, particularly with the situations with the housing authority or Clubway, when you've got bad actors that have demonstrated they're doing this over and over and over again, How are we going to ensure? So I appreciate you saying that. So we can do a list is what you're saying. So I was about to ask Is that possible that just providing the list is one thing, but can we require that they use someone on that list?

I think that's a slippery slope.

We can't do that. Okay.

That's a slope because even if we provided them with suggested vendors, we're not going to endorse any of those vendors. So it's just information that they can use to assist them along their way, but we certainly wouldn't require them to use anybody on the list. So one of the other components of our action plan is the outreach and engagement process and so we are moving forward with that. I think August 25th is our first date on the calendar for us to be in the community and talking with our stakeholder groups amongst property owners, renters, landlords, whomever. So like I said, that will start in August. And I just wanted to put a snapshot up there because we have had an intern in the city manager's office, Ms. Malia Pearson, who is a student at Pitt Community College, but she has been working hard this past summer. She'll actually stay on with us through the fall. But she has been, like I said, working hard with us to create collateral that's consistent, that's engaging, what have you. And so this slide just shows a snapshot of what some of that collateral looks like that will be taken to the community when we start our outreach and engagement sessions in a couple of weeks. And this is just a list of topics that we will be focused on. The PowerPoint presentations and all of the information will really be the same. It'll just be tailored towards whomever that particular target audience is. So with that being said, we will be, like I said, recommending adoption of the proposed city code ordinances. That's your September 10th, 2026 meeting. We will be then moving forward with our training and development of code enforcement officers. That becomes a foundational piece, and we will rely on a third party to assist us with that. We will continue our community outreach and engagement, and then we'll continue implementing our technology upgrades for both Intergov and in other systems that might be involved to be able to provide you with consistent data reporting and then also making sure our officers can provide for consistent case management. So any additional questions?

Will Intergov be tied into when the city comes out? So if somebody reports something on the city comes out, it'll go straight into Intergov?

So we have had that conversation with Intergov and it does not look like that is going to be able to happen. They have put a moratorium on their system in terms of integrations. And so maybe that's something that can happen in the future, but right now those systems will not be able to talk, and Intergov has made that very clear with us, unfortunately.

So how will that process work? Will somebody have to manually put it into Intergov when they get the report in from the City Compass stuff?

Yep, and so the expectation will be is that City Compass public stuff, for what some people might know it as, will solely be for the external facing community members because historically we have used it as an internal system and that's what we're trying to get away from. So if somebody calls, somebody puts something into public stuff, there will be an administrative staff person who will assist with carrying that information over to be able to start cases for our code enforcement officers on the intergov side.

He is ECU SGA president for this next year and we have been working very closely with Ryan to set up a series of meetings starting once the students come back. We're going to meet with all the property management team over here in the University neighborhood and then set up meetings on campus that we will invite students that reside in our public housing developments. that for them to get an overview of code enforcement, what their rights are, what the process is to work with the city. So I'd like to thank Ron for helping us out with that.

I have one last question or concern. As I listened to this and read through this after the briefings and all of that, I think my biggest concern is the 7080 vacant and abandoned structures. Because what I hear is that translating to people losing their property and would imagine that a good portion of that is in west South Greenville and possibly in the ETJ north of the river. We've kind of gone through a period of dormancy as far as pushing the code enforcement and have to accept some level of responsibility in that. But the other thing is that rather than putting people in a position where they would lose their property, oftentimes this being air situations where people receive something that they were not prepared financially to take care of, You know, is there any way that we can put together some type of initiative or something to help people save their property? We do know, everyone knows that that has been an ongoing issue. But that is something that I don't want to see the city get in the business of. And I'm going to tell you that that is going to be a public relations nightmare if it happens. Well, it's going to be known that the city is taking structures over in West South Greenville and the north of the river area. And I would want to know what percentage of the 70 to 80 vacant structures are in that area. What is the communication process? Again, looking at the possibility of an opportunity to help them save that, then just taking it. And 50 in 10, which I spearheaded the idea of, comes to mind for me, but not at the expense of the community and people that I love. I would not sit by idly and watch that happen without advocating for it and taking any action to help them. So that's my biggest concern. When I hear that, that's what I hear. And I've asked straight out and gotten that answer. So I can say that publicly. I've asked straight out and gotten that answer that that is what that process would look like. And so for the community, the city needs to be part of the solution, not part of the problem as it relates to that. Not only would that piece of people losing their property and their legacy that they could pass on to their children, but it would end up potentially being part of the gentrification process. And I won't co-sign that.

respectfully, if we could verify what the percentage is before we go down that road. If we can just verify what the percentage is that are heiress property, I think we can have a better premise for this conversation.

All right. Moving on. Item number three. We will have a our Deputy Chief KZ Thomas come up and do an overview of our juvenile curfew that we had in July. You stood there for hours.

I know.

I'm impressed.

Alright, well good afternoon Mayor and Council. I am providing an overview of the downtown juvenile curfew. So we started to notice a problem as far as the police department in May. In May we started seeing an uptick in juveniles just coming downtown and hanging out, and we started to see an uptick in our calls for service, disturbances, and disputes. That led to June, and in June we had a really rough night around the June 22nd weekend, where we actually had our first experience of a team takeover. And what that looked like that night, we had multiple fights. And when I refer to juveniles, I'm talking about anyone under the age of 18. And we saw multiple fights and physical altercations. We recovered some firearms. We recovered about nine 9 to 10 firearms this weekend. Now, all of those then come from juveniles, but that's just letting you know that firearms were downtown and amongst some of the incidents that we had. We also had businesses that were impacted. They had to close early. And we used a significant amount of police resources. We ended up calling in officers from all over the city to have to respond to downtown to help with the crowd control issues that we had this weekend. So our goal is always prevention. It is not waiting until Greenville has a problem is to kind of jump ahead of this. So if you think about what's recently happened in the news, 4th of July, the city of Raleigh had an incident on 4th of July where they had they reported anywhere from 3,000 juveniles to 5,000 juveniles that showed up to their, bless you, Briar Creek area. And that ended up ending in nine people shot, and they also arrested 29 people. That was Raleigh. And then recently, July 11th, Charlotte had an incident with a teen takeover where they had anywhere from 200 to 300 juveniles that showed up in their university boardwalk area. And they ended up arresting, they arrested 12 juveniles and cited 10 adults. So our goal is not to get to that point. So this is what we experienced here in Greenville. We started to notice the teen takeover flyers were going out. When you see a teen takeover, it's usually an AI flyer. where it is done. Sometimes it has a lot of information, sometimes it doesn't. It'll just say, go to this place. This one is announcing that this is a part two, because this was after the first incident. And they were just encouraging people to come downtown to Greenville on June 22nd. In our response as a city, the mayor issued an emergency curfew for June 26th. What we did with that curfew along with the city is we made sure that we really educated people, explaining to them what was expected of juveniles, where they could not be at. And that curfew was for the downtown area. We focused on warnings as far as for law enforcement. We made sure that we gave people opportunity. We gave the juveniles opportunity. When we saw them, we went ahead and told them, hey, there's a curfew this weekend. You need to go ahead and start making your way home. So we issued a lot of warnings. We also had focused enforcement. We brought in more officers because we knew that we could expect crowds, and we didn't know how it would go with the curfew. And we had high visibility patrols, so lots of officers. This was also extended to 4th of July because the next weekend was 4th of July weekend. So this went well. We had minor incidents where we had a couple of juveniles, I think about 12, that we ended up making contact with throughout that night. But that was very, it worked out very well, very successful. We were worried about 4th of July because 4th of July usually brings more violence sometimes when it comes to juveniles. In Greenville, we have seen over the years, 4th of July has been an area where people come to the celebration, especially juveniles, and then they meet up with people and we start to see the fights. So we were worried that they would already be in the area and it would be really easy for them to come to downtown and have another team take over. The mayor agreed and we extended that emergency curfew for 4th of July. And from that, we had a really safe 4th of July celebration, no issues. And it was probably, the officers would say it was probably one of the easiest 4th of Julys that they had working the 4th of July event. And I think the curfew contributed to that. but also the construction. I have to be realistic. The construction downtown also helped with that. But we had no repeat takeovers after this. And the emergency curfew really demonstrated that limiting the juvenile activities during high-risk periods can be an effective tool to reducing public concerns. So we proposed, the police department proposed, that a curfew is looked at as more of a permanent solution. We would like for it to mirror what the emergency curfew did. We would like to keep the same area, just focus on the downtown area, including the town commons area. The only thing we would like to see a little bit different is instead of it starting at 10 o'clock, like the emergency curfew did, we will push it back an hour to give juveniles a little bit more time to get to where they need to go. So we're thinking 11 to 6 would be a really good time. And our reasoning for wanting to keep it in this area is really what we see here is a high dense population of clubs and bars and alcohol and college students. It really isn't a place for anybody under the age of 18 to be because there's nothing that they can do down there. They can't get into anything. So what happens is they tend to hang out on the street and when they hang out on the street, That's usually when they see somebody, and that's when activity tends to happen when it comes to fights and disputes. This would apply to all juveniles under the age of 18. Now, there are some exceptions to this, because you always have to think about, well, what if? So some of the exceptions would be if they're with a guardian or a parent, then they would be allowed to be down there. If they're coming from work and they're traveling through and it's a direct route, that would be an excuse for them to be down there. If they're responding to an emergency, if there's an emergency situation, then yes, they will be allowed to come down. And if there's some kind of First Amendment protest or something like that, they are allowed to participate in that. So they would be allowed to be in the area. So our recommendation is for consideration for a permanent downtown juvenile curfew ordinance, and we're just looking at the council for direction.

All right, any questions?

Comments?

Do you want to include July 4th? It's not on a Thursday through Sunday?

July 4th, no matter what day it's on, tends to have the same issue.

Like I was saying, you got Thursday through Sunday?

Saturday do you want to include July 4th also regardless like holiday I think yes why just Thursday through Saturday well those are the days that we see issues doing the week we really don't have a issue I don't know if it's because school or whatever But Thursdays is when we start to see the crowd increase. It really is Friday and Saturday that we see the bigger increase, but we know Thursday, Friday, and Saturday is typically when people start to hang out.

It starts on Thursday, it goes up on Friday, but really it's peak on Saturday.

Well, I'd just like to say I don't know if I've fallen either here or there on that. You answered a question that I know the community would ask is why downtown specifically. So you answered that question with the density of bars and things of that sort. I appreciate that. I think that needs to be part of the leading discussion. the communication process with this so that citizens understand. But the other thing I would like to say is that, particularly as you talk about these teen takeovers, that it is a symptom of a larger issue. And that larger issue is teens looking for social opportunities. opportunities for entertainment community and engagement amongst their peers and lack of safe spaces and I would even add provided by people that care and so as I think most of you know, because of those things, those were the bulleted things that I pulled together a team of community leaders and citizens to do summer wave. And And it was to answer those issues with which the first night we had over 400 teams participate and have averaged 200 since. From July 1st, which was the week that the team takeover started, to July 31st, our participation was 2,290. And as of today, it's 2,735. And so I shared that, not in any bragging kind of way, but to highlight the bigger issue of needing things for our teens and our young people to do. So it is bigger than just putting on curfews. It's supporting efforts that I suggest are community led, but that are offering them something more constructive to do in safe spaces with people that care about them.

this is actually something that we started having conversations about well over a year ago and your desire to have something for kids to do because of the uptick in crime that we saw last summer thank you so we haven't seen quite that uptick in crime this summer but we did see the impact of the team takeover which echoed that need to do exactly what the what the wave has accomplished in doing and allowing a large number of teams to have some place to go several nights a week which is which has been outstanding and also again i'd like to echo for for the council i cannot stress enough how how unique Greenville, North Carolina is in its downtown area. There's not probably a handful of downtowns across this state that have the same situation that we do, where you have such a large number, a dense number of bars right beside each other, right next to a college campus. And so it just, it's a draw to a lot of activity, which

keeps these guys very busy outside of teams so that's one of the reasons that we're looking at this is that we don't that it does not get out of hand on any given time i think it's worth saying too i appreciate what you said and i think that's a great idea but it's it's not a one size fits all right and you know the other thing too that i think we're not nobody's really talked about is some of the people that were responsible for the la or the the actual team takeover that took place We're from Greenville, right? And so we've also got to protect our own city too, along with allowing the people that are in our city to have a place to go. So it's a multi-pronged approach. It's not just, hey, we can do this and this is going to fix the problem. We also need a place for people from our community to be able to go to because that's who we represent, the people in our community. And we want to protect our downtown from people that are going to come from any city in eastern North Carolina or beyond that want to come down and cause problems there.

And let's just, again, put it on the table. This is just one tool in the toolbox. There is discretion here. On any given weekend, you see just a few teams down there. Not that big of an issue, but if you see 100 or 200 just show up, then this provides that tool to say, hey, we need to move this on.

I agree that it's needed.

I like the proactive approach, as I said publicly. But I would like to be able to have an opportunity to hear benchmarks along the way. So say for the next year, to be able to hear quarterly how this is working, if you feel like it's working in the way that it was intended to. for us to be able to be kept updated. I think that's important. There have been some things I feel like that we've done over the course of my time on council that I would have wanted to learn more about and be kept updated just so that things don't get lost in the hustle and bustle. So that if it's something we need to address, make adjustments to, we can do that. Additionally, I would say I like the measures that are put in place to be able to account for teams that may be working, of course, teams that are with their guardian. If you're passing through, I think it was coming from work or something that you mentioned. So I think that there are there's flexibility in there but over the course of the year to be able to make sure that it's working in the way that we intended to so that we can make sure that we're getting the Desire goal, but I think it's it's the right thing to do sure And obviously all this activity downtown has been in the spotlight because it's a yeah, it's our downtown But is this a problem anywhere else in the city?

No. So what happens with teen takeovers, they usually focus on places that are kind of highly dense. So they look at malls or any kind of entertainment district, things like that. So they don't typically do neighborhoods and like your one-off places. So for now, it is all in those kind of places.

Yeah, there have been instances around the state where malls would be an area, but malls are a completely different situation. There's times when it's open and closed, and plus it's private property. Right. So, you know, the police respond there. They can move. A lot of what we've got down here is public right-of-way.

I just appreciate the fact that we're being proactive about it and not just being proactive about the curfew but looking at other avenues give them alternatives to do things. And being proactive lets this element that is bad, they're just bad. I mean, we can not say that and ignore the truth. There is an element that's just lawless. We see it all over the country. I think we're sending a message to those folks, don't come down and ring me and expect that like this kind of mess. We're going to deal with it. But being proactive with things in our community to give our youth other things to do, because a lot of times, I guess we grew up in skate parks and ice rinks and stuff like that, things that kids, I guess I'm dating myself, and Catherine was kind of shaking her head with me. You know, you went to the ice rink, which was run by Bubba Rawls on 14th Street. You had a roller skating rink. You had other things to do that if you were young, you had activities to do, and now it seems like, and during the day, you'd go to the your local park recreation play carrying down the park or kickball or something like a lot of that's gone away boys and girls club have done a good job providing some things during the day but you know exactly and so it is a good thing to look at other alternatives but also to send a message that we're not going to be one of those cities you can come into and get the team take over and we've been fortunate we haven't had these um bikes and motorcycles, bikes and stuff like that. You know, you see in like Charlotte, in those places are just a large gatherings. I don't know. See, man, you're not have a little bit of a bike problem in my neighborhood. You know, they're not a whole lot of them. But you know, we're trying to protect themselves close to this might get really hurt all those things. And then there'll be a mom and dad crying about it. And I'll go like, you know, you should have been talking to your son or daughter 12 months ago when we were highlighting this. I'm glad we're taking a proactive approach forward, but not just a single focus. We're looking at multi-com trying to deal with it. I appreciate you doing that. Thank you. Anything we can give you as a tool that will make your job easier to enforce and keep our downtown areas safe, I hope you will keep coming back to us and tell us what those things are so we as a council can look at them and try to make some good decisions.

So I take that as a thumbs up to bring back next month an ordinance to move forward. Okay. All right. The last item for tonight's workshop is a review of the city's traffic calming guidelines. I'll call for our civil engineer Stacey Pickford for the presentation.

All right. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. This is a review of the city of Greenville's traffic calming guidelines. Just a little bit of the evolution. Our guidelines were first incorporated in 2001 with our first updated update incorporated in 2008 at that time we added a point system and we removed all way stops from our approved traffic calming measures second update was incorporated in 2015 at that time we created an updated point system and then our third update incorporated in 2020 we removed the petition process So the initial qualifying criteria, this is what we look at before we can even do a study on a city street. It must be a city-maintained public street classified as a two-lane residential street under the City of Greenville's MSDD, must have a roadway width of less than or equal to 40 feet, and that's back of curb to back of curb, and must have a posted speed limit of 25 miles per hour. So if we get a request from a roadway that is not posted 25, that's the first step we take is reducing the speed limit. This is our criteria point system. The first thing we look at is our speed. So the speed we look at is the 85th percentile, which is the speed that the traveling public is going at or below. The 85% of the traveling public is going at or below. And that's typically what's used to set speed limits. So for example, if the 85th percentile speed comes in at 28 miles per hour for a 25 mile per hour posted speed limit, you will get nine points. for speed. Pedestrian activity, you get five points assigned for each school, church, bus, bus stop, public park, community center, senior center, senior living facility, or shopping center that is likely to generate a significant number of pedestrians crossing the traffic calm street. And you can get five points if there is no sidewalks present. Volume, you get four points assigned for every 400 vehicles per day, up to 20 points. And then we have other factors, zero to 10 points such as sight distance problems that can be improved with traffic calming. So there is a total of 100 points maximum score and you need a minimum of 30 points required to qualify. In addition to the previous listed technical criteria, we do have special conditions unique to a location that is not covered by the general criteria listed in the above point system that may warrant the installation of traffic calming devices. So that's kind of engineering judgment. We haven't really run into this, It could be any number of things that could qualify. So the procedure, the city receives a request and performs a week long study of the area and we only study when schools are in session. So that's typically September through May. The data collected includes speed and volume. The data is evaluated and compared to the point system and any special conditions are considered and then a determination is made if the street qualifies for traffic calming and a response is sent to the neighborhood contact. If the street qualifies, staff will develop a traffic calming plan, and we will send notices to all the residents located in the area of influence with a map showing the proposed locations. We allow a two-week comment period, and the way we have our notices set up, if you do not respond, we take that as you are in favor of traffic calming being installed. So as long as we receive the majority of residents in favor, we move forward to the installation phase. So the types of traffic calming devices that we currently have, speed humps, which we no longer install, speed cushions, traffic circles, traffic diverters, edge line striping, rumble strips, and speed boards. The last two are what we have used on non-residential streets. And then what we currently have installed, currently there's 48 speed humps, which we are removing as streets are resurfaced and replacing with speed cushions. We have 583 speed cushions installed on approximately 90 city streets.

Can I ask why we moved away from the... Maintenance.

The cushions are a lot easier to put down.

Emergency vehicle access.

Yeah, emergency vehicle access. The fire trucks can straddle. We have two traffic circles. They are both installed in Moywood. We have one traffic diverter that is also installed in Moywood. Edgeline striping, these are also referred to as parking lanes. We have these in several neighborhood streets. It just visually narrows the roadway to help slow down traffic. Rumble strips, Hooker Road, and then speed boards we have on Charles Boulevard. So this is kind of just a table to show the material cost per location based on street width. For a street width 16 to 22 feet, we need two cushions, which is approximately $1,300. Street widths of 23 to 32 feet, we need three. That's a little over 2,000. And then street widths of 33 feet to 43 feet, we would need four, and that's about $2,700. And that's just the material. This table shows what we have spent the last four years on traffic calming for the material and installation costs. And this is just the initial cost. This does not include whenever we resurface a road, we have to take the cushions up and reinstall them once the road is resurfaced. And those expenses are paid by the pavement management program. And then this table is just a breakdown by council district, what we have installed. Council District 1 has 120 total devices. Council District 2, 150. District 3, 69. District 4, 100. And District 5, 192. And that's it. Any questions?

Any questions? Comments?

I would like to talk to either one of y'all after. I've got a resident that says that she had speed cushions improperly installed on her street. Is she a registered engineer?

I will say that one of the things that I hear the most as city manager

is citizens wanting more speed cushions and i think that is echoed by some here on council as well so there's you've got to have a a measuring tool you got to have a formula if not i mean you it could be also if we if we wanted more to qualify we would have to adjust the formula And so, you know, I would ask the council for direction if we would like us to take a closer look at the formula. Tinker it? No. That's my opinion.

I wouldn't.

But I think that's interesting, though, because you have the district with the most. So for those that don't and need more, then it sounds like to me it needs tweaking.

I don't necessarily think that. I think that there has to be a need there, too, right? I mean, there's a formula in place. But the formula's in place.

Right, but it's not meeting the needs. Could you go back to the things in the area that you would need? So I

I think is, are there being requests, because I know... Yes, there are.

And I remember having a distinct conversation with you, Michael, and you were saying, you know, if we need to change it, then I want to have the ability to just change it. So if we have to give you the ability, then I'd like to do that.

Yeah, I mean, I've got to take guidance from counsel before we take over.

And I've given lists.

I guess I'm looking at it. You know, I know in my district, people are very... We've got a couple of roads in our neighborhood, Michael Pinewood, like what, almost a mile, three-quarters of a mile probably, and it spreads narrow. And then we've got Chesapeake. We've got a lot of roads that are straight and long. And I think our neighbors speed and also use it as a cut-through, but they've been very vocal about it. And I'd like to see the number of requests that were made and denied versus requests that were made and granted because, I mean... I think the point system's pretty easy that if you ask for it, you're probably gonna get it.

But to me, the point system's fair, right? If it's there, it's there, right? And I think part of the problem I've seen in government is we like to manipulate things so it meets whatever criteria for something. create a system that's been used and that's been the way and i've had to be on the other side where i've had to tell people that your road did not qualify and that's just the way it is i mean you could come rip them out in in my neighborhood i hate those things i mean personally i do but i think that if the system's in place and it's been used and there's certain criteria there has to be a need for it but if we start manipulating them who's to say that more of them aren't going to be in less's district right You're going to have more roads that are going to be over there. They're going to get qualified too. And then what do we do when we run out of funding?

But what also happens when you have a child that is walking in the street and you have someone that's flying by or speeding by And because if a speed bump could have slowed that person down, that's coming through 4th Street. Because that's one of the places that I've had a lot of people say that they need speed bumps. But because it does not have a public park, it doesn't have a church or a bus stop there, then we can't get a speed hump because of that. So there has to be some type of exception, some kind of rule that we go by and say, well, okay, well, you may not have these. These have to give you, what, 20 points? So that's going to stop the people that's in my district from being able to get that speed up.

And it's not that the requests haven't been made. The requests have been made. I don't know if at some point they weren't being passed forward, but I know in the last two and a half years they've been being passed forward. And we've gotten some. We've gotten... Myrtle and chestnut Nash is coming, but there are other areas that they are desperately in need that based on that criteria to reiterate that would be more difficult.

I'm sorry. I was going to add to sometimes to its perception issue. So trap and calming isn't intended to stop a handful of speeders. It's not going to. So if you have people in the neighborhood that are going 50 miles an hour down a 35 mile an hour road, the traffic calming isn't going to stop those two or three. It's never going to qualify. The intent is that it's a consistent problem with high volumes. The other issue is an enforcement issue. And traffic calming isn't going to work, regardless of what tools.

And to your point, I would never ask for them. for something where there was two or three, where our citizens have been asking for them. We know the density of traffic that goes down those streets, and quite candidly, is significantly more than in the areas that seem to be more prone to have them just because of the density of the communities. And so, you know, to that point, you know, forestry is, maybe shouldn't be, but it's kind of like a little thoroughfare almost because of, right. And so we know, and...

we know that that's not the case and would not ask if we thought it was the case right but that is what the study does we take the numbers we're not guessing we're not it's not up to personal perception we actually put counters out we take the volumes that road over a week's time we try and do it during the most populated time like she said during school so no one's guessing at the numbers that show up on this point system now if we need to modify the point system that's one thing and then it's applied equally across obviously the city but right now it's based on the hard cold numbers the other thing is that speed and volume data are the two biggest contributors to that point system you know the other things like it

that's really unjustified. And like Lisa said, we do like that data. But part of what I heard just, go ahead, I'm sorry.

How about people who've been killed on Hooker Road?

That's, you can take accidents into account.

We're talking about neighborhood. Yeah, residential. Residential, yes.

However, what I was going to say as it related to that is that you said, I think you said most dense times, like when school is in or what have you. And if you're not from that community or don't know the dynamics of that community, your formula for determining what the time is. might not be the time of most of the activity in that neighborhood.

I didn't mean most dense time of day. We do it for 24 hours. We do it for seven days solid. I just meant time of year. So we don't do it during the summer months when people are on vacation.

So you do the give count over a week in what you perceive to be the busiest time of year for traffic on that area.

Correct. So we can do nothing. Keep it as is. We can look at modifying the look-back period, whether it be a week, extending that period, Or we could look at changing the fund. That'd be the pleasure of the council.

Well, is there any suggestions? I think some people have said that the formula they don't feel is sufficient. Is there any suggestions that we want to give the staff?

We would have to research. I don't have to mold it over, but...

I mean, are there any suggestions, though, like off the top, without messaging the staff in the future? I mean, does anybody have any suggestions of what you'd like to see changed in the formula?

The other thing, it's not a formula. It's a point system, okay? If people keep thinking that we're inputting certain values in formula and it comes out with an answer, that table represents all the way you can earn points. And the biggest contributor to that total of 30 that's needed is speed and volume. So that should make everyone understand why in a residential neighborhood you're not getting that speed and you're not getting that volume that Stacey talks about.

And also what Rick is trying to say is if you adjust the parameters for the speed and the volume, it's going to be done uniformly, which means that more in your district could be from in there, or who knows how.

What is the time period as far as if something were to fail, how soon can somebody go back and ask for it to be recalculated?

So we do use professional judgment with that, meaning if there hasn't been significant development that's happened in that corridor, we typically do not restudy it unless it's just been a number of years and different people are involved. but we don't go back to every year consecutively.

I'll say for instance, I know somebody had requested in, what's the name of that subdivision over there off of Allen Road and Brook Hollow, I think it is, over there. And now that they've got Brook Hollow Phase 2 that they're working on right now, the traffic is significant. That would be something where the staff would make just a professional judgment and say, hey, we're fine with going back there and seeing what type of

changes have been made right to see if it's if it's warranted now yes okay but there's nothing as far as like hey we're not going to do this for two years or three years whatever it is because that because every study it may show that the volume has increased and again the volume and the speed are the biggest contributors to satisfaction of that of that table

Does our point system mimic some other city as a guideline?

Yeah, I was going to say, when we did this last update, we canvassed similar sized cities throughout the state to help develop these.

That was the 2015 update, right?

Yeah. I mean, our previous point system, we were saying no majority of the time. So this did open up a lot more neighborhoods that were not qualifying before. And like I said, it was based on canvassing the rest of the cities in the state.

And we still have an option that I know I've used the cheap before to say, hey, go run some enforcement on this road and send a message to people driving up there. Because word kind of gets out quick that, you know, the pub's over there running right at least the people who are chronic, I call them the chronic speeders, that speed bump doesn't slow them down a bit. I kind of yell at them and raise my hand, I'm gonna have to stop something, but they'll come through, and they're literally jumping the speed bumps with a car, like a Honda Civic and bottom out.

No, for real. I'm not joking. I've come home and I've seen a car flipped on Chesapeake. I'm not kidding.

But there are other factors, and I would have to really kneel this over. If you guys would go to the screen that had the totals on it, I think that that is very telling, number one. But the other thing is, PJ, you mentioned Brook Hollow. Brook Hollow is a neighborhood with very narrow streets and not a lot of parking. People are parked on both sides. And so there's some other kind of overarching factors that probably led to them asking for them that are in addition to what is part of this point system. I won't say formula. So, you know, but those are narrow streets and people are parking on both sides. So that might have, and it is dense out there also. So. You know, I don't know what the answer is, but I do think it needs to be something.

Do you want to come back with suggestions? Is there any feedback, though, that can be given to you?

Well, we want to put it out there and get direction from the council. If the council is asking us to come back with suggestions, we can come up with suggestions.

Does anybody have any suggestions to give them some guidance? Because sometimes we just ask for guidance, and when it comes back, that's not what we want.

I would say since 2015 with this point system, look and see if there's anything more updated to drive these speed humps.

Anybody else have any feedback?

I mean, there could also be a public safety aspect that we could pull into this.

Hey, I do want to say, Deputy Chief, soon to be Chief, you guys are doing a great job as far as traffic enforcement. I left my house this morning, and I was going down Red Banks Road. You guys were pulling them over like crazy over there. And then I was coming down the road from an appointment on Greenville Boulevard, and you guys were pulling them over there, too. So I saw two of them today, so I appreciate all that you guys are doing to be able to enforce the speed limit throughout our community.

Yes, we have a really good traffic unit.

Alright, does that sound like a deal?

Sounds good.

Alright, do I have a motion to adjourn?

Second.

Alright, motion is made by Councilor Robinson, second by Council Member Hardy. All those in favor say aye. Aye.