County Council - workshop

This time I'll call to order the York County Council Workshop for August 27th, 2024, 2026 to order. The first item on our workshop agenda is to have general discussion regarding ED incentives, ED fund policies, the status of our current projects and and just for purposes of Kind of opening this up one of the issues that council all collectively said they were interested in looking at is How do we find ways to improve this process? How do we find? out what council will support and how do we give some direction and revisit these issues as we move forward and go about doing that. I know that ther

Do you know what the historical idea or why the ED fund was implemented?

You weren't left any documents or any direction on what that fund was created for?

So the two, just so I'll make sure that we answer the questions and go through this appropriately, there's two issues here to hear from council. One is how do we go about having... This is a test.

Just sitting here, minding my own business. So to me, we have two issues. One, I appreciate the questions that y'all put up. And I do appreciate, Mitch, a lot of the issues that we are hearing that we're getting public feedback from deal with projects that were brought before you were here. And so there has been a change at the helm in how do we Number one, how can we improve the process? And number two, where do we want to invest the ED funds, or how do we want to do that? To me, I think those are the two main issues that we're here for. And I'm happy to let you all start, and I can share my

I'll follow up on that and. You know. We definitely need some to give you some more definitive guidance. I assume that's what the ED committee is for. They should be making those decisions. They should know what councils, you know. Ideas are and what Council kind of wants so. If our committee doesn't know what we want, then maybe we should reevaluate how we're handling that so that the ED committee, because I know they had been working on some of these deals. I know they work on these deals way ahead of the full council getting to see them. So we should empower them to be able to make these de

And so I'm not supporting that. We can all take the same. If we need to give up 3%, everybody's going to give up 3%. The ED fund, I could give up, if there's 10%, when we get up above 500 million or a billion dollar projects, I could see letting some of that money go to other things, not necessarily have to be 10% to the ED fund every time. I don't see a point in funding the ED fund if we're not going to use it to do some ED projects. I'd like to see some responses or some projects come from staff and the ED department of what we could get a good ROI on and what could we use to really help our

Let's let council members go first. Let's let everybody get through first. Mr. Atkins.

You better say it now. You may not get to come back.

Okay. So, I questioned... what the money was going to early on when I was on council. And I was told from economic development folks that it was to be used When a business came in and they disrupted the land around them, maybe the roads or sidewalks were needed or something happened like infrastructure, it was to be used for whatever that business needed. was a disruption and needed to be fixed and added. So it would go along with the road situation that was also somebody else brought up. That's what I was told. And it made sense to me because these businesses do come in and they tear up roads

You can go ahead. You can go ahead. OK. I'd like to listen, if that's OK. No problem.

So I'm going to start with a couple of things that I think are important that I agree with. First of all, all of our businesses. Our small businesses, our existing businesses, they pay 6% or more to be here. There's very few businesses that are allowed to get this Filos. And those Filos oftentimes go to 4%, and oftentimes below 4%, they're paying less percentage tax than even residents are under these Filos if SSRCs are given. What I believe is that our county is a great place to be. And I honestly think that most of our problems on this council have come from fellows and I think fellows shoul

Actually, I would like 15 and 30. 15 and 30? Yeah, I'd like to have an hour's worth of talking. Yeah. But if it's longer than two minutes of talking, they really should just send us an email.

Well, they just need to give us the high points and then send us an email if they've got longer than that and a whole presentation or something. Only three minutes. Three minutes.

I mean, try three for three months and see how it works. And if it doesn't work, the rambling, then let's go back to two.

And at three minutes, there's a lot of people that get up and only talk for a minute or two. So we're cutting out five people that get the opportunity to speak. That's very few that are only going to talk for a minute. I'm just trying to help get as many people as possible to speak. and not limit the numbers. We can do a 30 at one minute if we want to get the quantity, but that's not going to help.

I think that's very worthwhile having trained two staff members or whatever to be there to sign up because what that's gonna do is it gets so congested out there when we have a big topic that there is infighting and everything because they're all trying to get in there. Well, if they're signing up after out there, it can be more orderly, and then people, if there's an overflow that they have to go upstairs or whatever, then they sign in and go upstairs, but I think that that is a definite nice thing to happen. And then, I'm not necessarily for the three minute situation, but I'm willing to giv

We'll do three in 10 for the next three months unless they're reevaluated.

I think the only thing that folks need to understand is that this is in an ordinance. So we can't willy-nilly go back and forth. What we can do is we can give more flexibility. We can change the ordinance to, say, 30 minutes, and then that gives us the opportunity to do whatever we want. But I think we have to set some parameters because right now it says 30 minutes, two minutes apiece, and we can't. Deviate from that but we can create some more flexibility in the ordinance if we want to give ourselves flexibility I think the bigger question and and I'd like to go ahead and tackle this piece s

I would support at the end another 30 minutes for whatever.

I mean, last time we discussed one ordinance for one hour. And then we had the rest of the agenda to go through. I mean.

So y'all do not want to prioritize? Anyone who signs up, whoever gets there first, we're going to do 130 minutes.

Well, then we really aren't changing anything.

That's right. We don't have to. Well, again, I think.

But we are kind of, because if they're going to go out front and you've got the folks out there talking to them, and they want to ask questions of somebody. There's people here all the time that have never understood how to sign up. Because like you said, they're signing up to come in here and sit down.

I know, but you can if you've got qualified staff and they can ask questions. I mean, we had a whole QTS situation where we had like three or four women that came that had never walked through that door before. They didn't even know what they were supposed to be doing. But if they had had somebody out there to talk to, and ask questions and answer questions, then it would go for a smooth transition.

Well, that doesn't require, I guess that does not require any change in our ordinance to have somebody out there manning the form. I think we all agree that's valuable. Let's do that. The question is, are we going to just keep everything else the way that it is?

Whatever it is, it needs to be manned. We need to have somebody who mans it. So y'all need to speak into how you do that.

The thing is about 5 o'clock is you're encouraging people to get here at 5 o'clock for a 6 o'clock meeting to sign up on the sheet. That's why I put 530 down. 530, they stand in line, and 20 minutes later the sheet's picked up or we get 15 names on it, it's picked up. So we don't have a staff member sitting there for an hour before a meeting manning a 15- We just need to make sure that people are going to stand in line and not let people in line and fight to get in line. Well, and that's the other thing. The complaints in the beginning was people were signing up for the people to speak. That's

You've got to get here at 5 or make sure they line up right. Thank you, Mark. You make sure they line up right.

So that's why I suggested 5.30 until 10 till 6 and pick it up.

I don't know that you're going to be able to get 15 people to sign up in 15 minutes.

Help me. That's why I suggested Sheriff's Day.

Well, that's where it is. I guess I don't understand.

Why is that? I don't understand why that's a problem. It doesn't put a time. I thought you were going to tell me we went so far as to say a time.

I guess I'm confused. Why is the problem?

That's where it is now. That's where we're keeping it.

Yeah, let's leave it. Oh, we're not sticking it out in the lobby with the. It's right there.

The only thing that council is supportive of is getting a sign-up person out there by the sign-up sheets. Let's do it 515 to 545. uh... but what about fifteen minutes fifty people's it's kind of hard to some fifteen people in that sort of time frame if there's a lot of people were asking them a minute speak of the people who take direction there hasn't been a staff member to be out there one of them around for an hour is not the reason i don't want to do a sign up sheet what what what what what what what what what

because uh... uh... all right never know other changes and i don't want any other changes now leave it at the members first whether it's a gender and on a gender you leave out all right i don't have a quick not really cheap she brought up she said sign up a person or organization What is an organization? What if it's a group of people that's going to talk? So can one person sign up multiple people? You can't sign up nobody that's not here.

You're signing up on behalf of an organization. It says organization.

I think we can talk through that. That's not something we've got on the agenda right now. Let's circle back on that one. We're talking about public comment. We'll come back to it.

About 15 people. The only suggestion that I heard is that since we're leaving it agenda and non-agenda, any of those topics, with agenda comments, we will get an opportunity to address that. So there's really no point in having someone address that because we will have it in the agenda. Not agenda comments would be the only time where there would need to be some response.

Are we talking about the second 30 minutes now?

No, we're not talking, what do you mean? We're not even doing these additional 30 minutes. We're not doing that. We all said, apparently the group says we don't want to do anything but one 30 minute slot like we have.

No, we're talking about a response to what is brought up in the 30 minute, two minute session. And there's not consensus on that yet.

Okay, because we haven't. So the suggestion is from Mr. Huckabee that we keep the 30 minutes for the community and that we then allow another 30 minutes for council to respond or someone else to respond.

will strike down so we think it'd be step up to thirty minutes staff and a representative strike councilman some point and future like and so i can't i i definitely don't think we need thirty minutes no it's to respond to anything it's up to thirty but at a fifteen just come up with something so we can respond to what we're here or or staff can respond to what we're hearing so we can get the truth out on something if in fact it needs to be correct who's going to tell staff to answer a question

But they're not the ones that have concerns about it. We're up here saying we don't like it.

And we've had council members try to do it and get out in front of it. So at this point... If it's an agenda item, we don't need to do anything about that because it comes up in the agenda. If it is a non-agenda comment, what we're saying is leave it up to management or staff. If they want to respond, that's really not addressing what council's concern was.

So the reason this came up was because when we get to... Well, people are coming to speak on topics that happened months ago sometimes. And so you've had a chance between meetings, the last meeting you heard it, this meeting you heard it, and staff could respond if we chose to so that we're addressing it head on. Because what happens is the citizens leave and they don't hear any discussion later in the meeting typically. They're definitely not going to hear it in non-agenda at the end.

but it's really the will counsel whether you want arrest but that the opportunity to have a response after or not i think you should get the name and email from that person if you want to respond to their problems respond to it after the because here's what's going to have are less than respond one I'm going to go real broad. Please don't hold it against me. Let's say we have one person that tells a lie, and we respond to that particular lie, but then there's another more obscure lie or something, and we don't respond to that one. Does that make that lie now the truth? Because we responded to

All right, so we have not changed anything on public comment other than have someone outside to help them. Watts, you have some other ideas here that council has not considered. Do you want to raise them?

Yeah, sure. Be glad to. I just was mentioning that they have assigned place to sit so that they can come up orderly and quickly and really get it done in 30 minutes. Person speaking, somebody standing behind them. Also, whoever's sitting in the designated seats would know that they're here to talk about an agenda item that can be explained to them. The second section had to do with the response, give it up to 30 minutes for us to respond to something that was said in public comment to kind of give the different perspective so that something doesn't go into the media, but we've already covered

That'd be good to refer. Last item was Consider holding executive session, if not before every meeting, but maybe one meeting a month from 4.30 to 5.40, and also ending meetings by 9.30. So no matter where we are in a meeting, we end at 9.30. And part of this has to do with our staff being here. We're sometimes here at 11, 11.30 at night. Most of our meetings, we have attorneys that are participating in these meetings, and if our taxpayers knew we were paying these attorneys to be on the clock at 9, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 o'clock traveling back to Columbia, you'd have a heart attack knowing,

That's an hour and 10 minutes, but I hear you, not 30 minutes.

It may not work. I'm just throwing a suggestion out. I mean, I'm just saying I can't make it at 5.

the opportunity for discussion more efficient, especially with the applicants that are here. Sometimes I feel like they should be speaking ahead of the public here or maybe after the public speaks so that they can kind of answer some questions that were brought up. So I would be interested in seeing maybe some different options. If it's not already written in an ordinance that we have to do a whole lot of changes for.

Yeah, I support that. We already have them speaking in the beginning.

The way we typically do public hearings is to hear from staff. I mean, if what y'all are saying is allow the applicant to be up there to answer questions from council, Fine. If we're adding more presentation, y'all are talking about trying to shorten meetings. The way we shorten meetings is for us to be prepared and for us to cap our talking and be prepared. I don't know that you can just put an end at the meeting and say I'm done at 930 when we haven't completed the business. So I don't know that we can do that. I do think with the public hearing, I don't know that we have to refer that to a

I think the suggestion to send this to committee and let them present what it is they have interest in, improving the process, makes sense. Which process? I think the process for the public hearing. I think come prepared is a very good point, but the other point is that we really don't have a lot of discussion on issues. We make comments. We really don't have a discussion, right? One person speaks pretty much, and then we try to end it at that point. So it's an unfortunate process that some of the conversations have to take place outside of this building, which means that only a few people are

How is the public hearing, how is changing the public hearing going to do that? How is that going to fix that?

The last bullet point is irrelevant to the public hearing. The last bullet point just has to do with establishing some guardrails for our meetings.

I'm not interested in that last bullet point at all. The one thing I would be interested in is maybe just having a limited number of items on the agenda. But then we're just not going to get anything done. We're just going to have more meetings. Well, we have more. We want to go meet twice a month.

Well, I think that definitely whoever committee that is that looks at public hearings, I don't know what committee that is, that the people that come up to speak, I think there should be a time limit on them. Yeah.

Greenville does with their public hearings the same way they do with the public hearings. 30 minutes for 30 minutes against. Hmm. We're going to cut public. I'm not supportive of cutting public comment. Well, I think that's a major change. And we're sitting here saying that we. But I don't disagree that when we get to a point where folks are saying things, I guess I have a concern that we would give an applicant more time than an individual in the community. I don't support that, so I want to be clear. If y'all want to refer an item on public hearings to a committee, I think we need to underst

So is it possible to get the agendas out by Wednesday at lunch?

I do think being mindful of what's on an agenda and spreading out the public hearings so that we're not loaded up helps more than anything. And that requires folks taking a look ahead of time when things get published in the paper. I mean, I do think that's a key thing.

Can a lot of that stuff that's in the consent agenda, can we somehow make it so that that stuff doesn't have to be on the consent agenda, which would free up some time?

I know, but they have to put all that data together and put it in their package and get it in the agenda. If we pull those things out of that so they don't even have to come to us or something. Like, if it's already in the budget, To do this thing do we have to we still have to vote on it still has to be in there To me that's not really what's making our items longer the consent agenda is a matter of emotion.

We spend a lot of time on rezoning, but that's just...

There has to be a record of the expenditure.

Our ordinance is very specific on a lot of these things, apparently. We can change the ordinance. Good.

I kind of like it being consent, because then the community sees that, and a budget's too long. They don't see it.

Maybe it could go through the F&O committee for fire truck purchases. Still, the council has to do this. But all that is the consent of the board of trustees.

No, we can't delegate the majority council, majority responsibility to one committee. You can't delegate that.

Well, we're trying to make them do much.

At least we tried. All right, let's move on. Discussion regarding future workshops. I know that we have to address fire in September. I'll say no more workshops. I'm starting to get there with you.

When we talk about things, and we say we want to change it, and then we don't, that's frustrating.

Well, I have a suggestion on workshops. First of all, I think we need to put them on the calendar. Just go ahead and put them on the calendar for the rest of this year, this year through June. And you can always take them off, but you have the workshop on the calendar. At least it's held. I thought they were. They are.

Well, it's the special call. We've had four or five special call meetings.

Apparently, our workshop in September can't go the date that we put it on there, though, because we have a council meeting. So we did have to change that. All of the rest of them are on the calendar.

And the second thing I was going to suggest is that we talked about executive session. Maybe there are a couple of items that we could cover at a workshop and executive session so we don't have so much on the docket the night of the meeting. Spread it out a little bit. Because we spend a lot of time in executive session. We go in there at 8, and we come out at 10, 10.30, 11 o'clock. It's just going to make workshop go longer. It might.

I'd like to see one of those soon. Fire and EMS, I think maybe we could take those two together, even though they're separate. I think we need to really talk, as a council, I think we need to talk about and get some direction on the comp plan that's coming up. We really do need to understand what that's going to require and get that. That's a huge thing that's coming up very soon. Talk through what that looks like and Y'all share with us. Those are two big things that I see coming up. Any other topics?

Our data center moratorium and what we've been doing so far with the additions to the ordinance. And the plan is... to take Tom and Jonathan's work that they've been doing to the Planning and Zoning Committee, another committee meeting. And then after that, any additions you guys have, then bringing it to council, not to vote on, but to discuss all the things that we've put into it. So I don't know where that's gonna fit in.

I don't know. You're looking for a response.

Well, now I'm just saying, I don't know where that's going to fit in.

I don't know, should that one go to the full council at a workshop instead of just PNZ?

Well, it's going to. You're talking about...

So we're going to have PNZ and then the workshop and then... I was just asking. I was just making sure.

Well, wouldn't you like to hear some of the things first and kind of mull it over and then we put... take out, put in, then bring it to council. I mean, that's how a workshop works. If you don't want it to work that way, then we need to change workshops.

I think all of the council should be able to hear the whole presentation for that, because it's a big deal. Because we're going to end up rehashing it.

It's going to be the whole presentation, but I was trying to be polite. If you don't want me to be polite, we'll just bring it right on. We're not going to bring it to PNC. What do you want to do, Tom? Do you want it brought to PNC first or do you want to just bring it to council?

That's what I thought. Maybe we hash out a few things in the committee before we bring it to council.

The moratorium's in place for how long? Nine months? Nine months. And the whole point is for the committee to do some work. And then when y'all get to a point where you have some suggestions.

So I had two items, either share it at a workshop or share it at council, and that's the trail.

Yeah. I think if it's a big item, bringing it through the workshop so we're all informed would be a good idea. I think there's some work to do on that committee. Any other big topics that we need to bring up on our workshop schedule?

updating the trails master plan updating us on the trails master plan and where we are with that because a lot's happened over the last year with the carolina thread trail and the municipalities trail programs understanding what's what progress has been made there and the second would be an update on the small area and corridor plans whether that's a full council or a workshop, either one. I think it would benefit all of council to hear an update on those.

Well, aren't they in the ED board is taking those up? So we don't have an update until they've done something with it, right? I'm asking you. So whenever they get there.

I would suggest with RFATS that that be with transportation and that we follow up. My recollection is that these plans that we've already funded, that they were coming through transportation as well. We need to make sure that we keep on that. All right. We do have an executive session briefly.

Should have passed the 930, ended the meeting.

Yes. Motion to authorize the interim county attorney to move forward with the settlement agreement in bankruptcy case number 25-03084 regarding applied machinery rentals. Second.