Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the Board of Commissioners regular meeting for August 17th, 2026. I will call this meeting to order. If you all will please stand with me for the Pledge of Allegiance and remain standing for invocation. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And I would like to welcome up Dan Marshall who will give us our invocation for the evening. Good evening.

All right. I do need a motion to approve the minutes as presented. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries 5-0. And then I need a motion to approve the agenda, including the changes on page 42. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that carries as well, 5-0. So we will move on to item number two, which is the geobond video. And this is going to be presented by our new county manager, John Eller. Welcome him to the dais. We're so glad to have you up here.

And I just want to say thanks to Dominique and Jonathan Weaver for doing that as well. You know, our job here is to educate you on what a bond is and what that means for you. And so for the next several weeks coming up until November, we will be putting out videos and educational material for everybody to understand what this bond means for them personally in their own households. OK, so we will move on to recognitions and presentations. Item number one, Consolidated Human Services Agency Economic Services Appreciation Proclamation. And that is with Stacy Daniels. Good evening. Welcome.

All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And that carries 5-0. Thank you, ladies, for coming up to present that, and we certainly value the work that you do. All right, we will move on to item number two, recognition of Chief Deputy Burchett on her retirement from Cabarrus County Sheriff's Office with Sheriff Banshaw.

you go we do have to give you your your clock because you can't leave without your clock um i just want to say tessa i have enjoyed being able to work with you i appreciate so much that you know how important the animals are And you have always been there to answer any questions that I've had. And you've just been a great resource for so many people. And I'm truly grateful for your leadership in the Sheriff's Department. And we really are going to miss you. Now, do you want to tell what you're going to be, your next endeavor is going to be? Because I love that you're doing this.

Again, we are very grateful for you, and thank you very much, Sheriff Shaw. All right, and we will move on to informal public comments. Arie, how many do we have this evening, ma'am?

All right, commissioners, I do need a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Any opposed? That carries 5-0. Thank you. And we will move on to new business. Item number one is the proposed animal shelter replacement discussion with Kyle Billifer.

Commissioners, do you have any questions? Commissioner Pittman?

I was going to say, I don't want Ingrid Nurse to faint, but I actually sympathize with some of what she said about this. I don't say no, let's don't do it necessarily. I did understand her point about consulting the citizens about it. One thing I do think between the two positions is maybe. We ought to have, like, a public hearing on it or, you know, take those kind of concerns into account before settling on something. I'm not against it, but I think, you know, we do want a lot of transparency up here, and I think that would be one way of making sure that we have that. So I'd appreciate it if

I don't necessarily disagree I think what we talked about in the work session was that if for instance we find a funding model that is community-based right we go ask for donations it's important that we go through step one and get someone on board who can do a site plan and a rendering that you can use to market the project if we go for that funding model so I'm certainly in favor of doing step one here even though I do agree with you on some of those items commissioner Pittman so I will certainly be voting for

Any other questions or comment? OK, I do need a motion to approve the county staff to advertise a request for qualifications for limited design services for the proposed new animal shelter and request staff to study alternative funding models that other counties have used to build and operate their animal shelter. Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? All right, that carries 5-0. Thank you. We will move on to item number two, which is discussion of potential permanent stage construction at Rob Wallace Park with Kyle.

Commissioners, do you have any questions? I do need a motion to approve the county to partner with the town of Midland and feasibility and design only for the proposed permanent entertainment stage at Rob Wallace Park. Construction approval would come at a later date and be associated with several agreements. All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? That carries 5-0.

commissioners any comments or questions all right I do need a motion to approve the donation of County assets four zero seven two and four zero seven three to the town of Midland all those in favor please say aye any opposed thank you so much for your time all right we will move on to item number four boards and committees they have partners governing board appointment Aerie, would you like to address this, ma'am?

Commissioners, do you have any questions or comments? All right, I do need a motion to approve John Eller to serve the Cabarrus County representative on the VEA Partners Governing Board for a three-year term expiring September 30th, 2029, and to include any necessary exemptions to the appointment policy.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries 5-0. Thank you. And we will move on to reports. Just so you all know, the reports have been included in your packet for review. Do you all have any questions regarding those? Okay, just remember that we do have vacancies still on our boards and committees, so please, if you are interested, please fill out an application online for any of those boards and committees. And I will start with Commissioner Pittman.

On August 5th, the first... Thank you. 4,420 trips for a year to date, over 7,000 for Medicare patients. The on-time rate was 98%. They've been going through a period of driver shortages. At that moment, they had 11 drivers out of the need for 21 total. And they were at that time about to interview four potential new drivers, and they had two others interested. Some dispatchers and supervisors are having to fill in the gaps for that lack of drivers and are doing some of the driving. Unused funding from fiscal year 25 through 26 has been reappropriated for fiscal year 26 through 27. Annual trai

It does save them some trouble trying to deal with that otherwise. Midland Town Council met on August 11th. The sheriff report, I didn't get all of it, but it did say 265 calls during the month, 104 dispatch calls, seven animal calls, two assault calls, two breaking and entering calls at storage buildings, and 261 traffic stops in the Midland area. Midland Fire Department reported 118 calls, 60 of those being medical calls. NCDOT representatives came and they reported on consideration of the proposed 2427 bypass for Midland. There are three plans under consideration. They're leaning toward wha

i asked james after meeting with any kind of james k polk and he said yeah he was a distant cousin thank you commissioner pitman commissioner wortman do you have anything all right commissioner jones wait are we in for some we're in for a little dissertation here all right uh talking about the human service advisory board update again we deal with a lot of different things and Usually, with the human services, this is typical. All you hear is the negative, and there's a lot of good that comes. There's a lot of progress we're making. And so, at this point, we need to start getting that out ther

Thank you, Commissioner Jones. Commissioner Patterson?

um pretty light month for me actually this will be quick harrisburg town council um a couple of just kind of regular contractual items they did have three public hearings on new developments two of them were small single-family homes those were approved the other one on the agenda was 149 lot residential neighborhood and it was on 175 acres That applicant pulled that last minute, so while it remained on the agenda, they did not discuss it, so there will be a public hearing on that project at some point. WSAC, we meet on Thursday, so nothing to report there. Cabera's planning and zoning was can

All right, thank you. All right, just a couple of things. At the Kannapolis City Council meeting this past month, I was able to watch four new police officers sworn into the KPD. So congratulations to them. I'm also very thankful that none of the Kannapolis police officers were hurt in a recent situation that happened. I think we have heard of to this point. I did get the opportunity to attend the Locust City Council meeting last week. I just got to give a shout out to them. They are a phenomenal group of city council members. The mayor is hysterical and their city manager, Cesar, is wonderful

um someone's mentioned about where we stand on the go bonds i have not stated my personal position on that because i didn't think it was appropriate as a county commissioner to do that i will repeat though the only reason i put voted to put it on the ballot was because the people need to decide that and so that's why i wanted it on the ballot is let the people decide if we're going to do that now I want to say thank you to the sheriff's office. I've been getting a lot of death threats. Got one recently where the guy said somebody should beat me to death. It's been tried, you know, and it was n

I just wanted to point out that our very own Arie has officially completed clerk school, so she is officially, officially the clerk. Officially, officially the clerk. Congratulations on completing it.

Thank you, Commissioner Wortman. And I just want to say that you are doing a fantastic job, even though you had not been officially official until now. We are grateful to have you. You're welcome. Commissioner Jones.

I'm opposite of Larry. I'm against the tax amendment. Just want to let you all know that. All right.

um yeah i want to thank commissioner pittman and also mr jones for being very careful about the way they said that because there are two things about referenda that are on the ballot that i think everybody should know we are not allowed as a board by state law to use any taxpayer funds to support or oppose the referenda that goes for the geo bonds and that goes for the constitutional amendment now if you'd like to see me afterwards and know exactly where i stand on both of those i will tell you as a voter which is my right but this body has to be very careful about what we say we cannot suppor

Thank you, Patrick. So first, I want to highlight our animal shelter video for this month. So this month I was able to meet Button, Hunter and Fisher. Hey folks, I'm Laura. This is Button. This is Hunter. This is Fisher. And this is your August shelter update. Let's go meet those friendly faces now. Button is approximately six years old, and according to a volunteer donated DNA test, Button is 33% American Pit Bull Terrier, 29% American Staffordshire Terrier, 18% Boxer, 8% Boston Terrier, and 5% American Akita. She is cute as a button and looking for a family of her own. Hunter and Fisher were