Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

good morning everyone this the wednesday september 2nd 2026 regular meeting of the nags head board of commissioners is hereby called to order before we begin there are some folks in the audience i'd like to recognize we have former mayors renee kahoon and bob moeller with us this morning we have former commissioner webb fuller and former commissioner anna sadler with us this morning welcome to all of you if you will please join me in a few moments of silence Now, as you're able, if you'll please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. That brings us to the adoption of the agenda and a motion would be in order to move have a motion and a second on favor say aye aye opposed. Thank you that brings us to our recognitions and we'll start with chief Perry Hale with a new employee.

I'm here before you this morning to introduce one of our newest officers, Meredith Luke. Meredith is a native of Darragh County, and with her family still residing here, and she is also a graduate of Manteo High School and holds a master's degree from North Carolina Wesleyan University in criminal justice. Meredith is a recent graduate of Pitt Community College-based law enforcement programming in Pitt County. While at Pitt County for BLET, I was contacted by several local law enforcement agencies, officials, chiefs, and higher ranking in the departments, advising that she would be a great candidate for our department. With the implementation of the department's police cadet program a few years back, Booth is the first person the department has hired while in the basic school. I will say that the process was flawless with Booth being the first, and we're extremely fortunate to have her in this program, in place, and also hire her before any other agency had the opportunity to pick her up. Meredith loves being outdoors in her off time and spending time with friends and family. I would also like to add that the PD will be looking forward to retaking the wiffle ball trophy as Meredith played softball in college and then was the assistant coach for Wesleyan and Silverton in BLE2.

Meredith, we're glad to have you. Thank you.

That brings us next to Public Services Director Nancy Kerwin and a new employee.

Good morning, Mr. Mayor and Commissioners. I'd like to introduce Chance Ducharme. He moved here from Northern Virginia when he was six months old. He grew up in Collington Harbor. He graduated from First Flight High School and went to Francis Marion College in South Carolina to play baseball. Chance graduated from college with a double major in sociology and criminal justice. Sociology. Psychology. He played one season of baseball with the Lake Erie Crushers in Ohio. He has lived in Nags Head for five years with his soon-to-be wife, Hayden, and their two cats, Neo and Baby. When he is not working, he enjoys surfing, fishing, golfing, bowling, and fishing.

Thanks.

Next, I'd like to introduce Justin Allen. He's originally from Pennsylvania and relocated to the Outer Banks with his family in 1999. After graduating from First Flight High School in NC State, he began his career in public utilities in 2014 with the town of Carolina Beach, where he stayed for over 12 years. This summer, he moved back to Dare County to continue his career with the town of Nags Head Water Department. Justin holds a B-Well and an Aid Distribution License with NCEQ. as well as a grade four wastewater and grade two collection certification. When he is not working, Justin loves to spend time surfing, fishing, and hanging at the beach with his dog, Lenny. Thank you, Justin.

All right. That brings us next to planning director, Kelly Wyatt, um, with a recognition for years of service.

Thank you. Good morning, mayor and commissioners. I'm happy to recognize Chase Hunley today for five years of service with the town of Naxat. Chase started with the town on August 9th, 2021 as a facilities maintenance technician. In January of 2023, we managed to lure him over to the planning department as our code enforcement officer. And it wasn't long before we started talking to him about a new opportunity. At the time, we were trying to fill a building inspector position, and we were not having much luck finding the right candidate. Meanwhile, Chase had shown an interest in inspections, and he brought some pretty impressive experience with him before coming to the town of Nags Head. He worked at the shipyard in Newport News building and inspecting nuclear reactors for submarines. and aircraft, so that technical detailed expertise, he already had that, so fitting in with building inspections was going to be perfect. We asked him if he would be interested to make that transition, and fortunately he was. On November 13th, 2023, Chase officially became a building inspector trainee, and he hit the ground running. Ever since then, he's been training shadowing other building inspectors, and he has acquired all of his level ones. building, mechanical, plumbing, electrical, and he has most of his level twos. It's just going to be a matter of time before we're celebrating him becoming a building inspector, too. It takes a lot of work and commitment, and Chase has embraced every new opportunity, and he puts a great deal of effort into everything that he does here with the town. It's been rewarding to watch him build his knowledge and confidence and become such a valuable part of our team. Our new chief building inspector Rick Gotsi, who you met last month, also wanted to recognize Chase. Although Rick has only been with us a short time, one thing that he said really stands out is on every inspection people talk about how well respected Chase is on the job. All the contractors and citizens, so that's wonderful to hear. um as dedicated as chase is to his work i think um the only thing he is more dedicated to is his family his wife sharon and daughter ava he is a proud softball dad his daughter ava has a great opportunity to play softball with a 14u team so playing above where she is at on an elite softball team this year so Most conversations with Chase include a little bit about work and a lot about softball, first thing in the morning. So between work, family, softball, his interest in health and fitness, he's very busy and very committed, and he brings all of that to his work and to the office. So we very much appreciate that. I thank him for his five years with the town, and I'm excited to do this again at 10, 15, and I may not be here at 20, but somebody will be here at 20.

Thank you.

That brings us back to Chief Hale for a recognition for years of service.

Great. Before you to recognize, Detective Sergeant Greg South was 20 years of service with the town. Greg started with our agency in 2006 with uniform patrol after serving 10 years with agencies in the suburbs of Philadelphia. After serving a year in patrol, Greg was selected for our criminal investigations division and worked as a detective until being promoted to detective sergeant in 2016. Greg has been instrumental within the division as he has started the agency's drone program, including writing the policy and being FAA-certified operator. He is the agency's only certified fire investigator, CPR instructor, and has led the crash reconstruction for the agency for the past 20 years. His ability to do reconstructions, crime scene investigation diagrams, with the use of the drone are nothing other than simply amazing. Detective South also played an instrumental part in the agency's Baby Doe case, which was unsolved for 30 years. This case brought worldwide attention as DNA evidence was processed by private lab which led to the charging and conviction of the infant's mother in May of 2023. Greg loves spending time with his wife and Marie who is here today. Along with running his photography business. I would like to add to this day also brings a sad part. We'll be back before you soon as Greg has announced his retirement of December 1. Greg, thank you for your 20 years. Thank you for the dedication that you've given to our agency and our department. We know you look forward to your retirement.

And she failed, continues.

Mayor and Commissioners, again, we have another 20-year employee to recognize, Detective Trey Lipscomb. Trey began with our agency in 06, I might add five days after Greg South, after serving 12 years with the Fort Smith Police Department. Here in Nags Head, Trey spent a short time working as a patrol officer and then became our agency's second K-9 handler. With the retirement of K-9 boss, Trey transitioned to criminal investigations to specifically work narcotics in 2010. Since moving to narcotics, Trey has been cross-sworn with the Dare County Drug Task Force since its inception in 2010. Back in 2016, he became federally sworn to Homeland Security for narcotics enforcement only and has most recently joined the SBI's Regional Drug Task Force here in District 1, which contains seven counties. Trey shines in his role and represents the town well in his capacity. He has been involved in numerous cases that have ended with seizures of large amounts of narcotics and currency, which have been prosecuted on the federal level. Cases have taken him to New York, New Jersey, and south to Miami, where he is willing to travel, where the work takes him to reduce the flow of narcotics to our area. During his time off, Trey enjoys boating with his wife and spending time with his four grandchildren. Congratulations.

Thank you.

And we're asking Greg and Trey to stay around for photographs in just a few minutes. When they come back up, we don't see those guys in suits very often. They look like classic TV detectives. The dark suits. That brings us back to Nancy again. Nancy, with one of those sad days of retirement. Sad for us, not necessarily for everybody.

Good morning. I'd like to recognize David Perry and his retirement and his 31 years of service to the town of Nags Head. David began his career in May 1st, 1995 in water operations. The fresh pond was in operation producing up to a million gallons per day from May to September. From 1995 until 2008, David Perry was there every spring calibrating instruments, adjusting chemical dosages, performing water testing, and making sure the equipment was in perfect running condition for the summer season. John Richardson, past deputy public services director who hired David, said that David's natural mechanical inclination and ability to troubleshoot problems made him an excellent water plant operator. David was nominated for Employee of the Year for Public Works in 2006 and 2009. He was promoted to Chief Operations Crew Leader in 2013 and to Water Operations Superintendent in 2022. During his 31 years of service, Davis received his ACE certifications in surface and well water treatment. He also obtained his A certification in distribution as well as a physical chemical wastewater license. David is also certified in bacteriological testing and was responsible for the state certified lab from April 2009 until he retired in June. I have worked with David since 2003. During his time, David has trained eight water plant operators, including myself. He is a natural born teacher and has the patience to review, and review and review a procedure until it clicks. He did not hesitate to assist other divisions of public services when needed. The town of Nags Head is fortunate to have David's knowledge and experience for the last 31 years. He took pride in his work in water operations, and he will be missed. Even though he is retired, his 12-layer chocolate cake will always be welcome at the public services Christmas party. We wish him the best for the future and know he's enjoying his retirement with his family.

board to come around and for Roberta to come and take pictures.

We do have a small financial gift there.

And a plaque presented today in the period of plenty of retirement would be a grateful appreciation for your loyalty and patience.

Okay. Thank you very much.

So we've seen the full gamut this morning, new employees, record years of service and retirement. It's important that we have a lot of respect and appreciation for our employees and days like today are important when we get to celebrate them and they get to celebrate one another. That brings us to a series of proclamations. First for Septic Smart Week and I'll call Planning Director Kelly Wyatt to the podium.

Good morning. I just wanted to introduce Septic Smart, the Septic Smart program and Septic Smart Week coming up and let everyone here know about our Septic Health Initiative that we have with the town. Our environmental planner, Connor Twitty, runs the Septic Health Initiative and we offer a lot of programs for the community to take advantage of. Connor can come out and do an inspection of your on-site conventional septic system on your property. You just have to give us a call. He's happy to come out and do that. If you need to have your septic system pumped, you can give us the receipt once you've had it pumped, and you will receive a water credit on... your water bill, so $250. And then if the inspection shows that you do need some maintenance, you can potentially qualify for a zero interest loan. That is a new opportunity for us. But at a minimum, a low interest loan with the town to help you get your septic system maintenance. So we're really proud of our septic health initiative and just want to recognize September 14th through September 18th as Septic Smart Week.

Great, Kelly. And I'll read that proclamation, but I was glad to see the town of Duck finally take up a similar effort recently. So we've been promoting this for a while. Whereas proper septic system use and routine care are vital to protecting public health and preserving our highly valued groundwater and surface waters, and whereas proper septic system maintenance will preserve the function, performance, and longevity of systems, thereby avoiding costly repairs that can result from neglect, and whereas nearly 85% of homes and most businesses in the town of Nags Head rely on septic systems to treat wastewater, and whereas the Todd D. Kraft Septic Health Program established by the town of Nags Head provides education to its property owners about the need for proper septic system use and routine maintenance, And whereas the Todd D. Kraft Septic Health Program encourages proper maintenance by offering free inspections on conventional septic systems and a $250 water bill credit each time the system tank is pumped. And whereas if a conventional system is found in need of repair or replacement, the Town offers low-interest loans to assist in replacing all or a portion of the septic system. And whereas residents and the environment of the town of Nags Head benefit from properly designed, installed, operated, and maintained septic systems, now therefore be it resolved that the town of Nags Head Board of Commissioners does hereby proclaim the week of September 14 through 18, 2026 as Septic Smart Week in the town of Nags Head and urges all citizens to join us in this observance by considering what they can do to properly maintain their system This being the second day of September 2026, having heard the proclamation, a motion to adopt would be in order.

So moved.

I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Thank you. That brings us next to the Diaper Need Awareness Week. This is something that has been occurring for the last several years. I think this year in particular with and its impact on young families with small children. I think it's especially important that we consider this issue and consider the channels that we have available to us to support those young families. Whereas diaper need, the condition of not having a sufficient supply of clean diapers to keep babies and toddlers clean, dry, and healthy can adversely affect the health and well-being of babies, toddlers, and their families. And whereas national research reports that one in two families struggle to secure enough diapers to keep their children clean, dry, and healthy due to insufficient income. And whereas a daily or weekly supply of diapers is generally an eligibility requirement for babies and toddlers to participate in childcare programs and quality early education programs. And whereas without enough diapers, babies and toddlers risk infections and health problems that may require medical attention and may prevent parents from attending work or school, thereby hurting the family's economic prospects and well-being. And whereas addressing diaper needs strengthens families, reduces poverty-related stressors, and fosters healthier, more equitable communities, and whereas the Town of Nags Head is proud to be home to trusted community-based organizations, including the Children and Youth Partnership for Dare County, that recognize the importance of diapers in ensuring the health and providing economic stability for families and thus distribute diapers to families through various channels. We, the town of Nags Head, do hereby proclaim the week of September 14 through 20, 2026, as Diaper Need Awareness Week, and we thank the Children and Youth Partnership, their staff, and donors for their service through the Children and Youth Partnership's Diaper Bank, and encourage the citizens of our community to support CYP's Diaper Bank to help ensure that all of their county children and families have what they need to thrive. This being the second day of September 2026, having heard the proclamation, a motion to adopt would be in order.

I'll make that motion.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you. That brings us to Fire Prevention Week and Deputy Chief Hite. Good morning. Good morning.

Good morning, Mayor and Commissioners. Thank you for giving me a few minutes to speak about Fire Prevention Week, which takes place October the 4th through the 10th. This year's theme is Charge Into Fire Safety. The primary goal of this topic is to deal with the growing use of lithium batteries. Our staff will be providing numerous educational opportunities in daycares and the elementary school during Fire Prevention Week to talk about fire safety. With this in mind, we would like to invite our community to our open house. October the 8th from 5 to 8 p.m. at Fire Station 16, located just across the street at 5314 South Corotana Highway. We will have many fun and educational opportunities for adults and children. We'll also have dinner so parents, take the night off and come to learn about fire safety. The best part, it's all free and fun. Thank you again, and this year's open house will be a great event, so please join us. Thank you.

All right, thank you. It is a great event. It's a lot of fun, and I always enjoy operating the extraction equipment. That's always a highlight. Whereas the town of Nags Head is committed to ensuring the safety and security of all of those living in the town of Nags Head and who are visiting, and whereas fire remains a serious public safety concern locally and nationally, and the presence of lithium-ion batteries in many household devices introduces unique fire risk, and whereas most of the electronics used in homes daily, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, Power tools, e-bikes, e-scooters, and toys are powered by lithium-ion batteries, which if misused, damaged, or improperly charged can overheat, start a fire, or explode. And whereas the National Fire Protection Association reports an increase in battery-related fires, underscoring the need for public education on the safe use of lithium-ion batteries and devices. and whereas the way lithium ion battery devices are charged can make a difference in helping prevent home fires and whereas safe charging includes the cord and charger that came with your device or one approved by the manufacturer charging on a hard flat surface watching for warning signs like devices that are very hard hot or start to swell unplugging with fully charged and charging larger devices like e-bikes outside and away from exits and whereas residents are encouraged to understand that safe charging means making smart choices every time they plug in, and whereas the town of Nags Head's first responders remain dedicated to reducing the occurrence of fires through prevention, safety education, and community outreach, and whereas the 2026 Fire Prevention Week theme, Charge into Fire Safety, Safe Charging is a Superpower, serves to remind all residents that safe charging can help reduce the risk of fires in homes and communities. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Town of Nags Head Board of Commissioners does hereby proclaim October 4-10, 2026 as Fire Prevention Week throughout the Town of Nags Head and urge all residents to learn about and practice safe charging habits. All town residents and visitors are invited to attend the annual Nags Head Fire Rescue Open House held at the Doug Ramali Fire Station 16 on Thursday, October 8th from 5 to 8 p.m. This is the second day of September 2026. Having heard the proclamation, the motion would be in order.

So move.

I have a motion. Is there a second? I have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. I will point out also that I believe there were two Dare County solid waste trucks that caught fire as a result that were traced to batteries in those. And so it is a serious issue. That brings us to our final proclamation, and that's National Night Out. Chief Hale.

Good morning again. I'd like to welcome everybody to National Night Out this year. It's going to be October 6th, Tuesday at Dowdy Park from 5 to 7. I will say since we moved it to Dowdy Park once the park opened, it's been one of the best decisions we've ever made to be right there on the bypass instead of the town park off Health Center. We have been attracting four to 500 people. The kids have a great time. We look forward to playing with them again this year. We do not have the dunking tank this year, Mr. Mayor, but we do have a bouncing boogie blow up bouncy house. dino dive combo seven and one blow up house that has a basketball hoop and obstacle course and then we also have a blow up axe throwing thing for the kids this year. Island snow cones will be there to provide snow cones. We're going to have some face painting and then the other agencies that usually come by from the Coast Guard, Sheriff's Department, EMS with other information available too. Due to the logistics this year Bass Knights is assisting us with their food truck and they will be cooking the hot dogs for us this year. So we look forward to another great event. We look fun for it and good weather so all the kids can come run, play and have a great time.

Very good. You just knew I was going to be out of town. Whereas the National Association of Town Watch is sponsoring a unique nationwide crime, drug, and violence prevention program called National Night Out, which is celebrated by communities in August and early October. And whereas the Town of Nags Head, the Nags Head Community Watch Association, and the Nags Head Police Department are celebrating National Night Out on Tuesday, October 6, 2026. and whereas the annual National Night Out provides a unique opportunity for the town of Nags Head to join forces with thousands of other communities across the country in promoting cooperative police community crime prevention efforts, and whereas the Nags Head Community Watch Association plays a vital role in assisting the Nags Head Police Department through joint crime, drug, and violence prevention efforts in the town of Nags Head in supporting National Night Out 2026. And whereas it is essential that all citizens of the town of Nags Head be aware of the importance of crime programs and the impact that their participation can have on reducing crime, drug, and violence in the town of Nags Head. And whereas police community partnerships, neighborhood safety, awareness, and cooperation are important themes of the National Night Out program. Therefore, I do hereby call upon all the citizens of Nags Head to join the Nags Head Community Watch Association, the Town of Nags Head Police Department, and the National Association of Town Watch in supporting the 43rd annual night out on October 6, 2026. Further, would it be resolved that the Town of Nags Head Board of Commissioners does hereby proclaim Tuesday, October 6th, 2026 as National Night Out in the Town of Nags Head, Dare County, North Carolina. Adopted this the second day of September 2026. Having heard the proclamation, a motion would be in order.

I'll make that motion.

All right. Thank you. There's a motion to adopt. Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you, Chief. Looking forward to a good time. That brings us next to public comment, and I will turn this over to Mr. Lighty.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. At this time, the Board of Commissioners welcomes members of the public to provide comment to the board. This is not an opportunity for dialogue, and the board rarely responds to public comment. I will also point out that there are no items for public hearing on the agenda today, so if you're interested in discussing any of the items on the agenda, which would include but is not limited to the discussion of automated license plate readers, the revisions to the town's crowd gathering ordinance, the discussion of e-bikes, et cetera. This would be your opportunity to address the board on those items. So anyone who wishes to address the board, if you will start by going to the podium, telling us your name and where you live, and then I will let you know when your time is just about up.

Thank you. How many minutes do we have? Five minutes. Five minutes. All right. So I would like to start with a quote today. Benjamin Franklin.

Can you start with your name, please? Oh, sorry about that.

My name is Melanie Bortz Brewer. I am a citizen of Kill Devil Hills. My family, my husband, my three girls, we live there. And we own a business down here in Nags Head. Thank you. So I would like to start off today with a quote that says, and it was written back in 1755 just for times like these by Benjamin Franklin, they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. We have been sold out by our governments across this beach, across this country, to be surveilled permanently in every movement that we make, every place we go, our children going to parks and recreation, walking on bike paths. We are being stalked and watched. Y'all spent, this is what I'm getting from Google, if you made a one year contract with Flock, $189,000. You guys are doing this whole diaper drive. I did some numbers while that was going on. There are 124 families a month in peak distribution periods that you guys service with the diaper drive. That would be 1,488 families per year that could be serviced with the funds that you put towards acting as if we were all criminals instead of citizens and family and community that we treat each other like here on this beach. i also found out in my little searches this morning google's a fantastic little journey that you all started installing these flock cameras in 2023 to 2024 and you all do it for our safety guess what crime was up 120 percent in 2025. so please if i guess you guys could discuss amongst yourselves how that proves that these cameras are actually doing anything for the good We have 50, we had actually their County board of commissioners yesterday unanimously voted across the board to remove 14 of their sheriff's department cameras. Thank God that they woke up and are doing something about this. We still have 38 cameras to talk about, but I crunched the numbers with the 52 cameras. Um, In Raleigh, they have 44 cameras. They have a population of 105,000 people in Raleigh. I can tell you that the violent crime rates are through the roof compared to what's here in Deer County. Y'all have had 52 cameras installed on our tiny little beach of 38,000 permanent residents from September through May. Influx up to 300,000 in the summer with a police force established for 450,000 citizens. Whenever we get pulled over on the side of the road, we don't just get one cop helping us out. We get three or four. So when I say that we're in a safe part of this nation, we're in a really safe part. And you know what else? I know a lot of police officers. I know a lot of sheriffs. I'm really grateful for those relationships that I have with those people. But when you install cameras like these, you attach them to a data center, and you allow AI to start making decisions for our citizens, guess what? They're gonna say three, five, 10 years down the road, you don't need all those police officers. You're gonna be putting all these people out of a job. So do all the police officers sitting around hanging out and allowing this whole flock camera program. You guys are signing your retirement checks permanently. I don't wanna be stalked. I don't wanna be watched. I'm a mom of three kids that homeschools her kids. I don't want them to be stalked and watched. And we have been hacked as a country on multiple different occasions by multiple different countries. How can you guys guarantee that in this state of war that we're currently living in, that our adversaries aren't stalking us and watching us and tracking where our children are going? Children are like the biggest asset that we have as any citizen of any country. They're our future. and so that would in my mind if we're in a state of war be the first place that i go for attack because you completely demolish an entire country by going after the children so i want my girls to feel safe when they're out i want them to not feel stalked and watched i'm asking you guys now to remove these cameras to give us our liberties and freedoms back whatever happened to the constitution the fact that we have to come here and talk about this this is the fourth amendment right violation the fact that we have to come and talk about where we can assemble and what public gatherings we can have that's a first amendment right violation so i really want to question not just you board of commissioners attorneys and all the people that we elected to make these decisions for us And when we elected you, we also asked that you guys include us in the process of making decisions for our towns and our governments and our people. And you guys went and signed all this flock camera BS under the radar. You did it without anybody knowing. You asked no questions. You all, I'm guessing, lined your pockets just like every government across this country. And in 2021, we started... I got 30 more seconds, friend. In 2021, there were 300 cameras in this country in 2021. By 2026, 130,000 cameras have been installed, and you guys have created a network of surveillance without asking any of us if it was okay. So I'm sorry I took my extra minutes, but I'm here to make a point. And I want them gone, and I know a lot of people do too. So thank you for your time.

Thank you for your time, ma'am.

Good morning. My name is Mary Kelly of Nags Head, but I am reading these comments on behalf of Randy Cartwright, also of Nags Head. Mayor and members of the board, I'm sorry I cannot be with you today, but I wanted to offer a few thoughts about flock and ask the board to consider what I believe is a fundamental question. Max Head has now had flock cameras for several years. I understand why the town adopted them. Crime occurs and anything that can help police solve a serious crime deserves consideration. But I believe we need to step back and consider what we have actually created Flock is a mass surveillance system. It doesn't simply look for stolen cars or vehicles associated with known criminals. It routinely records the license plates and movements of ordinary people who have done nothing wrong and who are not suspected of any crime. That raises a question that is bigger than whether flock is technically effective or whether its use is currently constitutional. Is this the kind of community and the kind of society we want to create? The laws governing surveillance and license plate readers were developed before anyone could have imagined the capabilities of today's interconnected systems. The fact that something is permitted by current law does not mean that we have to choose to do it. And there is another issue that concerns me particularly. The data collected in Nags Head does not necessarily stay in Nags Head. Nags Head participates in FLOC's data sharing network. Information collected here can be shared with other organizations, and Nags Head also receives information collected elsewhere. Once our data is shared, we cannot simply assume that Nags Head will continue to control everything that happens to it. I don't think we should wait for a court to tell us that this has crossed a constitutional line. The Constitution tells us what government may do, and perhaps more importantly, what government may not do. No court is requiring Nags Head to operate flaw cameras. No one is requiring us to participate in a system of personally identifying data collection and centralization. We have a choice. We can decide that public safety is important while also deciding that the routine tracking of innocent people's movement is not something we want our government to undertake. So I am asking the board to make that choice. I ask you to discontinue NAGCET participation in the flock mass surveillance system. Deactivate the flock cameras currently operating in Nags Head and remove them as municipalities across the country are increasingly choosing to do. We don't have to wait until technology makes this decision for us. We can decide now what kind of community we want Nags Head to be. Respectfully, thank you, Randy Cartwright. Thank you very much.

Good morning. My name's Catherine Heath, and I'm from Kitty Hawk. And I hope that you all watched the commissioner's meeting because there was a lot of very good information that was presented by a lot of the speakers. And it was... Turned out really pretty well. And one of the speakers, and I'm here to try to provide you some of the same information that Andrea O'Donnell of Deep Lock Dare provided to the county commissioners. And they are both tracking the abuses of these cameras and then another set that tracks the cancellations and or rejections of using these cameras. And I don't know who to give these to. But I'm here because you are going to talk about this. And I think we need to do this with a lot of due diligence. The Outer Banks has just been blessed with wonderful police departments all up and down. And we all usually feel very safe. And it's like an escape and we're here and we can enjoy ourselves. but I believe that these companies that are selling this new technology have gone to our police departments directly and marketed them to our law enforcement agencies in the way that a good marketer would do. They would highlight all the positives and they would just brush the negatives back. Let's not talk about those. And it's getting exposed over and over. You watch the interviews of these CEOs. They are so arrogant and dismissive of the citizens of this country. They are not being transparent. I'll try to say this as nicely as I can. They're being deceptive. about what these cameras can do. They're not, and they're trying to hide them under this cover of them being automated license plate readers. They're not the same as what those used to be. These collect a lot of data. We don't own that data. They claim rights to that data. They can take it and give it to anybody they want. They feed it into a great big data bank nationwide and over and over and over again, day after day after day, we're tracked, we're seen, we're noted, and somebody can build a map of our lifestyle. They can see, well, that person goes to substance abuse meetings, or that person, I don't like those, they're going to these gun shows, they're going to this certain church, and just think about whether this was in place during the chaos we went through with the COVID stuff. The lockdowns, it would have been horrible. It was bad enough that this would have been really bad. But I wanted to bring you that information. I hope you have watched the commissioner's meeting. i hope you will do your due diligence deeply on what these cameras are capable of doing and what they are doing and there was one gentleman last night he said he he was born and raised here and when he leaves the it has to go somewhere else he felt like every time he comes across the bridge it's he's home he's safe He's away from everything until he saw these cameras. And now we feel like we're bugs under a microscope being tracked everywhere. So please consider these. Please look at what these cameras can really do. And I seriously doubt if you look at past Supreme Court cases where they examine constitutionality of surveillance, I seriously doubt if these, once this gets there, and it will, that these will survive constitutional scrutiny over Fourth Amendment and First Amendment, possibly more.

But... Ms. Heath, that's more than five minutes.

Okay. But please do your due diligence.

Thank you, ma'am.

Good morning, Mayor, Commissioners, all the people in the audience. My name is Webb Fuller. I live at 452 Villa Dunes Drive. I've lived on Villa Dunes Drive since 1982. I'm here to speak in favor of flock cameras as I know them. With that, I will have to say that I am a privacy right person. Probably because of that, I've had to install five cameras on my property just because of all the trespassers that I have on my property. The same thing holds true with a number of my neighbors. They have cameras up, too, because of trespassers. Actually, more to watch wildlife, but we've noticed a number of trespassers while we're looking at our wildlife. But that being said, I really think that the flock camera, as I know it, is a tool. And I think it's this board's responsibility to fund the administration to buy the best possible tools they can for its workforce, whether that be in public works, whether it be in the fire department, or whether it be in the police department. We need to fund the best possible tools we can for our employees to do their job. Now, I'm not gonna get in the discussion about flock as an organization. I'm not gonna get into any discussion about stuff I don't know about sharing information, whatnot. I am saying that I think flock cameras provide a useful tool for our law enforcement agency, and I strongly support that. I would request that this board, maybe contrary to other boards, but that this board receive all the information that they can gather, both from people that are speaking as well as from other resources, look into the flock camera situation and review the decision you've already made, because you've already made the decision to fund them, but to review the decision and see if in our situation they're still the best possible tool to use or we need to use a different tool so with that being said thank you i think they're fine i have not found anything in my research that says they're not a good tool thank you thank you thank you mr fuller

Good morning. My name is Michael Bryan, Nags Head, North Carolina. Love Nags Head, thank you. Great place to live. I'm here to voice my concern over our new rules concerning electric bicycles. Not all e-bikes are equal. I have learned through research that there are e-bikes and e-motos. E-motos are bikes with speeds capable up to and beyond 30 miles an hour, and they're more like a motorcycle. Our electric tricycles have a top speed of 14 miles an hour. Ours is only at 11, because I haven't taken the governor off, and 11 miles per hour is fast enough for me. I believe there's already current laws in Nags Head concerning riding an e-bike on our multi-use pass. And I do notice that on the beach road, it has a speed limit of 15 miles an hour written right on it. Well, I'm not oblivious to the problems people are facing with kids. I say kids because anybody younger than me I consider a kid. Zooming all over the place because I've seen it. I mean, I have a guy, I've been on my e-tricycle doing my 10 miles an hour and people zoom past me probably 35 miles an hour. So I do see there is a problem. But the solution of banning old people like me from the multi-use pass with our electric bicycles are very safe. They have headlights, brake lights, hydraulic disc brakes. We wear a helmet. It has a flashing red light on it. And like I mentioned before, the top speed is 14 miles an hour. Enforce the laws you already have. I don't see you banning cars on the road because people are speeding or driving recklessly. Let us old people enjoy our lives. And remember, all e-bikes are not the same. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Good morning, Mayor and Commissioners. My name is Renee Cahoon. I reside at 7213 South Virginia Dare Trail. I'm here about the e-bike discussion on your agenda later in the meeting. Thank you for your time this morning. I had written all of you a letter earlier this summer about the e-bikes. I'm not here to talk about all e-bikes. I'm here to talk about one particular area of the town, which is the multi-use path along Virginia Dare Trail, which is heavily occupied by all sorts of our visitors, our residents, families at night walking about. I was out last night and observed one group of about 15 people that was multi-generational. It's really nice to see them out on the bike path at night with strollers, wagons, wheelchairs so there's lots of people and i think that pathway especially in the summertime is extremely crowded and we're an accident waiting to happen as mike just said there's all sorts of e-bikes now they go really fast some of them do look like motorcycles and they're out and about. There's lots of driveways along that Virginia Dare Trail coming in and out. And I think we need to really consider what kind of safety measures we want on our pathways. And I think those vehicles that go really fast, there's no helmets most of the time by being worn by people. As many children as there are out there with little scooters, riding their tricycles, being pulled in wagons, they need to consider that Things that go really fast that are electric that come up all of a sudden. Nobody has a chance to see them. We need to put public safety first. Thank you for your time this morning.

Thank you, Ms. Cahoon.

My name is Bob Muller. I live at 124 West Old Cove Road, Nags Head. I want to second Webb Fuller's comments about flock cameras. I'm not here to talk to you about flock cameras, but I feel it incumbent on me to tell everybody that flock cameras are adopted as items on your agenda, which are published five days before your meeting, which meetings are both open to the public and broadcast on YouTube. Anybody who wanted to know that license plate readers were being installed in town had nearly to look at the agenda and go to a commissioner like I addressed a former police chief. when he was a commissioner, Kevin Brinkley, and asked him if he thought these cameras were important. And he said that he thought they were very important and they were a tool the town could use. So if you want to know what's going on, come to meetings, read the agendas, or at least watch on YouTube. And don't go accusing commissioners of getting their pockets lined. That's offensive. That was offensive to me. And I apologize to the board on behalf of that speaker. I'm really here to talk to you about the exciting issue of drainage improvement. At your last meeting you were presented a really good list of proposed drainage improvements by David Ryan. I took some time to look at that and David Ryan's evaluation process used a lot of the same metrics that I would have used and he strongly ranked number of residences served, maintaining the current system and cost as he ranked those projects. I think those were all good. I'm not sure that all the projects fell exactly the way that I would have picked them, but David did a really good job. My concern is that you indicated you were gonna talk about that at a retreat. As I speak about your transparency about adopting and installing cameras, I hope you will also take the opportunity to discuss that item in a meeting that is broadly open to the public and not at your retreat that is recorded and is available so that we can see how those budget dollars are gonna be allocated in the future. And in fact, I hope you'll do that with any item where you're looking at ranking things like CIP, making decisions about how you're paying classification plans, do them in open meetings that are being recorded so folks can see those things. The retreat's an open meeting, but nobody, you don't, it is structured such that the public, it's harder for the public to go to, it's not recorded, and the minutes that come out of it are substantially less than the minutes that come out of a normal meeting. So please consider reviewing David's excellent stormwater work here at an open meeting. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Muller.

Hello, my name is Donna Sills. I lived on the Outer Banks for over 30 years. um i've never been to a town meeting so this is my first one um i want to talk about flock cameras they are everywhere we we're being surveilled we if we go into a store i was in a store yesterday the lights buzzing i know what's in those lights they're reading our phones and if you if you want to support safety, then you should know exactly what is going on, what they're really surveilling before you support it. And if you are anti anything, they are after you. And I know because I have been stopped by police because after the protest and my name was all over the news for that video, what happened? Everywhere I went, there was a black unmarked car sitting on the side of the road, sitting outside of my house, following me for weeks. Because my name was on the news because I oppose this regime that's in the White House. And anyone who knows anything about anything should know that we are coming to a point of no return. No one voted to get these flock cameras. Did any of you ask if us as citizens wanted these? No, you didn't. But here we are having to fight to get them removed. You see this? Every time I leave my house, I wrap my phone in cellophane and turn it into airplane mode, hoping that that works because I can't afford a Faraday bag. And the only time that you all looked interested and happy up here is when y'all were doing your little presentation of employees. The rest of the time, most of you looked bored or angry. Do you all want to be surveilled? Do you want your kids, your grandkids? We know that there are many child predators that have access to these cameras. We know that there is human trafficking going on because of these cameras across the nation. We also know that these cameras are tied to a foreign country. This is treason. And now our military is also joined with a foreign nation. I wonder why. So before you all continue to just allow these things to happen, think about your kids and your grandkids. And if you have daughters or granddaughters like I do, You won't be able to sleep at night come the near future because it's it's happening this. I mean, neighborhood, you can't even go into a neighborhood and you that you live in without being surveilled. It's ridiculous. That's all I have to say.

Thank you, Miss Sills. So anyone else? Yes, ma'am.

Good morning and thank you. And I will not tell you my name nor my address after listening to the nice to see you in this settler. Thank you. I am Anna Sadler and I have lived in Nags Head since 1968 and don't try to figure out how old I am. As you all know, I served in one of your seats for 12 years and I enjoyed almost all of those years. We accomplished a lot, but one of the things that we accomplished was the septic health initiative program and the mayor at that time was Bob Mueller and He does his homework. One or two of our commissioners at that time did not. But I will say that we all did a lot of homework. And I am so proud to have been part of that board when that passed because we found sand bottom tanks, we found overloaded tanks, we found dysfunctional complete tanks, and for the town to take the step to pass that. And I reminded Mr. Mayor at that time, please do not call it septic health initiative task. Watch those initials. So of course we didn't. But he was instrumental in passing that and I just want to say thank you very much. It's still working. Two other things. I do not want to be photographed except in a fashion show, so I think that would mean that I am against the flock cameras until the police department finds out really and truly where all of the information that the cameras are taking go. And number two, I have spoken to the chief some time ago about the e-bikes. I think it's great that people have them, but we absolutely must have some regulations and then enforcement for the e-bikes. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Sadler. Does anybody else wish to address the board?

as a newbie to the outer banks for the last six years your name melissa george i live on the 21st mile post of south old knag's head down on the beach trail and we've been here six years and like the gentleman said once you cross that bridge It's a sigh of relief from the old rat race. We enjoy living here, we appreciate it, but being a senior citizen, I do ride an e-bike on that stretch from Bodie Lighthouse maintenance up to Fish Heads. there is just one strip where the painted line is i feel it's wrong to ride on the sidewalks sidewalks during tour season there's children there's strollers that's not appropriate i think a bicycle should maintain the federal laws three foot conveyance on the street, and you should ride a strip on the street, street-worthy helmet and lights. Like the gentleman said, there are different classifications of e-bikes. I chose mine because of a heart condition. Mine is a pedal assist that I bought up by the water park at the gentleman's store. and they don't go very fast, up to 14, 15 miles an hour. You do have laws on the books now for reckless operation. Why not enforce those? Of those children, I've seen them doing wheelies. They can't be over 12 years old, 15 years old. They are reckless to themselves, and if I'm driving my vehicle, you could hit one of them. They zoom in and out. Why not maintain our safety and go after the parents the reckless children and protect the citizens and allow us senior citizens to have our pedal assist e-bikes that we drive and we don't have much room from 21 mile post up to 17. we ride in the street which would be nice if we had a little bit of a shoulder, but we don't, and I know that's money. So we respect the pedestrians, and we respect people on the road. So why not hold the parents responsible for these reckless kids and do something about them? And I must commend the police officers. I always see them patrolling, and I've never felt safer from Ohio to Pennsylvania as I do in the Outer Banks. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. George. Is there any further comment to the board? Yes, sir.

My name is Nate Jones. I'm a resident. I don't really have any prepared statement, but there's been a lot of emotional rhetoric regarding the flat cameras, but I just want to put some numbers to it. I was in the Deer County commissioners meeting and the sheriff's department had made a presentation regarding the flat cameras. So they have attributed to the flat cameras 380,000 unique plate scans resulting in 40 arrests or prosecutions. That's a point zero zero zero one catch rate. at the cost of $3,000 a camera, it's over $30,000 a year, you know, if you've got 10 cameras. So that's not really a great return on investment, in my opinion, aside from the civil rights situation and those sorts of things tied to it. So that's something that needs to be considered. And even though the 40 catches they're attributing, like the Avalon shooter catch, well, you would have caught him regardless. So a lot of these other, you know, these catches weren't specific to the flock cams. If that makes sense. That's all I have to say. Thank you, Mr. Jones.

Anybody else? Any further comment to the board? If not, at this time we will conclude the public comment session.

Great, thank you very much. That brings us next to the consent agenda, which you have before you, and a motion would be in order. I have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, thank you. Kelly Wyatt, and an update from the planning director.

Thank you so much, Mayor and Commissioners. I just wanted to touch base and hit the highlights on the written report that was provided in your packet. The Planning Board unanimously recommended approval of the Cottage Court Amendment, which would provide an alternative allowing all units to be one story in less than 1,000 square feet of habitable space. The request to schedule the October 7th public hearing is on today's consent agenda. We also started reviewing the town's history with accessory dwelling units. At this point, that's all it is. It's just going over the history in the background. There are no action items or proposals. We have several new members on our planning board, so we just want to bring them up to speed on what the history has been thus far. For September, we're expecting continued discussion on ADUs and a conversation about the commercial outdoor recreational overlay district, along with some potential changes to our vegetation and landscape preservation standards. A recent enforcement matter highlighted where we can strengthen those a little bit. So we hope to have those conversations as well. Board of Adjustment heard the Pelican Park Beach Access walkway appeal at their August 13th meeting and unanimously upheld staff's determination to deny the proposed building permit to demolish that structure. For the Septic Health Initiative, We've had a lot of responses, very encouraging response to our recent targeted subject outreach. We mailed approximately 280 letters to owners whose properties may be more vulnerable based on system age, elevation, and proximity to surface water. And as we know, that's from the Division of Water Infrastructure grant or loan that we were provided recently. focusing on areas of low lying properties adjacent to body water, bodies of water and who may not have had recent septic maintenance. So from that, we've had about 15 or 18 inquiries. I know it's gone up over the past couple of days since I wrote this report and we have ten inspections lined up based upon those letters that were mailed out. So that's impressive. We also met with ECU researchers to learn more about their groundwater and water quality work and we hope to have them attend the Septic Health Advisory Committee's October meeting to go into more detail about what they are doing as well. With regard to the estuarine shoreline management plan, there has been quite a bit of advancement there. There's been a lot of early interest in a technical assistance program which would provide funding for private property owners. We've developed a policy for year review today, and our deputy planning director, Joe Costello, will be presenting that here shortly. The Harvey SoundSide event site, the proposed marsh sill has been shortened about 50 feet in response to concerns regarding access for kite and wind sports. The current schedule anticipates permits in March of 2027, followed by bidding and construction, hopefully in October of 2027. And we've also updated the town's website with an FAQ. For the Villa Dunes site, our consultant is continuing to work with owners on shoreline stabilization measures there that will fit their property and that have their support. For Soundside Road, we requested a grant scope modification to focus on a nature-based berm and related stormwater improvements. We've also revised the draft easement language based on owner feedback from the area. The next stakeholder meeting is planned for late September, early October, and we will share that exhibit along with any revised easement language that we have. Design work is also continuing near the town's catfish farm and causeway projects. One parcel's ownership is under attorney review, but the consultant is continuing field work and coordination that we need to move forward with that. Parks and Recreation Plan update. When this went out, we had not closed our RFQ period, but that has since closed, and we have two companies that we're gonna be interviewing here shortly, and those are McGill and Destination by Design. So those interviews are coming up in a couple of weeks. So that was one of the number one priorities of the strategic plan. So moving that forward is going to be key. Permitting update. Occasionally I bring you guys just update on how many permits we've processed and turnaround times. And we're holding steady in the planning department at three to four days for a permanent turnaround. Dowdy Park, Farmers Market, everything's starting to wrap up. The summer schedule is starting to wrap up. The final Farmers Market was August 20th. The last summer concert is actually going to be tonight. And that is a band called Bird Dog. It's going to be 6.30 at Dowdy Park. um to that our event coordinator paige griffin has noted that concert attendance has really been sort of at a record level this season which has been exciting our concerts average about 275 people and our largest was over 600 so that was pretty exciting to hear Fitness program continues to do really well. Tuesday morning yoga will be continuing. I did want to highlight that we had 18 community partners participating in our park events. This summer, the Children's Tree of Help activity, which focused on healthy coping skills for children, was especially popular. And Paige hopes to offer similar activities along those lines in the fall as well. So we're shifting to holiday planning now. Our Art and Culture Committee is going to be meeting September 9th. We have a lot to talk about, including a type of celebration for the 150th anniversary of the USS Huron shipwreck. And I do want to mention that we also have some movie nights coming up in September, September 11th and 25th. And I think that's all I have, unless you'd like me to go into more detail on something.

Board, any questions for Kelly?

Thank you Kelly, appreciate that. That brings us to Joe, and keeping in mind that we do have a 1030 specific item, but I think we're tracking okay here this morning. So Joe is gonna talk about that estuarine shoreline technical assistance funding policy.

hey good morning mayor and commissioners before you today is the draft escrow and shoreline management plan technical assistance funding policy for your consideration and just a brief background as a part of the 26-27 budget the boc allocated ten thousand dollars in technical assistance funds for soundfront property owners to receive site-specific guidance on the potential to implement nature-based stabilization solutions the purpose of this grant was really to encourage these nature-based designs as opposed to bulk heading provide technical assistance encourage neighborly neighborly coordination and community buy-in of nature-based solutions for soundside erosion control The way this grant will work is applicant will contact the town. We will do an initial site inspection to basically see if the property owners are eligible. And then we require some basic documents like a map that the description of the current erosion issues the applicant will submit if they are awarded the grant we would basically require an agreement signed at that time eligible expenses include the site design the initial site inspections and then help with that initial permit application but the applicant would be required to basically cover the permit fees and then the construction and future maintenance of the project. So hopefully this bridges the gap a little bit between individual property owners bulkheading their property and very large town-led efforts. And so then once we receive the paid invoices from the qualified marine contractors or architects or whoever does those designs, we would be able to offer reimbursement. So happy to answer any additional questions you may have. Thanks.

Could you look into, you probably don't have an answer to this, but could you look into if there would be any possible grants for maintenance after this was constructed and after like a year or two, if it's holding up or if it's not holding up?

uh yes sir and that's a great point and um also just hoping that we can you know sort of be a conduit when people contact us we can put them in touch with the coastal federation and land and water district and other sort of people who might be able to appoint individuals to other grant opportunities yeah i think it's a great opportunity for uh private landowners thank you appreciate it thanks all right thank you joe appreciate it

I think at this point, can we go ahead with that 1030 specific item? Are you guys ready?

David?

Oh, I am sorry. Yes. Take that back. All right. So nobody had any questions for Joe about this. What is the board's wish this morning? Do we proceed with adoption?

I make a motion we proceed with adoption.

OK. All right. Thank you. Is there a second? We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion?

It's a good program.

OK. All right. Very good. Thank you. In that case, hearing no further discussion, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Thank you. All right. David.

All right. Good morning, Mayor and Commissioners. This item is related to the Bonnet Street stormwater pump station. This has been known as project area number four through the town's previous stormwater master plan. This is a flood mitigation project to address a recurring flooding along the south Wrightsville Avenue corridor. This project is fully funded through a LASI grant and is now ready to go to construction. At this time, I'd like to bring up Hunter Freeman, the town's engineering consultant with McAdams, who will go ahead and review the project with you, the bid evaluation process, and recommendations in moving forward towards construction. So, Hunter.

So just a brief overview of the project as a whole in the physical sense or what the construction would entail. It does start at the south end of Wrightsville Avenue with a stormwater floodwater collection pipe. We've made some conscious design effort to avoid tree removal along those residential properties along Wrightsville Avenue. So a portion of the pipe is under the existing edge of pavement. So it will require lane closures and some temporary traffic disruptions there. We hope to keep those minimal. That collection system then flows across Wrightsville Avenue to a stormwater pump station, as David mentioned, that would be located in a corner of Dowdy Park that's currently vegetated. From there, we'll pump the water out up Bonnet Street to the beach access parking lot. So the project will also include removal of the existing pavement on the beach access parking lot, installation of a flood water infiltration system or chamber system underneath that pavement or a portion of the pavement near the volleyball court. And that's where the floodwaters will be pumped to and allowed to soak into the sand and eventually migrate out towards the ocean. We are far enough away from the vegetation line and from the ocean to not require any camera permits. We have not required a camera major, excuse me. We do have a camera minor permit. We have the land disturbance permit and we have the encouragement agreement from NCDOT in hand for this whole project. The target of the project is really where it has, where I feel like it has the most benefit is on those small summer thunderstorms that cause an excessive amount of flooding in relation to the duration of the storm. Essentially a small cloudburst can leave water on Wrightsville Avenue for multiple days. we will be able to pump that water down and also prepare the system in advance of storms that we know are coming. But the target is not the larger hurricane storms or tropical storms. Those will still cause flooding. The system will help give the town more options on operating the system in response to larger events. But we hope the most impact is for those day-to-day nuisance flooding. that we see and it should improve the quality of life for the residents there as well as the ability to walk to school and access the rear entry of the elementary school. That's the project as a whole. The funding process started in the fall of 23, so almost three years ago now. We did our best to put together a grant budget that we thought would cover the expected inflation and construction price increases. We did receive bids close to two months ago now. We identified the lowest qualified bidder, which was Fred Smith Company. Their bid was still 15% over the expected grant budget. So we have worked with them on value engineering within the project to change minor parts of design that don't have a material impact on the project's benefit. The town has also agreed to do some aspect of the construction as far as like replacing bike racks and replacing a walkway and small things like that. uh and we made a design edit or we had a bit alternate the entire parking lot currently is uh it's permeable pavement we are going to replace that with traditional asphalt drive aisles and a portion of permeable pavement so we'll still have infiltration at the parking lot and meet our sustainability goals through that but it was a significant cost reduction to go to standard asphalt for a portion of it So those among some other edits that I won't bother for you with were made in order to get the project under the grant budget. That is a fixed amount. We did inquire about getting more grant funds. That was not possible at this time. So we do have this budget in front of you today for the project that still maintains about a 7% contingency for any unexpected hiccups or headaches or unexpected things that we encounter during construction to cover those. So the grant also does pay for the construction administration, which my firm and our local partner, Andy Deal and Deal Engineering, will be assisting with as well. So those are all funded by the grant. And with that, I'll pass it back to David and be available for any questions you have. But I appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning.

Thank you.

so if if there's not any questions related to the project we would request by motion to issue the notice of award for the bonnet street stormwater pump station to fred smith company in the amount of one million nine hundred and fifty five thousand sixteen dollars and zero cents which includes additive alternate number one and bid alternate number two and establish a construction contingency of $132,894. Also, to authorize the town manager to execute the construction contract and all associated project construction documents following receipt of required funding agency approvals and review by the town attorney. And lastly, to adopt capital project ordinance amendment number 14 for an additional amount of $2,087,910 in grant funding and project construction contingency.

Good. Any questions for David before we proceed? David, what's the timeframe for construction for this?

the the time frame is to begin in early october and complete the end of may in 2027. we do have some milestones in there so with the bonnet street beach access we would utilize a portion of that for a staging area that wouldn't start construction until mid-december also we acknowledge the interference with school traffic. And so there wouldn't be any lane closures while school was in. And so we've got a period of the winter break where they would be able to have school closures to install some of that infrastructure.

Okay, all right, good, good planning then. All right, very good. So let's first entertain a motion to authorize the manager to assign both the notice of award and the construction contract in any related documents. So a motion would be in order.

So moved.

I have a motion and a second. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, thank you. And then the next item, we need a motion to approve capital project amendment number 14. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Great. Thank you.

I would just say one other item, and that would be to establish a construction contingency in the amount of $132,894. OK. All right.

Very good. Can I hear a motion to that effect? I make that motion. Second. All right. And a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, very good, thank you. Thank you very much. All right, thank you. I'm gonna suggest that the board take about a 10 minute recess at this point. So the board will be in recess for about 10 minutes. All right, the board has returned to its work, and we need to jump back up to item G1, which is a discussion of crowd gathering activities, and Manager Garland. Thank you, Mayor.

Good morning, Mayor and Commissioners. I'll try to be brief. I know we've got a lot ahead of us still. This is an item that is carried forth from the July meeting. As the board recalls, we had a fairly lengthy discussion at the July meeting about our crowd gathering and group demonstrations ordinance. The board did adopt an ordinance, but directed staff to conduct some further work on certain aspects of the ordinance. As you recall, we had been speaking with staff from the tourism board, about the crowd gathering permit process. They had asked us to look into a conditional approval process that would create a second step in the permitting process, which I think the board's direction was to look at something simpler than that that wouldn't create two separate approvals. What the tourism board was looking for was essentially some reassurance that permits, once they're issued, could be amended if the applicant needed to do so. And so therefore, we've created a separate section of the ordinance, which does that, and I have that on the screen. We did meet with their staff to kind of go through the concerns. I feel like this does address the concern. Essentially, it clarifies after we issue a permit for crowd gathering activities, the process for getting it amended. that's the first piece of this the second piece of this we were looking at clarifying what conditions can be added to crowd gathering permits when they're issued by staff and so we've done that in a separate section which is now shown on the screen and it just sort of clarifies the types of conditions we can add to permits talks about noise and traffic um having crowd got crowd managers and security personnel obviously having additional police staff whether we're working the crosswalk at the event site or around town and so this this sort of provides a little bit of extra clarification on our ability to do that Fairly simple ordinance. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Just to review, in the discussions with the Visitors Bureau, there was some concern about you know, certainly being able to advertise events, do all the preparatory work, and so we've made it clear to them that they can submit a permit application at any time for an event, well in advance. Up to a year in advance. Up to a year in advance. They can submit an application for a permit, and that gives them the approval of that with perhaps conditions gives them some degree of certainty. And we do limit their ability then to subsequently amend that to not later than 15 days before the event. Okay. So they have anything from a year to 15 days before the event actually to fully sort out.

Right. And most of the time it's going to involve a change to their site plan or their parking plan, things of that nature. Now, we did say that if the nature of the change to their event changes the tier of their event, then they'd have to comply with the original timelines. Okay. And so in most cases that wouldn't happen, but that is something we included.

Okay. Very good. Thank you. I'll start with our visitor's bureau representative in case there are any questions.

No questions. I like it. I think it's a reasonable modification. I think it addresses the concerns about being able to be a little bit flexible if you're applying a year in advance, being able to make some changes without going through the whole secondary approval process that was originally And then, of course, giving us a little bit of flexibility at the staff level to impose some minor conditions, and they're spelled out clearly. So I think it's great.

Thank you. Very good. Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. Anything that makes it easier for them to get the permit and still be able to make a few changes is good for you. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Wehmer.

I'm comfortable with it. I echo the comments from Commissioner Sanders and Commissioner Vaughn. I think that I really appreciate all the work that the staff has done as well with everyone else to try to come up with something that everyone is happy with. Okay.

All right. Commissioner Harris.

I agree. I think it strikes a good balance between the town's needs and the visitor's bureau's needs at the site or anybody's needs at any site. So I think it's a good compromise.

And there has been a lot of exchange between interested parties and the town on this topic. And so I don't think any of this should be a surprise to anybody. All right. Then a motion to adopt the amended ordinance that you have before you would be in order.

So moved.

I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Thank you. Very good. All right. That brings us next to committee reports, and I will go down the line. Commissioner Harrison, anything from public access? Yes.

Yes. Current TV is currently looking for a new executive director. So we will be talking about that at our upcoming meeting in September. And creatively, Roberta is lining up projects and making videos. And so there's One currently available, The Life of a Beach Access. If you haven't seen that one, go look for that one. And the one, there's also one out about the old Nags Head Cottage Row and kind of indigenous architecture of Nags Head and how it's kind of evolved. And it's a great one. So she's doing a great job and that committee's going well.

Nothing outside of Miss fight gave an excellent report with her update as well as into reintroducing the septic health initiative in the beginning before the proclamation. So I'm very excited to see the progress that our loan program has already had.

Yes, absolutely. Very good. Thank you.

But their housing foundation and was more of a continuation of the last meeting. But we are making some progress and some headway and I'm pretty excited about how things are moving forward. Looking good.

Very good.

Thank you.

The Dare County Tourism Bureau, we met in August and one of the highlights was a report about the final 25 figures about statewide tourism. I won't bore you to death with figures, but it was interesting to me to note that Dare is the fourth largest county in the state as far as tourism spending with just over $2 billion. trailing just Mecklenburg Wake and Buncombe so our counties you know making an impact our numbers were basically flat from the year before so that's a wrap-up for 25 we have June local June figures overall occupancy tax was a 3% meals up a little bit those are but those don't necessarily reflect profitability for businesses or visitor numbers because of the increase in costs and those sorts of things. So basically the general just is kind of flat overall. And then I always think it's interesting that Nags Head share of these things. In June, Nags Head contributed 26% of Deer County revenue for occupancy tax and 25% for meals. So and then quickly the next event grant cycle is upon us. Event grants um all those applications are in there's 31 to review that'll happen in september and then of course this is tourist impact grant month so anything the town is doing i'm sure we'll hear about as far as um tourist impact grant requests from us

Thank you. It's been a while since I had a Jeanette's peer report. And so if you'll give me a minute, I want to talk, I'll just bring everybody up to date. I know that Commissioner Harrison, Commissioner Lambert, you were with us on a walking tour of the pier I think a couple of months ago when they were doing the plank replacement project and some heating and air work. So their visitation was heavily impacted by the pier closures in March and April. But May and June were strong. July took a dip. But the final plank of that project was laid in June, and all of the punch lists was completed in July. So that project is behind them. They have a new mini-split system cooling the IT room. You remember that that was an issue. for them and the elevator control area and they I think the last thing I'll mention is that their renewable energy upgrades are finally happening. So they have signed a contract to install the new turbines there, finally, after two or three years of sort of working through a number of issues. And they expect delivery in the next 180 days or so. And so they also have approval for a solar installation. Things are looking good at Jeanette's Pier.

I have a question about the trap door. Yes, ma'am.

Oh, the trap door. Yes, you didn't get to see the trap door.

I wasn't there.

So one of the things they have, so they have, they do a lot of research there. Coastal Studies Institute either does or coordinates a lot of research there. And occasionally a diver has to go out to maybe anchor a piece of equipment or inspect a piece of equipment or something like that. And The pier is pretty high off the water. How do they deploy? You can bring a boat all the way around through Oregon Inlet and let a diver out. They have in the little research shed that's out at the end of the pier, there's a trap door in the floor. And there's a platform that they can lower. So a diver can actually... go into the shed suit up and then be lowered down into the water to do work around the pier which is nobody knows nobody knows now everybody knows but it's a fisherman can't see it happening no that's right i mean that's right unless you're sort of look find a way to look around underneath the pier but it's a it's it's pretty cool there's a there's a lot that happens there it's a good way for them to avoid the lines yeah yet that's right the fishing lines that way they don't interrupt they don't have to block off a piece of the pier and interrupt what everybody's doing and it's just it's just neat and tidy uh that brings us to consideration of a drinking water state revolving fund low interest loan application amy

good afternoon mayor and commissioners um today we are asking for your approval and authorization uh to authorize the town manager and myself to apply for a drinking water state revolving fund low interest loan through division of water infrastructure the application is due this month so we're working on that right now And I did want to give a little bit of information that was not in the packet before I go over what was in the packet. We do, although they do offer some principal forgiveness, we have to fill out a financial indicator form. And I know I did talk about a grant because you never know how many people are going to apply. But our financial indicators do not qualify us for principal forgiveness. And because it is tied to the poverty level evaluation per capital income, etc. So we do not get credit for that, if you will. So it kind of takes us out of that category. However, A low interest loan is really good because it is about a 20-year loan and we're even looking at maybe a 30-year loan and the interest rate is like 2% or 2.5%. It doesn't put us in an arbitrage situation because we draw down the money. We don't get it from the bank. The LGC does have to approve it. Again, just another caveat, there is a 2% closing fee on what we would borrow for the loan. looking at the CIP that we're gonna ask you to adopt, it's close to $3 million. We haven't tied that exactly. So that would be $60,000 we would have to put in the budget that you can't finance. So just a couple of things that I did not put in the packet, but what is in the packet is that we do want this low interest loan for asbestos cement pipes replacement in the Vista Colony and Villa Dunes neighborhoods. And this is in accordance with the town's five-year adopted CIP plan, but for the purpose of the grant, we need to do a 10-year CIP. So the 10-year CIP we're asking you to adopt today is the CIP that you already have, the five-year water CIP that you have already adopted, with the addition of some other items that we have incorporated as part of our integrated street, stormwater, sidewalk water, water line projects. um and uh we do think this is uh based on a scoring system where you get points and obviously the more points that you get so we've we've kind of preliminary gone over our points and we do think we can get the points uh to qualify us for this loan we would find out in february um if we get it or not and it's kind of uh it the loan would cover everything from survey work to engineering construction admin and construction And again, the requirement for this grant would be the adoption of the CIP, which again, it is a 10-year CIP, it's a projection, it's fluid. So every year, obviously we're gonna re-look at this and re-prioritize our infrastructure projects and any emerging needs. So this is just kind of a moment in time right now. But what we are asking is for you to authorize the town manager and myself to apply for this loan. And then again, we do need the CIP adopted as well as the resolution. And I'll take care of that paperwork after the meeting on this if you're so inclined for that. But again, this was kind of an opportunity that we looked at. We're finalizing our water master plan and how to pay for all this stuff. So we do have the two projects coming up next year between the planning and the construction at Vista Colony and Villa Dunes. So I thought we thought this would be a great opportunity to try to help us pay for it for our taxpayers or water customers. So anyway, if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer. But that's something we didn't really talk about in the budget process. So we're, you know, always have capacity to look for funding opportunities as as they arrive. And this was something we've identified.

Okay, all right, very good. Thank you, Amy. Did you say that this, I mean, we have the 10-year capital improvement plan spreadsheet in front of us.

Yes.

That was part of the public package?

Yeah, I put that in the packet. Okay, all right, thank you.

I'm just making sure.

Yes, sir.

All right, very good.

All right, any questions for Amy, folks? I did ask the question about forgiveness because I wondered. So we are low interest. We're not going to get free money, not quite free money.

And we yes, we tried to get funding from this from the Legislature, but we were denied for this specific project.

This doesn't obviously preclude us from continuing to push. That door is still open, so we're going to keep pushing for that. If we get the money, we won't borrow the money. That's the deal, but we need to apply.

We'll know in February, so obviously if we don't want to take the money for some reason, this doesn't

stop us from not taking it or taking it but we won't get it if we don't ask so it's nice to have that choice right yep all right questions nope no not answered all right so um we need to uh do two things i think is approve the authorization the application authorization and the 10-year water cip

Yes. And there's a resolution that goes on with the CIP. But I think as long as you adopt the CIP, then we can you can. Yes, the resolution about the CIP.

OK. All right. All right. Then a motion to approve the application authorization would be in order.

I'll make that motion.

Second. Is there a second? All right. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, thank you. And also a motion to approve the 10-year CIP would be in order. I have a motion. Is there a second?

Second.

I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Anything else?

No, I think I have the next item. Well, oh, the attorney and then I'm okay.

Oh, okay. All right, yeah, we'll stay on track here. So any items for you? Don't go too far, Amy.

I have nothing to report, Mr. Mayor.

Okay, all right, very good. I knew it. Amy, then that brings you back for the discussion of the multi-year beach access replacements.

it does thank you and i know this is something that david and nancy and i have been talking about so i got elected to be the one that stands up here because we're talking about the budget and the cip so um why not but we're essentially asking to kind of allow us to have some flexibility in deciding about uh what was in our adopted cip with the beach access replacements um so what we're asking essentially and i did put the cip in the packet uh what we're asking is to replace the barn street beach access walkover this fiscal year it was originally adopted in the cip and the next fiscal year fiscal year 28 and the cost for that is about 115 000 and i know we don't know what's happening with the cost of lumber etc so this is kind of before all that but um Essentially, we have about that much budgeted in local funding for beach access. So this would exhaust that. The second thing is that the Albatross Street Beach Access walk over was supposed to be replaced this fiscal year. and we're asking to bump that back at least another year what's happened is that we've been made obviously we kind of well we public services goes through and you know maintains these throughout the year and is always assessing the condition um and so with albatross we've been making repairs and it's in it's in good condition but with barns The underside without getting too technical is kind of rotting. And so it really needs replaced because otherwise we're just throwing good money into something bad that's going to need replaced. So that's their recommendation and what they found as they were kind of doing these assessments. um and the third thing is we usually do do two of these beach access replacements every fiscal year and um we did apply for the glidden street beach access walkover from cama and we did not get invited to apply so that what we had put in the budget was contingent on that however As Commissioner Vaughn suggested, the Outer Banks Visitor Bureau Tourism Impact Grants are this month. And so what we would like to do is instead apply because this is well, it is tied to tourism and that we're making it like the parking lot is not ADA accessible. So we're making it much more accessible with the walkovers in the parking lot. So I did talk to them and they said that this would fit that. So what we would like to do instead is apply for our visitors grant since we didn't get the camera grant. um and so once we find out if we get that grant or not we can decide what you want to do because we will need to appropriate local funds for for glidden if we do or don't get the grant and whether we kind of pick it down the can one year um or not that the board can make that decision. And we do, just for transparency, we do use the MS, the money through a beach nourishment capital reserve, we get money from sales tax because of our MSD tax. So we use that to pay for the beach walkover. So just to let you know. So we will maybe need some extra money if we do decide to do GLID and based on if we get this grant or not. And we'll let you know, we should know in a couple months. But right now, I guess we would like your approval to replace Barn Street using all our, exhausting all our local money that we have, budgeted, and then kick Albatross down at least another year, and then we can update you on Glidden. But if it's okay, I will apply for the Glidden Street grants. And.

All right. Anything else, Amy?

I don't think so.

Okay. Thank you for bringing this to us because it does amend our previously published capital improvement plan. And so it is important, I think, that we do this transparently and do this by formal motion. So I would ask the commissioners, do you have any questions first?

Just curious the cost of the Albatross. We're like flipping them basically. What was, do we know?

The Albatross I think was 80, but when we applied for the Glidden Street grant, there's a match with that. So we had to put up a local match with the grant. So between the local match of the Glidden Street and what we had budgeted for Albatross, that is like $116,000. i think yeah 116 000 which david at 116 675 that's what we have in our budget for the local part and then david said this would cost about 115 so that kind of is that sweet spot right there right that's where that extra money is coming from it's from the local portion that the grant match gotcha okay is there any contingency in the 115 000

Yes. Without asking, come to the podium, the answer to that is yes, that we do have our contingency built into that number.

Okay, thank you. No questions. I appreciate the suggestion for the grant.

Yeah.

No questions. All right, very good.

All right, in that case, a motion to amend the town's capital improvement plan to accelerate the Barnes Street replacement and to defer the Albatross Street replacement would be in order.

I make that motion.

Is there a second?

Second.

I have a motion to second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, do you need an approval from us to make the visitors bureau application?

I don't think we've done that.

I don't think we have in the past. Okay.

As long as you know that you're okay with, we are applying and we, at some point we, whether we do it in the budget next year or this year.

Right.

But we would maybe ask once we get a contract if we.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. That brings us to our discussion of e-bikes. Chief Hale.

Good morning again, Mayor and Commissioners. We heard some comments about it this morning, but I'm here before you today on the growing concerns of e-bikes that we have within the town. Back in the fall of 2023, we came before you discussing e-bikes and the allowed usage of them on the multi-use path. And it was decided at that time to have discretion that they could be up there but our ordinance was changed so that they were not allowed to be up there operated in a reckless manner or a speed faster than reasonably proper i can tell you since that time we do see e-bikes on the multi-use path a lot are operating in a safe manner and speeds that are proper, but we have had some to where we have stopped and told them that if they're going to drive that fast, they need to get on the shoulder of the road, and NC-12 being that bikes and e-bikes within the state of North Carolina are classified as a vehicle, just not a motor vehicle. with the e-bikes even if they're what we've seen over the past uh year and a half or so luckily the visitors have not quit coming here and with the number of driveways and and people that are out on the bike i personally do not go on vacation to exercise and go out and run and stuff but with the number of people that do go out and exercise and run and have strollers and everything else even if they are operating um at a speed that is what we would consider proper I believe that that speed that they're operating at is usually a little bit faster than someone would normally cruise on a beach cruiser, et cetera. So when you mix the number of driveways that connect with the multi-use path on the beach road path itself, and the number of people that they're coming in contact with, to me, is starting to create a little bit more of a dangerous activity to where we've been very lucky that we have not had anybody seriously injured, but we have had some people with people pulling out of driveways, the e-bikes come out with bushes, et cetera. You can't see each other, and there have been some collisions. There have also been collisions with regular bicycles in that manner as well. But with the General Assembly this past year, I was hoping they would do a little bit more. Basically, all they did was classify e-bikes into three different classes. Class one, which can only go up to 20 miles per hour, assisted with pedals. Class two. It's equipped with a motor to propel the bicycle without pedaling, but only allows it to go up to 20. And then the class three provides assistance only when the rider is pedaling and ceases to assist when the bicycle hits 28 miles per hour. What we're learning is a lot of manufacturing companies to stay within the laws of what has been set and the definitions. They're not advertising that these things can go faster. What it would be with somebody that could be a friend of a manufacturer. And anyway, information is getting out on the internet of how you can change the speeds of these things. So they are changing them. There have been some speeds in other jurisdictions where the police tried to stop them. They were going 40 or 45 miles per hour. that is moving on a bicycle. So with all of that, of the legislation, and the classifications, it would be pretty much impossible for us to have an ordinance in place that if we did put a speed limit on them to be able to use a speed measurement instrument to get an accurate reading. The way radars and LIDARs work, or radars, excuse me, they're gonna pick up the larger of the item So when traffic is traveling by, it would be hard to obtain a clock on a bicycle versus a vehicle. Now, ladders are a point specific to an object. You can use them to get a speed on a bicycle, but no more knowing when a electric bike would be coming by. Do we put a person in a beach chair sitting on the multi-use path every day, all day, just waiting for somebody to come back? So with all those things to think about, it would be my recommendation to just do away with e-bikes on the multi-use path on NC 12 only. We heard comments about 1243. The traffic down that way, pedestrian, et cetera, is not as much up here on the actual NC 12 portion. And then the bypass multi-use path, we don't see as much pedestrian traffic as well. We see quite a number of e-bikes up there on the multi-use path on the bypass that are they're moving along, but there's no one else around. So if they fall or anything else that is on them and they assume the risk of it, the speed that they're driving at. So to help mitigate the possibilities of e-bikes and walkers, runners, other cyclists that are just normally cruising, that would be my suggestion, but I am open to any comments or questions that you might have that we could come up with something different.

All right, very good. Board members, I'll start with Commissioner Harrison. Questions?

Well, I do appreciate the comments from the public about law-abiding people being able to ride their bikes on the multi-use path. I'm wondering if there's a way we could possibly restrict all e-bikes on the multi-use path like from Memorial Day to Labor Day and then the rest of the year everybody could use it. I think there's so much less pedestrian traffic on the multi-use path in the off season.

I thought about that and I'm totally open to it. we would look at it just like you know the beach driving season so you know when that opens up we have somebody out there and then after you know labor day we know that they're allowed up there and then and we're not looking to enforce an ordinance and go out there and start writing town tickets or anything else and then when you have the juveniles um if they're under 16, there's really nothing we can do with them anyway. It would be a petition that would go now if they're not having helmets on, et cetera. North Carolina passed the law years ago where, you know, the parents would be responsible if the if the child under the 16 age didn't have a helmet on. So I'm definitely open for that. I actually, you know, had thought about that and been bouncing it back in my head.

And, you know, that would be a little unfair because biking season is the summer and the locals are being

punished for people's bad behavior in the summer which doesn't seem entirely fair and i can tell you personally i see just as many families um older adults riding e-bikes um that are just cruising along and you know people on regular bicycles pass them so there is that that difference that you know sets it down and it does sort of punish those you know during the summertime

And then what about the safety of putting children on e-bikes in the street?

That is another concern that was brought up back in 23 when we did, you know, look at everything. Bicycles are considered vehicles. They are allowed on the street. You still have to weigh that option if they're out there. Most times that we see families are with them on an e-bike, but I have seen very few on the multi-use pass. We see that more likely in neighborhoods with the children riding with their parents on a little e-bike while the parents are riding their regular bike. But that is also a concern. do we go as far as is putting an age limit on it or if they're with a family to look at it um and speeds then we're back to the speeds of how fast are they actually going um but usually they're not going to go too fast with the child itself now the the the juveniles that are actually riding that other agencies have had more of an issues with. They're riding through the neighborhoods, you know, and they're just going as fast as that's all they want. You know, the speed. Some have helmets on, some don't have helmets on. I've seen them where they have their dirt bike helmets on and ones that look like dirt bikes themselves. Um, which they don't have pedals and nothing has changed with the law regarding anything that the legislation has just done. Uh, even before the e-bike had to have operable pedals, what we'll see is people will buy an aftermarket, uh, pedals and just mounting them on the bikes, um, to get around the statute. But when you looked at them, they're not operable. They're just a fixed object. Um, so there are always going to be someone's looking to get around it. And if we, whatever decision we make, you know, I can tell you that we're not going to catch everybody.

Yeah. And is it realistic at all to think that you all can monitor speeds on the, I don't think you may have mentioned this earlier, but is it realistic at all to think you could monitor speeds of e-bikes on the multi-use path?

No, ma'am. No. I mean, like I said, somebody would have to sit there with a LIDAR and just wait for an e-bike to come back. Um, we don't have the personnel to do that, nor the time to sit there all day. Cause some days I don't see, uh, many bikes at all. Other days I see, you know, quite a few, but our staff knows that the ordinance that we adopted back in 2023, that they have to be operating in a manner that is, um, you know, the speed is proper and not reckless. We saw one the other day, the gentleman come up behind him, but he was on his e-bike and somebody was walking and he actually had a bell on his thing when I was riding by. And you heard him ring his bell to alert the person in front of him. That's responsible e-biking right there. But just cutting in and out of people and I've seen some where they've been on it and then they zip around to the road all of a sudden to get around to someone walking on a multi-use path. To me that is more dangerous than actually being on the roadway from the whole entire time, from wherever they left them.

OK, thank you. I have a couple of questions and I kind of want to reiterate when you mentioned the pedal assist right now, when we see e-bikes, not e-bikes, bikes that are electronic that don't have pedals, those are not legal for people to be using, period.

No, ma'am. OK, so they're going to either be classified as a moped or a motorcycle.

thank you so when we see those right now this e-bike discussion doesn't affect those whatsoever those are illegal yes they've had to have operable pedal pedals the entire time that e-bikes have basically been around in north carolina okay good um the second question i have is you mentioned recommending possibly not allowing bikes on the multi-use path in south knagshed

No, just NC-12.

Just NC-12, okay.

1243, what we consider South Nags Head, Old Oregon on that road. Um, we don't see as much foot running traffic as we do up here on the, you know, the actual NC-12.

That's just what I wanted to clarify because I don't, just hearing that off the, I don't know if everyone understands that NC-12 is not South Nags Head. So that way we understand we're talking about those two separate things. Um, that's all the questions I have. Okay.

Thank you. Mr. Sanders.

Do you have a statistic at all about how many accidents involve e-bikes compared to bicycles?

I do not have them right off the top of my head right now. I know we had one e-bike crash that was June. Was it June the one on the beach road? He was actually on the beach road riding and kind of weaving and got hit. Um, and that was an illegal e-bike did not have operable pedals and the speed that it would go to. So the gentleman was injured. Um, we did not issue any citations just because he got hit and with his injury that he was being transported. But there have been a number of accidents on the bike path or I wouldn't say that there would be a great number. We've just had some, um, but we've had more probably near misses where people come out and somebody swerves and they don't actually make contact and they, the gravel, et cetera, they slip the tire slides, they fall off. Um, or the, the vehicle operator coming out, sees it at last minute slams on brakes. Um, and then, you know, they miss contact.

Thank you.

No questions. I guess if you could speak to the safety of, you know, riding an e-bike on the road as opposed to on the multi-use path. Because, you know, we have walkers and...

Yes, with any bike, being that it's listed as a vehicle in North Carolina, they still have to follow all the rules of the road. So if you have, just say we're riding down the road and there's four or five people, somebody is waiting to make a right turn to a driveway off of the beach road, traffic behind them is stopping, that cyclist should be stopping as well to wait for them to make the turn. We've had incidents where even making a left-hand turn, it does not affect the cyclist if they decide to go straight, but traffic behind them is also stopped to allow because that vehicle is making a left-hand turn and with that bike, basically is passing on the right. They're going around the other traffic, so that is a violation. They have to stop at all stop signs. Even crossing the roadways at crosswalks, being that the e-bike or bike is considered a vehicle, you do not get the same protections at a crosswalk. You must dismount from either one and walk the bike across. I know people seem to think it's crazy. We do stop and tell people that you need to walk them about and they look at us and just think we're evil because we won't let them ride their bike across. But if you're riding that bike across and you actually get hit by a vehicle, you can be found at fault to where or a contributing factor that you were not, you didn't wait for the red light to turn green or you're traveling the wrong direction of travel.

I have a question for the town manager. I know we put those speed limit signs in, I can't remember if it was last year or two years ago, but do you know how, at what intervals we put them in? Because I ride the bike path a lot and I don't really see them standing out.

I mean, I did when they were first painted, but lately they... Well, we put them about every mile, but we've since overlaid the beach road path in a the areas from Jeanette's Pier I believe to Carlow I don't think we replaced those pavement markings in that area and there's been some conversation about the appearance of those pavement markings and so if we want to put signs up I think we prefer signs as opposed to the pavement markings

So the current standard is that if it doesn't have pedals and it's on a multi-use path, that's a violation. They're going to get stopped if you see them.

They're not classified as an e-bike. They're classified as something else. What we are trying to do is, if it's a juvenile, locate where they live at, speak to the parents to educate them on this is not classified as an e-bike under general statute. They could, if continued operation, be charged for allowing a vehicle to be used without insurance because mopeds have to be registered. They have to have insurance on them. And my opinion only, I was hoping the legislature would have put some restrictions on an e-bike to where it would require some insurance or registration plates. Because if you get in back in the day before mopeds had it, if any moped was involved in a collision and it was the moped's fault, you were eating the cost of repairing your vehicle because there was no insurance tied to it.

Right. So that's the enforcement for pedalless vehicles. if an e-bike with pedals is being, and then the other standard is if it's on a multi-use path and being operated per ordinance at an unsafe speed or unsafe manner, there's an opportunity for enforcement there. In other words, you can stop that cycle.

Yes, what we have now. Yes, sir.

it's a it's a quandary because I mean I I can ride my bike on the multi-use path fast enough and recklessly enough to cause problem most of the how much does your bike weigh though My bike weighs very little. I weigh a lot. But the bike actually weighs very little. And that's right. The mass of an e-bike is also part of the equation. And I don't know. I mean, I've never liked operating even my bike on a multi-use path. And most cyclists that are

In other words, Lance Armstrong cyclists. They usually ride the road because they're going at a speed, I mean, some of these cyclists are going 25, 30 miles per hour.

Right, and because at driveways, in heavy traffic, People coming out of a driveway and making a right turn only look left because they're only concerned about the lane they're turning into. And if you're going against traffic on the multi-use path at any speed, then they're not going to see you at all, regardless of whether you're walking, running on a, e-bike or any other kind of vehicle, they're not going to see you. That's true. When I was an avid runner on the multi-use path, I wouldn't do it today in the current climate, but I slapped a lot of rear fenders because people pulled out in front of me. Yes.

And with the new legislation, I need to add that this doesn't come into effect until December of this year. So anything that would be done would be an educational opportunity if we did whatever you decide. If we were putting signs up, obviously we can't. And this might be more of a question for the town attorney. Before when we were talking about regulating them, the statute had no motor vehicles whatsoever. So if an e-bike, it does have a motor, even though it's not a gas motor, it has a motor and bikes are considered a vehicle, that was kind of the reason that we were first starting to look at this. But I think we had the authority to regulate then and then now is giving municipalities and and counties the authorities to regulate under the new new statute so i'm a little confused on that um but either way if y'all decided on something today we're not going out there looking to start you know enforcing everything in a manner of where they would be cited on the civil citation from the town or something of that nature we would obviously be educating first right i don't we'll find out what the board thinks in a second but

seasonality is an issue. We're coming down toward the end of the season. There's time for us before next season to consider this and if we want to put up signs or take any other kind of action.

i'd like to just chew on this a little bit more after today's discussion before trying to decide what to do commissioner harrison i i need some more time with this yeah i agree i would like to hear from more people maybe um and see what other people's opinions are and um i would just like some time to just evaluate how it could work yeah i agree commissioner

I agree. I would like to definitely hear more feedback. We've brought up several new ideas today that might work or might not. And I think hearing feedback from NAGSA would really help. And from staff, too, as well. And I certainly echo what Commissioner Harrison said. We don't want, there's people that enjoy their e-bikes responsibly. And it's a shame that they would have to pay the price. But at the same time, there is public safety.

Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely.

All right.

Mr. Sanders. I agree. It's a tough one. I mean, you're weighing public safety against people that enjoy riding responsibly on the bike path. I think it was your idea for the 10 mile an hour speed limit. I'm surprised that people have a problem with that.

Actually, I think it was the Deputy Chief's idea to paint those on.

I'm surprised that people have a problem with that because I feel like if we can enforce the speed limit well enough, then maybe we wouldn't have these problems. I guess that's something we can talk about and look at down the road, like you said. Okay. All right.

I'm okay with waiting. I do think when we're – and it's definitely a tough, tough decision, but I think when you look at the sheer numbers of people using the multi-use path on 12, you know, it's – predominantly right way more walkers runners strollers but you know whatever people standing around talking to their neighbors these kinds of things i mean when you ride up and down the road you see you know i go all the time and never and don't see any bike Now, that doesn't mean they don't have any rights or privileges, but I think we have to balance the sheer numbers of people. Oh, I forgot to talk about cars pulling out, too, of driveways. I would especially agree with Commissioner Lambert about the weight of these things. We have a few of these in our neighborhood that are a nuisance. They're big, they're heavy, they're quiet. They're going really quickly. My husband actually spoke to one person and said, well, I'm wearing a helmet. He said, that's not safe. And he said, I'm wearing a helmet. I'm not wearing a helmet. I'm just walking. So anyway, that's my thoughts. But I'm fine with chewing on it a little longer.

Can I ask one more question? Andy, do you know, or Perry, do you know, have any other towns made any kind of legislation about this yet?

I don't think so since the law was adopted.

No, everybody's been kind of waiting for the law just came into effect in October last year. And then they were waiting to see, or excuse me, this year I believe it was. But it doesn't come into effect until December. So I know the school systems have like... kind of prevented you from riding them on the school property. Once you get there, you have to dismount and walk them up. That's about the only thing that I have seen so far. I know that our, you know, monthly chiefs meeting that we have has been discussed to try to see what everybody is looking at. But we're obviously waiting to see, you know, what actually came down from the legislation and

And the county too, right? Not allowed on park and rec property. I think I saw that. Yeah.

So those two things have happened.

Schools and yeah. So in park and rec property.

Thank you, Chief. We don't have an answer for you today, but appreciate the input and appreciate you remaining open for questions because we're going to think of things in the next month that we probably need to ask. Thank you. All right, wait, period, don't go away. Topic of the day, all right. Discussion of automated license plate readers.

If I could just say one thing really quickly before Perry begins. We had received comments, the board has received comments from the public about the automated license plate readers. We actually received requests for information. We were provided with a copy of a petition. and a request to remove the automated license plate readers. And so that's one primary reason why we scheduled this for today. So the board could hear from our staff on how the system is used, could consider all the information and sort of decide how you wanted to address the comments and the requests you'd received. So obviously, Chief Hales prepared to give a presentation along with the police staff and then We can bring back any other information that you need depending on how the conversation goes. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Chief? We're ready.

We're ready. The long-awaited presentation. First of all, Mr. Mayor and Commissioners, thank you for the opportunity to present this. We thank for the public to come in and express their concerns. I just ask that you review everything and make an objective decision based off what is presented and any research that you may do or come to light. I will say that I would first like to address some things that I've heard or seen that we're kind of waiting for the courts to make a decision. And that is not actually all the way factual. We've heard of Carpenter VUS. That was a 2018 case where law enforcement obtained cell phone data from a third party, which cell phone companies sell data to third parties. They obtained cell phone data for a criminal investigation from Google without a warrant. I totally agree with the case, but that was based off cell phone data. CSLI, which is cell phone site location information, And then we've heard the most recent case that came out this year was Chattree v. U.S. And that was a case within the Fourth Circuit. where it was Midlothian, Virginia, I believe it was. They had a bank robbery and a male was seen walking out and they ended up contacting the company and getting geofencing. Geofencing basically bounces off of different cell phone towers to give you a precision exact location and it does this every minute or so. Some of the facts in that case was the defendant stating that even to operate some apps on your phone, um that if you try to turn off location services it tells you that the the product might not work correctly so many people do not uh turn that off and so that for it is cell phone csli provides an intimate window of your movements basically every minute to two minutes when that is pinging a tower So to specifically address LPRs, the Fifth Circuit had a 2024 case and they just made a ruling this year in March. and they affirmed the lower courts from the federal district court there in Mississippi. And I would like to read a little bit of it because it states, for the use of an LPR system did not invade any reasonable expectation of privacy and did not constitute a search, so no warrant was required. Officially, intrusion into the private sphere generally qualifies as a search and requires a warrant supported by probable cause, which is United States v. Smith in the Fourth Circuit. And then a person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into public sphere. That is the Carpenter v. U.S. case from 2018. But a person traveling in an automobile on a public thoroughfare has no reasonable expectation to privacy in his movements from one place or another, and that comes from United States v. Knott's back in 1983. Therefore, the LPR system provides periodically information about a vehicle's location on a public street and highway. A scan occurs when a vehicle passes one of these locations where a camera isn't installed. The LPR system is not capable of tracking the whole of an individual's physical movements, much less for a very long period to the extent that a cell phone can, because the LPR system does not faithfully follow individuals beyond public thoroughfares. It was also noted that cell site location information, or CSLI, which can provide an intimate window into a person's life, revealing not only his particular movements, but through them his familiar, political, professional, religious, or sexual accusations. And that comes from Carter. So they deemed and affirmed to hold the federal district court out of there. And that was the appellate court from the Fifth Circuit. And that was done in March of this year. So now for the long-awaited presentation. We're here before you today to give a presentation on the agency LPR, or ALPR, or what we have purchased or leased is flock cameras. We've had those in place as we contracted in 2023. It was presented at the CIP budget process and we discussed that here that I believe was recorded and then we once it was passed we had installation happening in February of 2024. Since contracting with flock, I will say the department has had a positive overall experience with flock as an additional tool in our investigations. We have been able to identify leads to crimes quickly that have assisted our agency in bringing closure to businesses, residents and visitors that have fallen victim to criminal activity within our town. Just in the past year, we have used flock to assist in our investigations on 163 cases. ALPR deployment in Dare County. It was spoken yesterday at the county board meeting. They have been in place, I believe the sheriff said, since 2014. Within that, we have used their access to their system by contacting an investigator that we have used to help doing cases before we ever received any flock. back in 2024 with the operational deployment. We do have 12 cameras that are deployed here. And they're on the major roads, US 64, South Virginia Dare Trail, US 158, and 1243. Basically, we have them at the entrances of Nags Head. Once the vehicle passes those cameras, they are captured by three, four or five still shots that displays nothing other than a vehicle, the side of the vehicle and the license plate. We have no way of knowing who owns or operates that vehicle unless we look at the vehicle and have a query to find out. And then we have to log into and go to another law enforcement database that is monitored by the SBI and other assets. So if you cross the Pirates Cove Bridge, or Washington Bomb Bridge for factual, everybody calls it the Pirates Cove Bridge, so you come across to a camera there. If you continue on the bypass, we have no idea where you are, don't care where you are, and we never know unless you cross 8th Street that you have left Nags Head. Within all of that, we don't go and just run queries or watch because there is no live feed on these cameras. These cameras are accessed after a crime has been committed. All right. With the technology here, I'm gonna bring up Detective Alvarez, who is more IT operable than I am, and works a lot in the system for investigative cases, and let him go through the next few slides, and then I'll be back up to discuss some other issues.

Good morning, thanks for having me up. I'll just kind of dive right into it. So to understand how the system works and how we use it, I'll go over what the system actually is. So what you're looking at here in this picture is actually one of Floch's products. It's the Falcon ALPR. This device is fixed in place. It's put in a hole in the ground. It does not have any capabilities to do pan, tilt, or zoom. They only capture still images, and there's no continuous surveillance feed. So once a vehicle comes in front of the camera, it triggers its motion, and then it takes about three photos of that vehicle. And then that data is then sent up through a cellular connection through flock servers. and it's then processed. So it's taking a picture of the rear of the vehicle, those alphanumeric characters on the back of the plate are what are being cross-referenced with NCIC, which is the National Crime Information Center. That's what pulls all of the state databases in together, and it allows our officers that are working the road to get real-time alerts on stolen vehicles, wanted suspects, or missing persons. That includes AMRA alerts.

I just clarify. So it cross references. In other words, we don't know whether the suspect is driving that car or whether the missing person is in that car. We have a car with a certain license plate number and we're looking for that license plate. And that's all we know about that car at that point.

That is correct.

Okay.

So there's two parts to a HIT or this system. So we have HITs, which are real-time alerts that come to our officers, and then we have, after a crime has occurred, our search capabilities with that system in place. So just to go right into it, this is a publicly available image that you can see. This is exactly when we query the system, this is what kind of image that we will get back. So if we are looking for a white Ford Explorer like image here, this is what will come back in the image. As you can see, we have no idea who is driving the vehicle, who's in the vehicle, and all we have is the rear shot of the vehicle with those alphanumeric characters on the plate. There's no way that the system knows who owns the vehicle. If I wanted to figure out who was in the vehicle, I would then have to use another law enforcement database to then search that tag and get it back. So there's been a lot of questions about, is their system secure? Well, first off, it requires MFA, which is multi-factor authentication. So I'm sure a lot of anybody that uses email or anything these days, you have to verify your login with that device to even get into the system. Well then beyond that, once you are in the system, just in theoretical, if someone was able to get into a system, all they have is a picture of the back of the plate. There is no owner information or anything along those lines. So within this image here, you can see metadata that's captured. So you have where the ALPR is at, what area that it's taking a picture of, and then you have latitude and longitude listed in there as well, along with the date of the capture and the time. So as I said earlier, this system is useful to our patrol officers because they can be on the road and get a real time alert about a stolen vehicle that is coming into the area. Or if they have someone they unfortunately if the child is abducted or a missing person comes through and we do have a suspect vehicle entered in, we can get real time alerts and actually capture that suspect without any harm to the child. So the second part that I wanna go into is the search side of this system. So beyond time real hot list alerts, the secondary function of the system is retrospective investigation. So if a burglary or hit and run occurs at 2 a.m. and a witness only saw a dark gray SUV with a roof rack, a dented bumper, our detectives and officers can query that system using those physical characteristics. We don't need a full plate to narrow down the suspect vehicle. Additionally, it provides us high-level analytics. When looking at it, I have network insights in there for you. So it can differentiate between the total read, which is a count for every time a vehicle triggers a sensor, and a unique read, which isolates individual vehicles across our entire network. This gives our leadership clear objective data on traffic flow and seasonal volume without creating permanent dossiers on anyone. So when talking about the search capabilities of this system, specifically the Criminal Investigation Division has had, this is a very good tool that has allowed us to solve crimes that we would have no other leads going forward. And I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about specific cases, but there have been two cases recently where this was very, very useful. So one to just explain to, to be transparent on how I would use the system and how we did use the system. So my partner had a case involving a juvenile that had been hit by a vehicle and sustained very bad injuries. He did live, and has recovered, but at that time, all we had was the mirror that was on the vehicle. So we were able to figure out what vehicle that make model color that that came back to, but there was no serial number, so we didn't know who the vehicle belonged to. Using this system, what we were able to do is use those vehicle characteristics, run a search prior to that in our area where this hit and run occurred, and get a list of vehicles that matched that profile. And then, thankfully, the suspect continued past another one of our ALPRs, and it was clear as day, prior to that, we didn't know exactly which vehicle it was. We had four or five that matched that make and model, Well, afterwards we performed that query. We could see, well, there's a vehicle with a mirror missing. So then immediately now we identified this is probably our suspect vehicle, and we were able to run that plate in our separate system, identify who the driver was, and locate him and interview him. And that is an ongoing case. There is criminal charges in that case against that driver for hitting the juvenile driver. One other real world that was just recent, we've been, this summer unfortunately, we've been getting hit by a lot of vehicle breaking and enterings. To include daytime ones, nighttime ones, beanies that involve windows getting broken out, which down here is pretty rare for that to occur. And so we didn't know if our suspect was the same suspect for our daytime ones or our nighttime ones. Well, with this system, we were able to use evidence that was left behind at one of our beach accesses to then coordinate with the business owner and get their camera footage, but we had such a massive window in time that we didn't know where our suspect, which vehicle that went into the access was our suspect vehicle. So we were able to use the system to then identify with another beach access that had a recording system that now pointed to the direction of this is probably our suspect and show that he was in the area at those times. And then in coordination with our patrol division, we let them know that we had identified this vehicle and they were able to stop the vehicle and recover actual evidence from those breaking that are inside the vehicle. So it's a case where if we didn't have this system, that case would not have been able to be solved. So going over all those, how we use the system to search, what can be done, the last part before I kinda hand this back over to Chief Hale, I just wanna go over, just to be transparent, so this is exactly what we see when we search. This is an exact, I took a capture of my screen when I search a vehicle, this is what we're gonna see in the system. So if anybody has any difficulty seeing, so in the top left corner there, you can see what's stated as investigative purpose. So our system has a lot of accountability built into it. And what's required is an offense type. So currently we have about 44 different offense types that an officer can select to make a search. A lot of those could include breaking and entering, Robbery things of that nature and that is selected and then a case number which is associated with the actual search that we are doing has to be put into the system and then lastly a reason for that search and the reason could be as simple as a descriptor of this is a suspect that we've had involved in this or like the case i gave with the hit and run we have a specific make and model of this vehicle so we're doing a search for suspects on that type of vehicle and once that search is performed it's then logged into the system and our administrators go in and they can audit every search so as being in the criminal investigation division and getting cases assigned i'd say probably our division is one of the most utilized for this system and so we probably have a big paper trail in the audit system that i'm sure a lieutenant enjoys having to go through every month but he clearly checks it all the time lots of times he'll come back to me and say hey what was this can you give me a little bit more information on this and i'll say oh yeah that was this case to clarify if there was maybe i didn't give a good reason or just didn't describe something that was as clear for him to understand He'll come and ask me, hey, what was this? And I can explain it to him, and then he understands why I did perform that search in the system. So knowing how the system is used to search, I want to also explain that we do not authorize it for minor traffic enforcement. So this is only being used for serious crimes our officers are not allowed to query the system to try to find someone that doesn't have a driver's license or driving with a license revoked to a scenario where they know someone's coming into town every day and they don't have a driver's license so they're going to run the system that we do not authorize that at all So, just all in all, this was a general overview of how the system works and how our officers utilize it. I'm gonna turn the rest of the presentation over to the chief, unless there's any specific questions about the search capabilities or anything right now, or we can wait till the end to answer those, whichever you guys prefer. I have a question or two.

Yes, sir. So you have a vehicle with a license plate. Yes, sir. And you don't know from the flock system yet who owns that vehicle or who that vehicle is registered to. When you take that next step,

you open describe in detail you open a separate application and what are the steps that you have to go through then to search that tag to find out who it's registered to yes sir so we if it's depending on what system i want to use we actually have a couple of systems to search vehicle tags with but most likely being in cid i would use a program called omnics and that connects to DCI, which is the Division of Criminal Information, and if it's a North Carolina tag, that's just searching North Carolina, which is owned by the SBI, and connects to DMV, so I would then take that plate, put that into that system, and then run a query on that plate, and it would just return back the same way an officer would if they conducted a traffic stop to make sure the driver had a good driver's license and didn't have any outstanding warrants. I'd get back that exact same information.

There's a reason why there are some restrictions on getting into that system to find out who a tag belongs to. So it would seem to me that if Flock had the capacity, to match tags to owners. In other words, to do that step that you're having to do separately and to sell you that information so that you have quicker access in one step, I presume they would have come and offered that to the town. I assume that we believe they don't have that capacity at this point. Correct.

And a lot of that is actually restricted by the FBI and the State Bureau of Investigation because those systems are owned and maintained by them. So even if FLOC wanted to probably provide that product, I believe they'd be blocked by the FBI from even having the capability to do that. That's kind of where I thought the answer would be.

so all right board any questions before um he leaves that i do have a question when yes you said there's like a search function but then there's hits so you're just sitting in the office and you can get a hit saying that be on the lookout for this car is that how i understand a hit to be yes that's correct okay do those come from across state lines or just in north carolina

They can, depending on the agency. If an agency from out of state has it entered into the hot list, then it could come from out of state.

Okay. Do you get this a lot? Do you get this frequently?

I wouldn't say it's very frequent, but yes, we do get them from time to time. The patrol officers are the ones that are going to be getting those real-time alerts, and usually they're routed through dispatch. Lots of times they're the ones that are already monitoring because they did have the system. I don't know with the current climate and how things went yesterday if they still have access. That's a question I don't know.

Lots of questions. Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Do we share outside of NC State?

Currently, right now, what I believe is that no, we do not. That'd be a question I would give to the Chief to clarify on that, but as far as I'm aware right now, no, we do not share outside of North Carolina.

A follow-up question to that. If there's an inquiry from another agency in North Carolina about a plate that may have appeared on an axe head camera. In other words, that air system collected an image of a plate that air system collected and they want to see that and they go into the system. Is there an alert to us

There isn't a real-time alert, but there is through the auditing system. And later on in the presentation, I don't want to not answer that, but I don't also want to answer something Chief Hale is going to go into more detail about later on about that, just to clarify that. Okay.

Thank you. Commissioner Sanders? No. Commissioner Vaughn?

No questions.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you.

Do you want answers to those questions now or as we go and get to it? Let's go ahead and get them because I think there's fall. We do not share outside of North Carolina. The reason that is, is because year or so ago, there was what was believed to be a breach of the system. And speaking with flock representatives yesterday, I will go ahead and say they have hired an independent company to come in and try to breach their system. That report is coming out and there was no breaches and they found no breaches whatsoever. And that independent report will be coming out hopefully by the end of the year. But some information got out from states that do not deem this um not a public record north carolina states specifically in in general statute that license plate data is not a public record so if an outside agency from outside of north carolina back when you sort of started getting this everybody was just trying to share networks to because that's what law enforcement does we might have something that ends up in new york so we call people in new york etc so you can get access to um everybody's network so if they searched and then someone done a freedom of information request any searches that they present out that said that oregon might have searched something in exit so they're going to see that that did not come from any breach that was just from a freedom of information request because oregon and i'm just saying oregon it was some west coast state that did not have it protected it's not a public record and when that came out flock actually contacted us and said you may want to restrict being that north carolina deems it not a public record so as soon as that came up um i went to the lieutenant who has an administrative right on this and we locked our system down to not share our network with anyone outside of the state of north carolina because it is not named a public record in other states north carolina has deemed that not a public record since they come up with legislation and a statute for that now we can still What we thought would happen was those that we shared in other states initially, that they would deactivate us. We can still search their networks. They might not have deactivated our networks from being able to search them, but we deactivated them from being able to search us, if that answers your question.

I think there was maybe a follow-up question.

I do have one question. Can somebody, say from Mecklenburg County, search Nags Head data without approval from Nags Head?

Yes, because we share with them being that they're a law enforcement agency within North Carolina.

Okay.

Anybody else with an immediate question? All right. Okay, Chief. Continue, please. Going the wrong way?

I can tell you I do not use the system or this thing here either. All right, systems, audits, and oversights. This has been in place for quite some time. General statute, when they first came out, required that anybody that had an LPR system was to present a annual report to the House Oversight Committee. That never came to fruition. So we started doing monthly audits right after we got the system. Within that audit organization, audits, that ensures that our officers Within our organization, every member of our police department that is a sworn law enforcement officer can use this system. They have a login name and password, and then the two-party authentication that was described earlier. So each 30 days, when the month is complete, the lieutenant is tasked with running each one of these audits. The organizational audit ensures that our officers have put in a valid case number along with the reason for the search and that time stamps, the date and time that the networks that were searched, the number of networks until either all of our national networks that we can search ourselves. The event logs, they are conducted to show any changes made within the system where we've added a user or deleted a user if we've had a new officer come upon or an officer left. Our organizational audits, it'll show when he's done an organizational audit or any new restrictions or anything that we've put in place when a new feature or anything comes out. So the network audits are the audits from other agencies in North Carolina that have accessed our system. And so we have the agency name, date, and time when they accessed our system as well. They might not have the policies or procedures that we have in place here with the requirement of a case number, reason, etc to put in there but we do know the name of the agency and the date and time it was done so then that the organizational audit from that agency could be cross-referenced if we had any questions about anything These are reviewed as the lieutenant completes these, and then I check over them from our save folder that we have for flock audits. There's a new feature that has come up that they have added in the last three or four months, which is audit assist, and that is a system within the administrative rights that will flag an anomaly if a single officer has been searching a single plate multiple times over a short time period. so i can tell you that he has had some flags and then he will look at the case number from the organizational audit to make sure everything is matching up and that could come from an officer searching a tag to see for narcotics violations that they are working an active case on or to try to see if that suspect has come back into our jurisdiction for the crime that we are working that we have not solved yet to put him at a time and place when the actual crime occurred each flag search has to be verified by the lieutenant or he's going to keep getting alerts on his computer so he does have to go in there review it put a check mark on it and then i think he puts got put comments in there of actually that is a verified search that there is nothing that has been misused or abused based on our policy and procedures our annual review this is a memo that is sent up that the lieutenant will give me of all the users that we've added deleted any changes within the system do we have we reviewed our latest restrictions in place are they still the same do we need to add more restrictions or etc or How many times the total number that he has given me for reads will be forwarded up in a memo and then we review our transparency portal to see if there's any new features that we may need to add. And then we do an annual review of our policy to see if there's any changes based off any legislation or whatnot that has come up. The legal framework in North Carolina is put in place through the general statutes. 218331 is the regulation of use and it mandates that all agencies that have an LPR program, that they have to adopt a written policy, govern its use, and it restricts it to official law enforcement purposes only. 183.32 sets the data retention and that is for the state. Now this is where some confusion can get put in place. The state when these first came out restricted data in North Carolina to 90 days. We were looking at a different company at the time that we were posing to to get LPRs within Nags Head and then we decided ended up going with Flock just because it was a cheaper program and and seemed to be a better product. So flock, when they came to us and were telling us that it was going to be deleted at 30 days, we told them that North Carolina allowed 90. So the representative said, well, there are different states, different rules and everywhere. So we have enacted 30 because the least restrictive was a state that required 30 days. So they were not going to have different timeframes for different agencies. So they put the restriction at 30 days and that data is automatically deleted after that 30 day timeframe. 18332 is where it also states that captured plate data is not a public record. as defined under North Carolina General Statute 132-1. It also states that captured data shall not be sold for any reason. 183.33 governs the penalty for violations of the provision of the article to be found guilty of a class one misdemeanor. To go a little bit further in that, the class one misdemeanor, we're regulated by North Carolina Training and Standards Division of the Department of Justice, and they regulate our certifications to be a sworn law enforcement officer. So a class three misdemeanor will revoke my certification. I hunt a lot, but the only thing that I can get happened from hunting is being charged with not wearing an orange hat or my certification is at risk to be taken away. And once the training standards takes your certification away, you're not becoming a law enforcement officer again in the state of North Carolina and then most other states as well because it's reciprocal when they do background checks of a law enforcement officer of anything that they have been charged with. So a class one misdemeanor is definitely going to trigger that hearing is training and standards a probable cause here and it's what they call it to where you have to go up there and answer and then they make a decision and it's usually when somebody is found guilty of that they will revoke their law enforcement certification for the state of North Carolina. I can tell you that North Carolina has seemed to be kind of ahead of the game. Everybody's just heard that Florida has just restricted or that they must take theirs out of the right of way. That does not prevent somebody getting a private agreement with someone to put it up there, but it's just within the right of way. I was amazed that Florida and several other states where have you have seen a bunch of misuse and stuff come out, that they do not have any legislation in place that governs this. North Carolina's been ahead of the game on this, rightfully so. I can tell you within NAG's head if I find any misuse or abuse within our system that somebody is doing some of these things that have been seen throughout the country. I can't hire and fire somebody as the police chief. I can only recommend that to the manager. But our officers know that I would be recommending that they would be terminated. and then they will be charged under the general statute for the class one misdemeanor as well and make sure that the probable cause hearing is gone through and I would have to go and testify that probable cause hearing that they violated one of our policies or a general statute and why this has come up. Our policies and procedures are in total compliance with the general statutes This is where the 30 day retention policy that we were talking about earlier. Being that the state of North Carolina grants 90 days, it is different from flock safety at 30 days. If we were working a major crime and we knew we would need to get access past 30 days, we would have to do a preservation letter. a search warrant signed by a superior court judge or if it was going to be a case that we would care federally a narcotics case the officer that was here this morning is sworn federally so he has carried numerous cases to the federal level so we skip the district and the state courts we go straight to the federal courts or a federal search warrant that have to be submitted to flock in before the 30 days to keep it past 90 days of what north carolina law requires I can say that that would probably be an extreme case. I hope we have no cases that we are working that way that would be that big of a case that it would take that much to be able to charge someone and be able to find out what is actually going on with the case but that is a point that we would have to do before the 30 days because flock gets rid of the data deletes it from their system but north carolina just allows a different time frame we do have our transparency portal active and available for the public to view have a few myths and uh versus reality that i don't know what just happened um A lot of people think flock AOPR cameras use facial recognition and record demographic information. The ALPR cameras have no facial recognition capabilities. They're solely focusing on the rear and the side of the vehicle as it passes. Profiling based on protected classes is impossible with this technology. I will tell you that there are other systems out there that do things that we do not have. My homeowners association has cameras that do three times as much as what these LPRs do to include facial recognition. Flock Safety owns the data. It is in our contract that we own the data, and it states that they shall not sell it. If they do, it would be a breach of a contract that we could probably talk to the town attorney about, and we could probably sue Flock if they sold or done any of the data based off the breach of the contract and general statute that North Carolina specifically states that it shall not be sold. We own that data. We do control who we share it with. Like we said earlier, that we do not share with any agency outside of North Carolina. Flock has been hacked. That has been out there. I can tell you I'm not an IT guy. I can tell you that Detective Alvarez is pretty much on IT. I do not know what any of that stuff up there means, but I know that Flock uses AWS. That is Amazon's web service. I believe the town of Nags Head just went to AWS for our cloud features here. The flock information has to meet FBIC just compliant and then they are adhering to some NDAA and all those acronyms that are up there and the data is encrypted from the time it gets to the time it sits at rest. They put in the multi-factor authentication probably a year and a half or so ago right after we got the system and we enacted it as soon as it came out. They do regular penetration testing and as I stated earlier, they just completed an independent IT company coming in to see if they can be hacked and they said it was not successful and that report will be coming out later. The ALPR system is a permanent dragnet that stores citizens' location history indefinitely. It is kept for 30 days, and it's not a permanent record of a citizen's movement. We don't know who is in that vehicle. We just know that that vehicle, if I use my truck, a white GMC went past a point in time and place, and it's going to have the road name and the date and time up there. That could be my wife driving, it could be my daughter driving, and we have no idea who is driving that vehicle.

Okay.

What flock does it do? As we've stated earlier, it does not identify the driver or the occupants. It does not identify names or addresses of owners. And it does not clock the speed of vehicles. And it will not sell or give the data to anyone. It's in our contract. It's underlined and it's in bold. What Nags Head Police Department doesn't do. We have restricted to prevent. We don't use it from immigration enforcement, no routine traffic enforcement, no reproductive health enforcement, and we will not share access to our network with an out-of-state or federal agencies. Now there's been some chatter about traffic enforcement that people have seen or had heard and seen on social media that hit-and-run as a traffic enforcement it absolutely is it's a traffic offense in North Carolina we as law enforcement agencies look at minor traffic offenses as infractions the traffic offenses such as hit-and-run misdemeanor death by motor vehicle or misdemeanors And then, so we do not use it for any registration purposes. It does not know if your registration is expired. It does not know if you have insurance. It does not know if your tire pressure gauge is low. It does not know anything within that vehicle. It is taking a picture of your vehicle or a vehicle going by a point in time and place where a station camera is. The investigative impacts that we have had It's already been mentioned from the murder at Avalon Pier. I can tell you our detective was sitting at the office when the partial tag came out because of what the witness at the scene gave was a different making model and only had a partial tag. We did not know what the vehicle was. It was Detective Alvarez who used the partial tag. and put that in and we were able to start narrowing down. And one of our other officers, when we started getting some names that it possibly could be, knew the vehicle that that person operated and provided that to Detective Alvarez. And he was the one that alerted DARE Central that it just went across the Currituck Bridge. When it came back across the Currituck Bridge, Dare Central was already on it and they were able to notify us that it just came back heading back into Dare County and I was up there near the EMS station new in Kitty Hawk when the vehicle was pulled over and we took him into custody. Would we have eventually found him at some point? Yes. It's always nice to have somebody just committed murder in custody, you know, within an hour, hour and a half versus, you know, two hours, three hours. It has provided us vehicle leaves for robberies and aggressive assaults. We've identified fleeing vehicles and felony injury cases. The gentleman that was struck that we have all known and dealt with in Darragh County for years was riding his bicycle across the Washington Bomb Bridge. the middle of the night no other vehicles around howard patrol contacted us because we had this system in place and we were able to take the time frame of when the call came in and get the vehicle that was parked in a garage in manio after he struck that gentleman that he ended up dying three days later in the hospital We have recently solved nine counts of theft from autos and vehicle break-ins and cleared 10 plus larceny and retail thefts. A big Ulta case right after we got these in, it assisted us into identifying the vehicle that was from Virginia leading out of here. I did not know you could steal 15 to $16,000 worth of items from Ulta, but that's what they did. I now know that things in there are valuable with my daughter growing up and she loves to go to Ulta. So it has been a great investigative tool. It has helped us with multiple fraud, counterfeiting, and forgery, and embezzlement cases. And it has also helped us disprove crimes. have had two within the past year the gentleman come down did not know he called us and said his vehicle was struck didn't know when it happened where it happened or whatnot we asked him when he got here he was on vacation so we found his vehicle when it came into the county that day or in our jurisdiction that he already had the damage on the back of the car when he came to nag said we had a gentleman that was here said his bicycle got stolen and he was here for a week on vacation We did not know, he did not know when it happened or where it happened at, so we tried to see when he had it up there. We had him leaving out to go on his next route as he was camping with the bike on the back of the camper that he was saying was stolen. So it has been used to disprove cases as well that we have done, and it's been a great investigative tool for us. Our goal as an agency, is to provide the best tools possible for our staff. We want to make sure that we're maintaining our mission to make Nags Head safe. And I do believe this tool is a great assistance to do that. I've got full confidence in our staff. And as I said earlier, If any abuse or misuse was seen, found, and the lieutenant came to me and done it, I would be going to the manager to recommend termination and they'd be charged. We've had this system in place for two and a half years. I don't think anybody's personal life has changed since we've had this in with the talk of the mass surveillance versus going to grocery stores and everywhere else. There's talk, yes, you can not have cell phones, you can not have stuff. I know my cell phone's tracking me. My brother was in the military as an intelligence officer. He pulled my phone up one day and showed me some kind of code up there that they can sit there and monitor what you say through the NSA. It scared me to death. But I also have cameras at my house. that goes to the cloud. I don't know if anybody's gotten it. I just know with what we have here and what I can do at Nags Head with the policies and procedures in place, this is a greater tool that assists us in our investigations. We do not use it on every day for every little crime that might come out. I can tell you that within the past year, let me find my notes here, I've got a lot of stuff here. We have used it 1,366 times from August the 20th last year until today. It's been 162 cases. The gentleman earlier was talking about the county with the number of reads, unique reads and the amount of searches and said that's not a good conviction rate. That's not what that data shows. Within our last 30 days, we've had 224,062 unique reads. That is one vehicle that has hit one of these cameras. That's not counting me riding by hitting the camera at four or five different locations three or four times a day. Those numbers are going to totally increase. But we have 48 queries. Not much of a math guy, but I did it on my calculator. That is 2 10,000th of a percent what we're searching. That is not 2 10,000th of a percent of a conviction that we've had. That is 48 queries that we did. specific cases so that shows how many times we did not search it how many vehicles that went past that did not get a search done on that vehicle that is deleted after 30 days so that's not a crimp of percentage of crime arrest or charges or whatnot that shows that we're only using it for cases that we need assistance with And I'll say it again, I have full faith in every officer that I have employed here. We're a tight-knit group. People are going to say, well, that can lead to corruption. It can do anything. There's been misuse everywhere. Georgia, I don't know what they've got going on, but the list that was provided by Ms. O'Donnell, there's a lot of officers from Georgia. But looking at the end of that list where it says they were charged and fired, that means that the process of the auditing is working. There's been misuse and abuse in every profession in this country, from police to teachers to doctors, politicians. We're not getting rid of schools. We're not getting rid of the doctor's offices. Police officers have falsified warrants and citations in the past. They got held accountable. They did their time. We're not getting rid of warrants, and we're not getting rid of citations because of that. I believe that this is a great tool for NAGSHED, and I just ask that you objectively look at everything. And I wish I could walk over there and show everybody in here that has concerns about it, and let you log on and look at the system. I can't because then I'm going to lose my job. I've got four years left, and I don't want to lose my job by violating the general statute to allow somebody to look at it. But for somebody to go over there and actually see what it does, and more importantly, see what it does not do, i would love to be able to go over there and do it if you can call somebody at legislation or something to give me a waiver line them up we'll bring them in there but whatever y'all decide y'all provide the police department you're very supportive of us we thank you all for your support but your decision is is an action that we will go along with and i'm here for any questions that you might have okay i'll start down here commissioner um

It just takes license plate. Does it take pedestrians to anybody going by the camera is walking by.

When it happens, you can be caught in a picture. Okay. Um, just as those the bicycle can be right.

I'm just curious now. Um, I can't think of anything else right now.

So you're telling me that it takes a picture of you coming across the bridge.

then it doesn't know where you're at until you hit another camera leaving or going down south it doesn't know where you are at any point of that time no sir it does not throw anything out that attaches to your vehicle to we can continue to trade don't throw air tag on your vehicle so we can continue tracking it's that point in time what about this No, I can tell you that knows everything you're doing. I mean, when you have it activated and you lose your phone, you log in, it's giving you a pinpoint location. That is from the cases that I spoke of earlier. Your cell phone provides that intimate window. And people are going to say I can choose not to have a smartphone. Yes, but, you know, there's no expectation of privacy on a public roadway, and driving is a privilege. And FLOC doesn't sell your data? No, sir.

Doesn't build a profile? No, sir. Thank you.

I have some questions.

Who polices flock? We police ourselves, but who's policing flock? How do we know that they are not selling? How do we know?

guess the independent audit that they just hired to that they paid a bunch of money for it for an independent audit to come in and produce uh results of they were hacked they're doing certain things um i would think that they would not be allowed to um do certain things if they didn't meet the fbi sieges compliance or sbi compliance so the fbi's policing flock or I'm not telling you that FBI is. They have to meet the requirements that when we go through the training to be able to run stuff in DCI and NCIC that is logged every time we run in there. So they wouldn't allow their information that if they had a system that was allowing that information to get out.

Okay, another question I have is about other agencies in North Carolina having unlimited access to our data. I know they have to log what they're doing, but that makes me a little uncomfortable. You guys have a process and you know each other, but there's thousands of people in North Carolina who could have access to our data. That is, I think, what makes people uncomfortable with the surveillance.

And absolutely. Um, I think it was like Charlotte that just had a recent officer that was charged and Morrisville maybe as well. Um, We can restrict that down to share. We're just we're here within their county. I'm open to that. I'm open to anything. But we also have relationships with, you know, those agencies to where if you're reporting into the link system that allows us to read their reports, if we have a suspect or we're working a crime that leads us down that this person has committed crime somewhere else. That's that same system of this was not the same. So it's a different system, but it's called links. So agencies throughout can bless you put reports in there so we can go in and read those reports because an investigative report is not public record until it's been adjudicated through the court systems but we can still go in and see those reports then that that agency has might have that we have the same suspect so but I'm open to anything, because I can tell you Nags Head Police Department, we don't have anything to hide. This is a good system for us. It's a good tool. It has assisted us. And if you want to restrict it down to... DARE County agencies, Currituck, DARE County, I'm open to anything.

Yes. I'm realizing now that Nags Head has the ability to restrict how it's used, or the board has the ability to restrict how it's used. And that's one of my questions. What would be your recommendations for how we could, besides just restricting it to DARE County, how could we assure the public that we're using the data only for criminal cases and I think the public needs reassurance about this system. I feel like it's a good police tool but I also feel like the public is very wary of it and so what things could we put in place to reassure the public that the data is highly controlled and highly monitored and there's systems in place that is not being abused?

We can put it in place that we don't share with anybody but our own officers, not even the other agencies here, that we still have that control over. i'm open to i mean if you want to start a review panel once a month with a commissioner and one or two citizens i mean i can't give you information on the actually case wise ongoing but i can give you data audit reports that you can see obviously we would have to block out a tag number because that's not um public record the plate data itself but you can come in and see date time what officer ran it i'm open to that

Or could it be possible that if anybody was requesting information from an outside agency that they would have to go through a big process with our police department to get that information? They just can't get in there and look.

When Dare County first started these things, we didn't have access because we weren't sworn with the Sheriff's Department. but we would contact an investigator there and give them what we were looking for that we've got a suspect in this can you put him here during that time frame to give us a better lead so we can go interview him etc we would call the dare county sheriff's department or either go over there carry my case tell them a little bit about it and they could run that system so excuse me if we did cut that access down, that would be no different than somebody calling from whatever police department saying, Hey, you know, have you seen this person in your area? Have y'all ever dealt with him, they would have to physically contact us. And if they wanted information ran through there, we would put a case number in there, we'd start a case number four, and assist another agency, list that agency, and then we would, you know, talk to them to get an idea of what their case is about. and then put the case number, the reasons, and codes in there, but it's us that's doing it. And then we could tell them that that vehicle was here at that date and time.

Okay. And if some agencies within Dare County were using the system and some weren't? If some agencies within Dare County were using flock cameras and some agencies were not, as in the sheriffs are not going to be using them now, but Nags Head may or may not be using them. So if one agency has them and the other one doesn't, how do you see that working? They're going to be asking for our information all the time, I would imagine.

Well, it depends on, and we've helped. from other agencies that didn't have it they've come to us with cases and lay it out we have great working relationships with the other agencies here and they would come and just lay their case out they talked to it one to see if we have anything going on similar and then they would ask us could we run this tag and we'd use their case number in our system

One more question. I haven't heard anything about the cost to the town of Nags Head about this.

Absolutely. I was talking to the finance director when those numbers were thrown out. We pay $36,000 a year for our 12 cameras. Now the first year was higher because we paid them for the poles and the installation to do it. And give me one second and I can tell you wherever it is. Maybe.

And Perry, one of the things that I just want to reiterate, we pay for the cameras in Nags Head. Killable Hills pays for the cameras that they have. Each town pays for their individual cameras. Dare County's cameras that they decided to remove yesterday are paid for by Dare County. It's just those 12 or 14. But each town is individually responsible for the cameras they have in their town. And it comes out of each town's budget.

Since we've had it, we just re-upped our two-year contract. It's a two-year contract. You pay it yearly. So we just re-upped that in February. So we have paid $123,616.50 total. the first year was the higher year because we had to pay for the polls and then they installed it that year was um 46 756.50 and in february of 25 for the second year of the part of the contract um 38 430 now that has tax in it we get taxed back so it's three thousand dollars a camera so thirty six thousand dollars a year the same thing for february of 26 they put the tax in there that was paid and then we get the taxes back

Okay, thanks Perry.

Thank you. To follow up on Commissioner Harrison's question, if we created a separate process for North Carolina agencies to get the information from us, I'd like to understand the implications of that for staff, for example, because what's now an inquiry that they can do without any staff time on our side, we would add staff time on our side, which is maybe perfectly fine. I would like to understand what those implications would be if we decided to do that. The second thing would be that and this would be nice to know about all the users, but if we were talking about their county agencies in particular, it would also be nice if we knew that their policies were like our policies and all of their procedures were like our procedures because there's nothing to say there can't be their friends and neighbors, but there's nothing to say that there can't be a bad actor in the local system either. So if we were restricting that, it would be nice to know that we were all operating the same way. A couple of questions for me, then Perry. Was Nags Head crime up 125% in 2025, and I didn't know it?

I don't recall that. I'll have to run some numbers when we get back to figure out our crime.

All right. Now, the other question is, and a lot of this goes to the culture of your department. Um, and you've talked about that fairly extensively this morning. I mean that we have to trust the officers who are using the system basically, and there have to be checks and there have to be reasonable checks and balances on them. And you told me a story once years ago about a probationary officer who, on one of their check rides, failed a test. And I read a news story about this recently, just on a ride where a potential new officer says, let's follow that car well why because that's my ex-girlfriend's car well that's an automatic turn around go back to the station that person's not getting hired and you've told me a story before about a person who sort of failed that so tell me just in brief and i know it's it's more than brief tell me a little bit about beyond the checks and balances, how you maintain the culture, how you vet your people, and how you build that responsibility, and how y'all kind of monitor one another, frankly, I think.

We're one big family. Like I said before, we spend more time with each other than we do with those at home. Whenever we have an application process, we have had openings several, several years ago where we had six openings. but I went to the staff and said, we're not putting a heartbeat in there because heartbeats cause problems. So everybody stepped up and worked extra shifts till we found the right person that we were looking for. People can come and I don't even have to tell them for review boards anymore of what I'm looking for. They know that the first thing that we want to see, are they gonna fit with our agency? Are they going to fit with our people? You can come and have all the certifications in the world in law enforcement and have been in law enforcement 20 years, and we have passed some of those people up because their just attitude, their demeanor didn't fit with what we have here at Nags Head. People are not afraid to come up when they see something wrong to let me know, and then we do an investigation. We have people that call and want to report, you know, the officer was rude, et cetera, and stuff, and then we go in and have a whole process that starts with the lieutenant and it goes all the way up from the deputy chief to myself that we each review. We review that body camera footage, et cetera, and most of it is just the person is just mad because they got a ticket, they got a speeding ticket. And then when somebody has violated it, they know that there's disciplinary actions. That is not something that I look forward to doing. Unfortunately, I've had to go to the manager a few times, and we've had some disciplinary actions. Those people aren't here anymore. that's not something i'm proud of but i'm proud of our process and with our staff that we have in place that they're comfortable enough that if they see somebody doing something wrong they're going to speak up and if most of the times they're going to address it right then and there now if it's a major violation of something excessive force of all that other stuff that you know we we take care of that so that is how our department is built I like to keep it that way. The staff knows that. We've got openings getting ready to come up with retirements. And we know that we're not just gonna put the first person that applies in that position for that heartbeat. We want to make sure that they're gonna fit with our department. And the culture is there to expect that they do what's right they do the right thing for the right reason and they follow the the letters of the law um and that's all i can expect of my staff and i can tell you i've got a great staff i don't lose sleep at night when i go to bed

All right. Thank you. Commissioner Sanders.

I do have one more question. Please don't embarrass me because I've been here a long time, but I can't figure out 12 entrances to Nags Head. You said there were 12 cameras or somebody did?

so all right so we have 12 cameras right so we have two coming off the washington ball bridge there's a camera okay for each lane on each lane okay yes so eight street in the bypass has two for each lane eight street and the beach road 12 has two for each okay so i'm missing the one in each direction okay i could probably do the math now okay thank you

I have one question. Probably. When someone accesses, and forgive me if you've already mentioned this, when someone accesses our flock cameras from another town in North Carolina, do we get notified of it or do they only see it on their audit?

We do it, we see it at the network audit that we do each 30 days. We do not get an alert, the computer doesn't beep or it doesn't throw flags up like the audit assist that when he logs in it's got a flag up there that somebody has run it and he has to verify that. But we see who has run that 30 day period. okay so yeah we restricted it down and the mayor's talking about the other agencies here just within their county that their policies might not be the same as ours um that network audit if we restricted it just to their county that network audit would show everybody in their county that run it and if he starts seeing that you know these things are blank or whatnot we could go and just we're going to cut you off

so and then the next question is if someone if someone doesn't have flock cameras and they call nags head because they just simply don't have them or they're in new york what's their process to access our cameras do they have to go through you guys you'll look at it for them and let them know

Yes, they have to provide us a case number from them, give us a brief history of what the crime is they've got going and what they're looking for. And we would ask, do they have any criminal charges yet? Are you just trying to, you know, is this your suspect? Are you to see if he came down here for any reason, if they're trying, you know, to... had their case put together we would ask that information and we can put their case number in the drop down box and then we would make our own notes over there that this is for new york police department homicide case but that footage would still stay with us it's not yes that was just like oh they log in and now they can no no no that would be us logging in if we you know well right now those out-of-state agencies that's what would have to happen

But Raleigh can log in.

And we don't know it for 30 days.

But we do see it at the end of 30 days.

But we do see it at the end of 30 days. And if it's anybody outside of North Carolina, we know it because they have to. Well, they would have gone through.

They won't see it without him.

Outside agencies can't log. Each audit that he does, it's all North Carolina agencies. but state can but we don't know for 30 days and along those same lines i think you said earlier the data is hard deleted after 30 days but it could be accessed with a warrant from the fbi or the sbi later did you say that before the 30 day before flock deletes it at the 30-day mark we would have to do a preservation later a letter and have a warrant to give to flock saying we need this data past the 30 days not to delete it otherwise they're going to delete so could you repeat that to be very clear after 30 days flock data is not saved unless a preservation warrant has been put in place preservation letter um and even with a preservation letter that is letting them know that we're in the process of getting a warrant we do preservation letters if we have death by uh distribution cases from our narcotics officer we want the information off the cell phone to see who they've texted where they probably bought the drugs all of that stuff so we would do a preservation letter to save verizon So that lets them know that we're coming back with a warrant, that they don't need to get rid of this data that they have on that cell phone. And then once we have the warrant, data warrants like that have to go before the Superior Court judge, not the District Court judge. So once that warrant is issued, we would send them a copy of the warrant, and then they would provide us that data.

So after 30 days, there is no way to access it unless that has been done beforehand? Yes, that's correct.

Within the 30 days we have to share the information if somebody requested like if it seems like maybe it's just a suspect it seems like a sketchy case they do have to share the information we don't have to share it is this is our discretion if we would share if you call me and you work for Pinetown Police Department is that they want to check this car out and you know why do you want to do it well just got a hunch on something that we're not going to help.

It has to have a case number attached to it, yes, okay.

Hearing no more questions, does the board have any action they wish to take at this point?

I'd like to make a comment. I don't have an inclination. I've heard a lot of information. And I don't want to sound like with the multi-use or the e-bikes. But I definitely want to hear more. But more importantly, I'd love to hear more from Nags Head residents. Because like I said before, these cameras are paid for by each. individual town, and we heard a lot of public comment today, and I really appreciated all the public speakers coming, but I didn't hear a lot from Nags Head. And since we are dealing with Nags Head's budget for these, I think that's an important part of the conversation.

Yes, absolutely. 100% agree. Completely agree with that.

There's a lot of information.

We have gotten some emails from Nags Head residents.

We have gotten a handful. We do. From Nags Head residents and business owners, we have gotten a handful. And I think, certainly would hope that this discussion today what can we do to assure, I sure hope that our public watches this entire presentation and discussion because it will answer a fair number of questions and concerns that people have and if they, if Nags Head residents continue to have concerns, I think they need to be at the next meeting and I think they need to come public comment and they need to say I watched the presentation and I still have questions. That's fine. Or email. Email is fine too. Email is okay too. But let us know. Get your information and then let us know if you still have concerns about this. Let us know what they are.

I agree. I really want to hear from more people about this. I've heard about an equal number of pros and cons, and I really want to represent our people well, and I want to know what people are thinking, and I want to know what they want. I hope we hear from some people of other thoughts.

Absolutely.

It's obviously a valuable tool. There's no debating that, but the other concerns, like always, it's a balance of people's concerns about

their rights to privacy etc etc and knowing what's going on and help you know being part of the decision thank you chief thank you thank you thank your people appreciate it uh that brings us to item j4 a discussion of the dare county beaches project and that's andy i believe yes i think the board needs about about five or ten minutes here All right, so the board has returned to its work, and we're at item J4, discussion of the Dare County Beaches Project. Andy?

I just wanted to bring something to the board's attention. This happened in the last month. I was notified by the county manager about the Dare Beaches Project. The board's familiar with this, I'd say more than 20 years ago. the town and some of the adjacent towns were working on a beach nourishment project that would be federally funded. The project was authorized, but was never funded, obviously. And so that's when Nags Head and the other towns pursued a locally funded project. That's really how we've been operating ever since. Recently, we were notified by the county manager that Congress was gonna deauthorize the project. That was on a list for deauthorization. Spoke with the county manager in Kittleville Hills and we all agreed that it wouldn't benefit us to be deauthorized. If there's an opportunity for funding in the future that we need to keep the door open for that. So we drafted a letter requesting that we maintain our authorization. actually spoke to commissioner harrison about something uh several months ago that uh surf city received an office received a funding for a project that they've been authorized decades ago lots of funding and so you know it's sort of like really you know because i think everybody here was under the impression that there was no more federal starts for beach nourishment and so with that said you know we've requested to maintain our authorization but also i think we might start going down the rabbit hole of exploring you know whether or not we could get funding for the project and so We drafted the letter, I wanted to include it in the packet for the board and the public's benefit and just have sort of a public notice about what we're doing. Thank you, Andy.

I do think it's important that we keep that door open. I mean, it'll take a change of administration or something, change of direction up in Washington, but it would be, yeah. And I don't, I understand why they might occasionally do some paperwork house cleaning, but there's no cost to the government of leaving us on the list, it seems. Any questions, commissioners?

All right, thank you, Andy, appreciate that.

That brings us to the Board of Commissioners agenda. I can't remember which way I'll start. I'll start with Commissioner Harrison. Do you have anything for us this morning? Commissioner Lambert.

Mr. Sanders? I do not, Mayor, thank you. Okay, Mr. Vaughn.

Okay. King's Weep. All right, very good. That brings us to the Mayor's agenda, and we do want to talk about getting a retreat together. We customarily do this in the fall. What we have done often is to do a two-day or a day-and-a-half sort of retreat. retreat and it's a it's a good time because we're sort of into the fiscal year it's a good time to check in do it for the holidays sort of hit the ground running it also believe it or not staff is starting the budgeting process you know that early and starting to think about what projects need to go into the budget the CIP for the following spring so it's a it's a good time to talk about about course corrections um andy i believe in the email suggested perhaps november um and so i'm wondering is everybody available a let's call it a thursday friday in november i am not available the 13th through the 21st of november so that thursday friday the 19th and the 20th um and unfortunately the 12th and the 13th okay um the fifth and the sixth is our board meeting week but i am available that week it is a board meeting week but you are available the fifth and sixth and i'm not available on the 19th and 20th okay um so it sounds like everybody's available at the fifth and sixth So staff, if you would, just kind of move in that direction.

OK. As we start talking about the retreat and what we're going to include on the agenda, we'll have a better idea of how long it might be. We might be able to cut it down to one day, but if we have those two dates reserved and everybody's available, then we'll start trying to plan it around one of those two days at a minimum.

Board members have any immediate thoughts about what they would like to see on the retreat agenda?

My brain's dead, I'm sorry.

Well, we've got plenty of time.

All right.

I'm sure staff will have no problem filling up the agenda.

We'll think about it. We'll have great ideas.

We definitely have an idea of the things we want to discuss this year. It's getting into more of sort of the financial planning for next year's budget and beyond. Okay. Sort of rethinking our CIF a little bit. But, I mean, obviously, you know, we don't want to go into too much detail in terms of making decisions, but sort of being able to sort of freely talk about, you know, priorities and see how that funnels into the budget.

Very good. All right. Thank you. We don't have any closed sessions. Is there any other business to come for the board? uh remember that um i will not be here at the october meeting commissioner lambert will be sitting in the seat and so if there's nothing else then a motion to adjourn would be in order second i have a motion in the second uh all in favor say aye aye all right very good thank you