Council - Regular Meeting

At this time, I'd like to call the um meeting of the National Council to order. Everybody, will we please stand for our pledge? 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.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this beautiful day and we just really need your guidance and your wisdom as we look at the budget for the town of Nashville for the next year. Uh in the precious name we pray. Amen. And uh mayor, before we get started, I'd like to I'd like to uh thank all of the council people that agreed to move this meeting to Monday so I can take a trip that I make every year last week cuz it really meant a lot for us to take that trip. It was a long trip, but I appreciate everybody agreed to move to Monday. I know this is unusual for us. Well, we wouldn't do it for everybody. I know you would.

And that that's what's make me feel so good about it. Thank you so much. And listen, we really need to um pray for our Xavier. He's not able to be here today, but just keep him in your prayer. Uh first item on our agenda. Did you want to say anything first, Randy?

Well, just to let you know, um we'll get started. We have uh Daniel Jones with BC3 here this morning with us. It's been a few years since we've had any update on cyber security and our IT. Uh BC3 is the company that does that for us. and uh more and more we're we're paying for more security than I think we are it anymore. But that's that's the reality that we're in. So um if you're okay, mayor and council, we'll have uh Daniel take it over. Okay, Daniel. Good morning. Thanks.

Thanks for having me. Um um since I haven't been here at all, I just kind of give a background of who we are. uh our partnerships, our experiencing kind of going through the agreements that we have with the town of Nashville and everything that we've accomplished u basically from the very start of where you guys were eventually where we're at today and we started in future. I've also got uh some civics from some recent security incidents within as well. Is that any better? Oh, yes.

Looks better.

Um, so VC3, um, we are a managed service provider. We have been in business over 30 years. Um, the bread and butter of this company has is pretty much in the local government space. Uh, they were created or started in South Carolina and they grew in all throughout South Carolina into North Carolina. Now, we're actually in about 20 25 states and across Canada, but when you look at where our heavy presence is, it's still um in the southeast, in the Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia, and like I said, the huge focus has always been and is on the municipal government space, specializing in everything that towns do in regards to public safety, um fire, EMS, those type of things. technology.

Um, we are preferred partner with the North Carolina League. We work with them consistently all the time. Um we've been partnering and doing actually been doing uh videos with them about every other month uh where we give presentations on various states whether it's just cyber security things to watch out for AI um future trends things like that. Um our managed services are constantly changing to the needs of our clients. So we are a complete managed IT service. Um we can come into an organization that has no IT at all and fit very nicely or we can come into an organization that already has a few IT staff and pick up the pieces that they aren't able to achieve with the people they have. Um again this we've been doing this for about 30 years. Uh we have a 247 organization. We have over 600 people. Um, so obviously we are not staffed at the full capacity 24 hours, but we have folks that are working, you know, after your 5:00 in the evening update in the morning that can answer calls and get them to the appropriate people. So, I'll share an incident just because it comes to mind. Um, it was a it was another town here in North Carolina. there's a a police officer who accidentally opened something he wasn't supposed to and he realized he did and it was frantically got out of the car and was like running through the parking lot trying to get into the office to notify and within 6 minutes we had picked it up blocked it and was quarantining and isolating it. So to give you an idea, as Randy mentioned, it feels like we're spending more and more money on security. Unfortunately, everyone is because it's

just the nature of the world that we live in right now. But the type of tools and solutions that we have in place, it's always nice to when you can put it into a real world situation. And I can't think of anything more real world than that in regards to the time that he clicked it to the time that he got it and was able to get a hold of someone. We had already seen it and been taking care of it within 6 minutes. So it kind of says a lot to the existing solutions that we have in place and the type of protections that we have um within our solutions for our clients. um accomplishments that we have achieved uh from the very start. Uh when we first um I've I've had Nashville as a client from the very start. You guys were only one of my very first clients. Um one of the first things we did is uh there was fiber between town hall and the police department, but hadn't been um turned on or taken advantage of. So we turned on the fiber between the buildings, which meant less equipment that needed to be at the town hall. Now everything comes through um internet connections directly from the police department. So your main fire department, police department and town hall all interlin together and go out an individual um internet connection. We replace the older uh physical servers um in both town hall and police. We virtualized those servers and now they are all running on a single server in the police department. We also provided and set up uh managed backups and disaster recovery for all of the servers. Um and they are that device is also over in the police department. So I can give you an example there too. I had uh a client down near the border. Um same backup solution that you guys have. Their 911 server that does their CAD and

dispatching everything else. um they had a vendor coming in to do some work on the building and they kind of tripped the power and it caused the server to go down and the server wouldn't come back up. We were able to take that server and spin it up on that disaster recovery device just like the one you guys have and have them back up and running in a couple hours and then we could spin back around and deal with the problem of the server itself not coming up. Um, in the meantime, as part of this that everyone went through, just being able to uh deal with co uh where traditionally almost everyone was more of a desktop shop and we shifted and modified it um over to laptops where needed for the critical services to meet that growing need. Um, we took away from the old, um, traditional Office and email system over to Office 365. We implemented a voiceover IP phone systems that's used throughout all the sites in Nashville right now today, which has also grown and shifted because um, parks and rep has moved two times. Um, and then phones have shifted wherever they've needed, whether it's temporarily for a couple years at the lodge or to the new fire station. We've just shifted things around to try to keep cost as low as possible. Um, part of those accomplishments was um the services that I kind of provide, which is helping to do budgeting and strategic planning as well as analyze the the health of the environment. I also get involved in a lot of the security items too where clients are renewing their cyber security insurance and the insurance companies will say fill out this form and the form is usually they look at said this makes no sense to me. So just those usually come over to me and I fill out and usually it's just what type of things do you

have in place to protect the town so that they can provide you the best coverage at the best price. Again, we did uh what we call network as a service. So, we've provided the firewalls and the switches and wireless access points at all of the town sites. And again, that has been really helpful in regards to you guys get a fair amount of storms that come through. So, um a lot of the equipment um the buildings and the power within the buildings hit the equipment. And so when equipment um when that happens a lot of times equipment gets damaged. So we've been able cuz all of that equipment is owned by us. So it's on us to get it replaced for you or taken care of or the maintenance warranties that's all provided by us. So I think you guys have had like five or six firewalls that have been needed to be replaced because of the storms that come through. But the nice thing about that service is that it's our piece of equipment. it's on us to get it replaced and get it back back up and running for you. We've also been able to shift that equipment from various sites as you guys have grown and moved and and whatever. Like I said, when we started at parks and wreck, we were at the ball field and since then we're on our second site and uh we had a need to have some specialy officers over at the Elks Lodge for a while. So, we shifted equipment over there to handle it. And then again when that was no longer needed, we're bringing on the library and adding fire station two. We took that existing network equipment and just kind of pumped it up where it was needed. So again, trying to keep cost down as low as possible so nothing new needed to be added while you guys have grown and shifted to meet your needs. Um on the managed security side there

was nothing in place which isn't saying anything because a lot of cities and towns don't really have much in the way of security coming in. So from the very start we've added dark web monitoring, web content filtering, uh fishing simulator and um user training. That's a big one that all the cyber security insurance firms will be asking for. That's pretty much a requirement that they require that either for coverage or they're going to charge you astronomical premiums. Um, we have advanced email security in place allowing uh encryption and spam filtering, cloud protection and cloud data. These are kind of generic, but what one of those is is for your 365, your email account. Um it it makes it more challenging because at the local government space everybody's email address is public information they can come up. Um the cloud protection what it is it's consistently monitoring the Microsoft 365 cloud. So, if we start seeing someone trying to use Ry's ID from, let's say, California or even Mexico or somewhere else, it's gonna trigger us. And it could just be, hey, I'm trying to get in, so they're guessing password or back to dark web monitoring or something else. Maybe they've already got his password from uh a dark web dump or something else. But either instance if it says hey and he successfully logged in from said the UK we'll be blocking a quarantine immediately resetting his password letting him know as well as if you're using that password anyone else changing across the board things like that the cloud data recovery Microsoft by default only keeps 90 days of the history up against its cloud that particular one that last one that is indefinite retention of their cloud space so that way if anything terrible

happens there, we can bring back any data that was in their cloud beyond that 90 days. So to give you an idea um of everything that's going on and this is just in the last maybe 6 to9 months. So if you guys hadn't heard um Carolina Beach was hit in December. Uh the figures are kind of varying, but it's right around a half million. They only had $25,000 of cyber insurance, so the town is liable for the rest of that 475K. Uh Pender County, is it too far away? Again, a similar type of scam that they were hit with was 650,000. Uh I also have a client that went through a ransomware incident this probably two years ago. Their price tag to get everything cleaned, rebuilt is closer to 1 million. So to give you real dollar amounts of what's actually happening or what has happened and trying to rebuild from that, that's the real world numbers. Um that doesn't isn't really meant to scare you. It's just it's just the world we live in. It's no longer the board people in the basement doing this. It's dedicated groups. It's big money. As you can see, just between Carolina Beach and Pender, that's over a million dollars between the two of them. And the reason they're doing it is because they can. They can get away with it. And you know, even with the laws that say you won't pay uh for ransomware, they'll find other ways. They'll trick you into um sending an invoice or paying a fake invoice and things like that. So unfortunately the threats are real. From a strategic alignment standpoint,

we have an internal application that we use that um it's just best practice for all governments or even um municipal governments. Our intent is to have all of our clients at 80% or above. Nashville is at 97.6. There's only two items that you guys don't have in place um that would bring you up to a hundred. One of those we already have budgeted for next uh fiscal year. We tried doing it this year, but I was trying to be frugal and I did not design it very well. So, that was on me. I was trying to sneak it in um into the town as the least expensive as I could make it and didn't work out that way. The other item just has to do with uh I believe the one is secure hard drive wiping and certification. So again, it's one of those that trigger the scoring, but in the end, if you don't have a compliance lead from an outside entity or your own policies stating you need to do that, then there's no reason to pay the money. So the score is a little deceptive there. All in all, all this comes out to say is the town is in a very good position from a security standpoint. Um, compared to a lot of other cities and towns that have very little to no protections in place at all. Unfortunately, it changes all the time and there's always new security things, new ways that they're coming in. Um we forecasted out for the next fiscal year uh for the existing services as well as the items that we know that we need to put into place. Um the main agreement is at the very top uh the VA's holy collar and voice which is the phone system. Um the hardware as a service is

broken up still into two pieces because we had split it off originally. Um so that's the network component and then the manage security components and then of course we have the hosted backups which is that backup and disaster recovery. Um and then the future items that we have is we want to put in um multiffactor authentication for office 365. uh PC replacements is just a recurring annual thing that we project out what's going end of life and uh we always forecast a certain amount for that each year. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's see here. here. Let's try this. The same bigger Okay. We are coming up for uh just end of life time frame on the existing network equipment. Whether it's decided to keep it owned by us or uh the talent owns it themselves um that hasn't been decided yet, but um that's coming up pending as well as the age of that backup device. what's called a data device. Um, and disaster recovery is also coming up near its end of life. So, these are projected uh projects for this next fiscal year. Again, there's a little bit of shifting that can occur with those. It isn't um every single one of those line items has to be done next fiscal year. That's just the best practice based on end of life and the time frames. But we've got a year or so in there that we can shift and jockey those from one fiscal year to another. I always build into the budgets that ability to not kill. So it's like this is the money is available. This is what we should do. We don't have the money.

We'll let this one out and we'll make it according to fit within whatever the budget needs are for that fiscal year.

Thank you. Um, I can bring it up. Well, I'll see if I can bring back up after finish off. Um, so compliance requirements, that's another item that's coming more and more uh is just compliance requirements from federal. Uh I wouldn't say federal it's it is federal but any outside entity that's coming down. So the biggest one for any local governments is sie just requirements. Um you could have um if you do any type of federal work you could have CMMC complaints. You could have hippo of course if you deal with any type of medical. Um there's also IRS PCI personal identify. So, one of the things we have is the ability to help um cities and towns that struggle with that. Nashville doesn't, obviously. They have most of the security things in place. Uh the police department is really up to date on its siegest um things that it needs and what it requires. Um this is a good breakout. Uh the sieges document is one of those that's open to interpretation and it's a very um big document to go through but these are the main 13 areas that that focuses on. This

is just meant to give you an idea that just how much uh compliance that cities and towns have to adhere to that you may not even know is out there. And again this is anything the town's lacking in. you already have almost everything that you can have to meet these or checking these off. And like I said, the internal police department is already fully aware of all this and is up to date or is compliant. I'll say it that way because it constantly changes. You guys have any questions? We'll try to pull up that budget.

What's the C just stand for again? criminal justice information system I think so it's basically just crime of data crime statistics anything that could come back to be kind of that personal identical information at the crime level so just to even have access to it you have to have fingerprint checks I don't think I do anymore but I used to have my fingerprints done once a year and they'd send out cards and everything else the sieges um document because it is open for interpretation. Some people will say you can't even walk into the building unless you've been seated. Others say you can come in as long as you're escorted. Um so it it's it's different for every state, every town, every area. Some are very stringent and really lock it down tight. Um, some will say, "Okay, if if I walk into a police department and you have to buzz me through a door because that's the physical security side of it, that's good enough after that and we've done our check." And then others will say, "Well, unfortunately, we've got maybe some things um out in the open, computer type equipment, that's not good. That means behind a locked door." So it it always comes down to who's reading that policy, who's interpreting it for the state, and who's interpreting it for the town. So my part is how do you guys define it and I align everything with how you guys want to interp what VC3?

I'm I'm thinking it was like 180 approximately. It's about 180,000. 180,000. And Daniel, can you pull up your

just for the main agreement? That budget, excuse me, that budget does include some items that don't go to DC3. Daniel, if you want to point out what those are, cuz that's all of our um software and everything, too. Correct. some of the things that the town manages separately

four. What dollar amount are we looking likely for 2027? Right now for the main agreements would be those top six lines. Let me see if I can try to pull it. While you're looking at that, did you say you our town's been with you for 30 years? We've been company for 30 years. Um, you guys have been with us since you've been with us or 19.

Does that mean you first? Yeah. Daniel's been with us since we've been with PC3 and we started in 2019. Yeah. you guys in one of the first two flights have carried down with the with the new with the change over the new equipment. What is the advantage of the town owning the equipment rather than BCC maintaining it? Because after the license to fix it, what are we going to do with it? And if it gets messed up, right, they'll fix it. No, they'll fix it on cost if if it's ours, right?

But if it's there's no right or wrong either way. It's just almost everything done up as a service. Um, when you factor it up over three years or five years, it costs more. So, it's back to what additional value or you getting additional services built into that as a service cost. So, is it better financially to have it owned by us? Um, at times it can be because of the storms and other things that come through. So, if you guys own it, we're still going to maintain it, monitor it. going to watch it, watch the health. I'm going to track the dates to know here it's coming end of life or the warranty's up, it's time for renewal, and I'll do renewable, keep it renewed, keep it maintained. So, nothing changes really from the sport. It's just the ownership model. Now, if we own it, those um warranty renewals and maintenance renewals that come up, we pay for it. That's bundled in with the costs. as well as like I said, something terrible happens, you got to be chucking another firewall or switch and bring it up here and put it into. So, if you own it um and something happens, then purchasing another piece of equipment would have to happen and then trying to wait to get it from the manufacturer. So, it's that type of which is better. Neither one is better or worse. It's just which works better for the talent. And it's been like this from the start. like I said with the towel. So, we've been able to shift the equipment wherever you've needed it in any site that you would say, I want to put the library over here now. Not a problem. Pick up that equipment, move it over there. You plug it in, reconfigure it, off you go. Um, again, all the warranties and removals that have been needed to keep everything maintained, we've done, and that's been part of the process of the payment of it. Um, so in the end, it it there's there's no right

or wrong. It's just depends what is most common. So if I were to say you pay for all the network equipment to get it replaced today and then we say okay this is what it would be if we own it for let's say 3 or 5 years more likely when you do the math you will pay us more for that three or five years than you find it yourself. My question is how much but also what's like the useful life of technology everything is changing every year. So it could be 2 years down the line where it says oh well technologies have increased and what you have is no longer even

best practice on equipment um industry best practice is 5 years realistically what I do for my clients like I said I will budget and forecast for 5 years but the reality is like a firewall switch you can go up to seven but by budget and forecast for everyone saying let's plan on five and then we go to come up to that time period saying we've got to get some of these other things in place or you want to build a third fire station or something else then we slide that down for another fiscal year because technically you could go up to about seven years before then you really must replace it. So again it's PC level two 5 years but can you switch six or seven? Yes, you can. So all of this is in that position now to where this is what's projected and best practice the outside of the firewalls because at the manufacturing level they're coming up end of life the data device the network that can all be slid to another fiscal year or like I said be taken away from a snapshot here we started in 189

with all of our equipment not all of them cuz at different stages when we first came in and evaluated everything we took off a piece at a time and so on. So like right now um the server physical servers that are in place um they are projected to need to get replaced in the 2728 budget but that'll be 5 years which means can we push that out to a six and seven year? Yes. So it's more of just blocking it up saying this fiscal year this is what we should tackle the next fiscal year would be this next fiscal year is that and broken over.

Larry you'd asked the question our contract with VC3 for the fiscal year we're in right now 191,000 and what what Daniel is proposing here is about $199,000. So it' be about an $8,000 increase. Is that just for the main agreement? um other computers or anything. I just took the spreadsheet that you sent from last year 26 and the top portion which is the um the manage the VA the phones the backup service all those lines together. So the main agreement, correct? Okay. But that's total

1993 for this current, but 199 coming up. I'm sorry. 193 and that's that's an estimated. Yeah, I got over 200. It was like 207 if we replace all the equipment doing the six lines. But I was averaging too. And you got to take in account there was some additional you know some increase that fell in like they're not always you know on July they might fall in August December the other items are all replacement we would actually own the equipment lease

the figures uh down there in blue that talk. It actually says client owned. I don't know how it plucked in. So the items um these right here that would be factored or estimated if the town owned the network equipment. So what could be done is that we keep it as it is because the um the network components are higher up. We could refresh it. It would just those two line items drop completely off. But the two that say h the third and fourth ones. So these right here, these two, that's the existing network equipment today. So if we decided, you know what, let's refresh it, but let's have EC3 home. Then those two big line items down below drop off and that's going to increase some, but then we'd refresh the equipment. It would have a new time period and they would just be built into the main agreement.

It's okay. So uh the line three and four that just stands for hard. So that's all

right here. So that's the existing network equipment. That's a lease amount or that's a service. That's the lease amount. And then if we say okay three you continue to own it. We would refresh the equipment. Those two line items would change. They probably increase, but then those bottom lines of 41, 955, and 93 go away. So, are we going to eventually have a side by side of what it would be funding? Uh, I can do that up for you.

And then it's like project 3 years or 5 years total cost versus or is it that half?

It's half and half. It's all over. Like the coastal towns, they they like the odds of service model because of the hurricanes and everything else. Normally for a town where you guys are at, I'd say own it yourself. The hard part is, you know, the cost of buying it up. But you guys get so much storms through here, I'd say, keep it with us. Now, the only thing that could come back is at some point time will the manufacturer say we're not going to replace it for free because that was a power strike or something else. But so far, you know, we're able to replace it. Um, it honestly varies. I have some towns that don't all have others that they want us to own and then I've got some that a little bit of both. um the the simple basic desktop laptops um they'll get from us but they'll go by the higher ends themselves. Just depends on what they how they like to do things or or anything else. So I never go into it saying you must do this, you must do that. It's more what do you prefer and then I align everything you know accordingly. And none of this is said right now. I've always been incredibly transparent because like I said, it's been as a service for the duration that we've been you guys have been with us since 2019. Now that it's coming up near an end of life, it's like, okay, do you want to continue that? And I can for forecast here's the cost of that versus owning it or do you want to buy it yourself? And you go and you look at the numbers go, we'd like to buy it ourselves, but we can't do it now. Okay. Well, then let's shift it and let's plan to do that. And if we say, okay, it didn't work out, we can always go back to we still want it at a later time. So, it's got that ability to shift or do different things.

So, if we purchased it, does is the agreement say that if there's a problem with compatibility with you, it has to be have to be purchased compatibility with I'm not I'm not that guy. So, okay. I can't think of any competitors. So if you only you purchase it outright we help put you put it in the overall service doesn't change. We've always monitored anything and everything you guys have in town.

That's where we spend $2,000 and it changed. Now you say that equipment you bought isn't isn't right to do this so we can't service. trying to think through all the different scenarios from the time I've been with PC3 and ever having that come up, I would say no. The only thing that could come up is if for some reason the manufacturer of the device itself changes its end of life. Like right now the firewalls are coming up end of life in about 6 months I think. So normally when we yeah when we forecast out it's going to be the type of equipment that are is being designed to be put in has not just 3 years it has five six seven 10 years lifespan both from manufacturer as well as just the whole territories like that. So, can I stay with 100% certainty that would that would not happen? You know, I can kind of stay with 99.9 that

How often does it happen with a manufacturer change at the end of life? Not very often.

Sorry. Just saying everybody collectively is really hard to hear. Okay, I'll try. All across the board. Sorry, lost the last question. I just wanted to add that even though we budgeted last year, keep in mind that we added a whole new apartment to PC3.

Yes. What what Tresa was mentioning was that previous We brought in we brought in the library. We had done minimal support for the library. It was always kind of its own thing that we partnered with and helped out when when things came up. But um for last year's history school year we had brought on. So now the entire town is now supported. So that's 10 12 and they have miscellaneous devices. So that was a basic level. Now there's small department that got added to all that as well. So, who on our staff has really taken a deep dive, anybody into this to see what's worth owning, what's leasing?

Yeah. Well, Coy and Tresa have we we bring in Chris Aok, too, because he's kind of techy and uh we we've we've made the decision to buy our own PCs uh with PC3 helps checking them out to make sure that we get what we need in order for it to operate on our system. Fine. We we kicked around the idea of of the telephone system, maybe buying and purchasing that. We've leased it since the beginning with VC3. Um, where we're still in a position where, you know, I I think leasing those still makes the most sense. If uh one of them gets struck by lightning, they replace it and we don't we don't have to shell out the money for it. But and and they're relatively inexpensive per month to lease.

It is. And phones, just like anything else, they do go end of life at some point in time as well. They usually have a longer lifespan, but that still happens. But but the firewalls and the routers that is VC3 equipment and those those are the ones that Daniel mentioned several times are susceptible to storms and get taken out and they they have not sure why but uh I don't really how many how many PCs are we looking at per tank?

We probably have 16 more than that. you have workst if it'll open for me. See if this one 66 is what I 66 66 Yeah.

Yeah. 66 that's what I show I mean we haven't if a employee leaves and they get the um previous device goes back to replace it so I think it's a pretty decent number what did you just say so if if employee then the the new employee takes that device so it's really not adding on we were hiring we created a new position. So, I think this is a good one. But for our PCs that we have now, they are they end of life.

Well, we have a plan in place where we're we're basically budgeting each year to replace X amount and whoever needs it. It's based on a fiveyear. So the the main ones that we have budgeted for this year are the workstations for the library and they are okay with stretching those out for another year. So that we actually are not budgeting that piece.

So everything is tracked with a date. Like I said it's in this tab here. I apologize that it's so small. So every 3 months we meet and I refresh this to give them here's your latest equipment that I showed that you guys have. Here's the dates by end of life date. So here's the oldest and again they like to buy their own. So I said not a problem at least get it with this much memory, this much hard drive space, professional license, blah blah blah. I think it' be wise to purchase our PC or and and telephone. the other stuff like you just see the big the hard drive the brains of it all them keep it and maintain that

that's that's pretty much the way we're doing it Larry is that is that route I think that might be so the first page that had the numbers the four is is that what Jesse and Ky worked on with you is that what I think that you all work together or is that something this here. Yeah.

So, um this is kind of a combination of both. So, part of it the top six lines are just the existing agreements that are in place for the IT services. So, assuming that there are no new fire departments, nothing new. I project out on the current counts when I put it together um and based on like any cost um cost of living increases or anything like that that's built in the agreements that's factored out and that's what those six line items are. Then the additional line items are the things additional things that need recommended or need to be put into place. I said we want to get the last level of multiffactor authentication put in place for the town to protect it. And now the block is piece replacements. But again, that's tracked and managed. They have all the dates. If I want to slide some library out, we can because we built it in that way to give the flexibility to do that with the library. So like the PC replacements I put in as if we're going to replace everything that shows end of life, but what they want to do is up to them. Now, if they want to come back and say, "Okay, we only want to replace these 10 or 12. Can you adjust that number for me?" I'll do that happily, but that's projected out in that fashion. And then the other items are my things to project out what it's going to cost to replace some of the infra infrastructure items like that data device and the network equipment.

So the cheap most of it. Yeah. And we all set up Randy. I feel like we've already, you know, looked at other IT companies, it's going to be so it's just what it is. That was the reason my question was we have somebody in staff who has fairly good knowledge of tech is looking at this recommend that is that what I want to hear. Yeah. The the best we have Yes. is looking at it.

Not not against you. No, don't. I mean, keep me honest and I I will break down anything in whatever capacity they want. If Dresses says, "This makes no sense to me. I want to see it like this. This is I'll break it up like that. I've got some that want talent and public safety in separate in categories and I'll do my best to split it apart and say, "Here you go." So, you've had input from our people with this. So, he's just presenting that for us to chew on it,

right? and everything that's here, you know, there's tabs across the bottom have all the equipment, the dates, everything else. The and I have attracted another one, but I handed off to she said, "Let me see the details. I track your monthly invoices, so I see when your accounts go up and down, so I can see what the patterns are and everything else," which I'm sure she has her own way of kind of tracking at that level, too. But that's how I project out like the main agreement is I need to know what your monthly invoices are if it's growing and you know if it's shifting up or the numbers are staying constant because that is what helps me determine my projections. So again that's not done in a vacuum. If she suddenly said I want to see that here we go it's your guys' numbers. That's it's just my spreadsheet to help me stay organized.

And this year we suggested putting all of VC3 in an IT line because when you split it out between our departments is We do it, but it's very it's very complicated. We have to split it all out. So, at the end of the year when we sign a budget for it, we have to go through every one of these little lines and try to add it up. And it's easier to just say, "Okay, this is what they budgeted. This what we paid." So, we took it all out of everybody's department and put in non department. I think that's a better way to keep track of so you can just see it's one one line but all the invoices still out separate but it'll just be easier to see it as a whole. That's my just me working.

Yeah. Because you really you can see it but every month you know just like at one point we was we were expecting a decrease. We add the library we also add the fire section too. So the town growing which means this bill is going to grow too.

Well, we've talked internally staff too about you know do do we look at bringing in-house IT and having our own IT person similar to what larger local units of government do and there there's certainly pros and cons. I mean, one of the pros with having BC3 is they they have 153 uh IT engineers that that keep a breast on the latest threats. My my biggest concern about bringing it in house is, you know, is our IT person going to be so busy making sure everybody's laptop is working the way it's supposed to that they're not getting the latest word on what the newest threat is and we end up with having some type of security breach, which Daniel pointed out to us. I mean, there there's real true cost to that, but more than anything, it's just the aggravation of going through it. I mean literally I mean when Rocky Mountain went through it three years ago they they were dead in the water for three weeks. They couldn't do anything.

The client I had they had the ransomware. It had happened right at near Christmas time and we were all in a conference room and there were um other towns and counties down near them that were in saying don't expect to be up and running for a year. I mean we've lived it already. um and at least their core critical applications and their infrastructure, we had them up in 90 days. Now, fully replacing 300 computers or cleaning them and doing all that, that took a full year. But all their critical services and anything else, um that's the main infrastructure. We had temporary things up faster than that. But to say, okay, all the core 911 CAD, the DSS stuff that they had to do, we had backup and go within 90 days. So, and again, that's just like you said, there are plenty of cities and towns who pull it in and say, "We're going to do it ourselves." You can't. It's very challenging. Um because um finding that IT person that kind of knows it all, it's a hard person to find and then if you do, how long can you retain them? And that's kind of the reality that usually hits a lot of cities and towns. But then we have some that have their own IT and we come and we do part and they do part of their own. So it's just whatever makes the most sense to newcome.

Any other questions? Do not. Thank you so much. And I will do a breakdown of what the network is as a service and get that back through Randy. Back to you guys. Thank you so much. and thank those of you that work with it.

I was if anyone else has any questions, just feel free to shut up through trust and just stand with Dr. Jones. I'll answer any more questions you may have. Thank you so much. Okay, the next um item is our fire department budget presentation. All right, I'm going to try to make the screen fit. Okay,

go ahead. Thanks, Daniel. Take that.

Good morning. Morning.

I'm going to start out this morning with the first picture of me and our open house day. That was the picture that was taken at the station that morning. So that was one of the proud uh achievements we had this year with the fire department. There you go. So, in the contents of this, it's going to be the 2025 review. Um, the breakdown from 2024 to 2025, our call volume, the growth in the town of Nashville, the growth in the Newton Essie Fire District, our projected population, NFPA standards and requirements for fire emergency service, uh, department staffing levels, call response to incidents and needs and planning 1 2 3 5 8 10 years. Um so we'll get started with um here was some of our stuff for this past year. One of the first things it says there is the fire department responded to the most emergency instance in the county year for 2025. We responded to 143 uh instance the call volume was up from 2024 by 183 emergency calls. So this morning with the numbers from projected from the uh last call last night, we're projected right now to run 62 more calls this year. So far with the projections we've got, we've had two members of full-time staff leave the department. They're going to other jobs, both for senior firefighters. One's left for full-time position for higher pay at the Durham City Fire Department. The other one is going to Northside Fire Department in Johnston County. Uh the fire department uh staff, volunteers, and career completed 6,44 hours of training uh for last year. September the 13th, the town of Nashville and the Gully Fire District celebrated ribbon cutting and the open house of Station 2. And down at the

bottom, it talks about some of the things that we have done this year. We assisted with special events during the year. the bloom festival, the police and fire camp, Halloween festival, Christmas parade, and the third annual egg drop. This gives a breakdown of our numbers. In 2023, we ran 1,810 calls and we run 66 of those were fire related calls. In 2024, we run 1860, which was up 50 calls and we had uh 54 fire related calls that year. Last year was the year that jumped. We went for a total of 243 calls and 72 of those were related to fire. And I've got another breakdown a little bit further in here that'll talk about those. Our population, uh, this shows the town of Nashville. These were the ones that we showed you in 2024 that were coming. Cardinal Woods had 248 houses. It was going to be a three-phase uh growth. Brea Road had 48. These are what they look like as of Friday last week. You can see how they are already growing out. Uh Cardinal Woods at 248 houses. There's 73 houses already complete in phase one back there. The Breedlove Roadhouse uh road with 48. There's 43 houses already completed in there. And that one will probably be built out. I'm projecting probably by the end of June that subdivision will be completely full. In our Gully fire district out in our um the district we respond to. Both of these uh subdivisions were completed. Both of them come online in 2024. There was 45 houses in Castleberry and in Bakerfield there was 60 homes. Both of those are completely built out today. So that's 105 houses that have been built out as of today. Uh residential growth

in the uh Gully Fire District. Bass Farms off of boat local road is going to have 69 houses in it. They're 20,000 foot lots. The Castleberry section 3, which is across from the other uh Castle Berry, is going to have 36 homes in it and they're 30,000 foot lots going in there. That's two of them. That's 105 more. We have another one that's coming in off of uh Old Carriage Road that's going to have 10 houses and I think they're going to be more high-end houses what are going in that little subdivision there but that's right off of Old Carriage Road that's in our district. Excuse me. Refresh my memor

if you're going down level road where you turn right to go on um um Barnesville Church Road. You turn left, you can go in that subdivision that's in that open field in there between the two subdivisions there. Castleberry section three is right to your right is where they've cleared off and they've now put the roads in over there. There 36 houses going in there.

36. Okay. So during the ice storm and a kidney stone, I sat at the computer and gsied all of our district gully and the town looking through those. So I done a roof rooftop counts the town of Nashville by rooftops is 2774 rooftops. Now if you use the population number that we use now, which is two uh 2.45, which it used to be 2.62, but now it's 2.45. 45. That gives us an actual total population at 6,797. Newton Gully has 2,599 rooftops in it. And if you use the 2.45 on that, it is 6,368, which gives you a total of we're actually serving over 13,000 people in the Gully district and in the town. There's two things, well, actually three things I want to point out here. This does not count Autumn Perry and this does not count Nashville Gardens. It does not count the prison and it does not count the jail. The jail has a little over is it 330? Do you know?

You slated at 300 but it's always over 300.

Yeah, I think it's 330. Prisons at 750. And unfortunately the population at rest home changes every day. I mean that's the way it is. But so you're looking at our totals there. We're over right at 15,000 folks we're serving. Projected, this is what's come off the computer. Our projected 2025 population for the town is 5,899. Now it was 5,850 last year and then uh census was uh 5,756. Our total rooftops, and this is something every time myself and Mr. Lancing meet with Susan Phelps I push out there because uh restaurants look at rooftops our rooftops now around 5,373 in this area that could support more restaurants. So I'll make sure we point that out too for our growth. So looking under the NFPA 1710 is where we look at for what our requirements are when it comes to staffing. A single family dwelling is 16 members and 17 on the aerial piece. That's a uh initial fire alarm for a structure fire which is a 2,000t home. The other one is the occupancy of a garden style apartment complex. You have 27 members and 28 on the area on a personal mission alert. That's what they're 2,000 I mean 1,200 foot apartments. You know we have them here in town. We have um the threetory apartments that were just built the other year. Those are numbers that are there and for us to put 27 members on or 27 people right now and that's going to take like six to seven fire departments in the county and I have also changed where Rocky Mount is our fourth in inside the town that took out one of our volunteer departments but the problem we're running into during the day is we're only getting two to three people from my volunteer departments and they're paid part-time people also. So

that's one reason we've changed some of those around what we're doing. The whole county abroad this past year used to be three three departments on structure fire has now gone to four departments on structure fire because we're not getting help. Uh there was a fire in the county. We were actually uh full. We were actually the first engine on the scene to not have structure fire district. It's just harder and harder and the volunteers are giving everything they can. It is just life is so hard and and pulling so much away from us that we're losing our health. So our department staffing levels right now we have chief, assistant chief, three battalian chiefs, three lieutenants, six engineers, six firefighters, and one senior firefighter. Uh station one has a lieutenant, a engineer and a firefighter working at it. Station two has a battalion chief engineer and a firefighter on staff. Now, we still have um we have a one lieutenant volunteer, eight engineers on the volunteer side, and four firefighters is what we have staffing wise. So, this gives us a breakdown of our calls for uh 2025. We had 29 actual structure fires in the district. Our district, we had 69 related calls, which would be fire alarms and things of that nature. We averaged six career staff and one volunteer on each one of those calls. 2024 we had uh 25 structure fires, 61 fire alarms, five career and two volunteers. 2023 we had 29 48 five career and two volunteers. 2022 you can see the numbers change as the year trucks in 2022 was 41 45 alarms five career and two. So I just wanted to put those numbers in there to show you what we're actually getting from fire departments. So, we were asked back in the 2024 budget to to give y'all plans and goals

set up by the fire department. So, I I put this back in here. In 2024, we wanted to hire three engineers, which we did. We completed an ask for three senior firefighters. We that didn't that didn't pan out then. So, in 3 years from now, which would be next year, we wanted two engineer two fire engineers to grant for a new lighter truck and a grant for the SCBAs. We have actually put in for those this year. The Don Davis grant for the ladder truck and then the U Allen Chester grant for SCBAS. Our five-year projection was uh hire three more fire engineers, three more firefighters to staff a ladder truck. Uh place an order for a new engine that would replace the 2018 engine that we have and look at growth for station three. Eight years out, station three, hire three captains, uh, high three engineers, hire three senior firefighters, and three firefighters. And 10 was purchase land for station 4. Those are all projections. You don't ever know what the growth going to be. Um, take some places that are out here. Um, Youngsville for example. I talked with one of their board of directors last week. They have three stations now. They are actually now in the process, station four and station five. So that's how fast they're growing. Johnston County is the same way. Um the way the counties are growing and it's moving out, it's eventually going to get to us. It's happening a whole lot now in the southern part of the county in the Middle Sex Bailey area. So we have to look at these projected growth. I mean when you look in that we've still got Cardinal Woods to build out. We've still got the birchwood that's on the line to to come with what Robbie wants to do with that out there. Uh those is what's that's what's happening around the town and in the county with the fire service. I did ask when we were looking at projected numbers, I asked for five more people this year in the budget. Uh after talking with Mr. Lancing, we dropped it

down to two. That would be uh two more engineers to put on shift. We are still losing people to these other districts where we're paying out more money. One of our firefighters that has left has actually left and gone to a fire department is not even in the uh local government retirement system. They're offering starting out um 12 to 13% in his 401k. So he is actually going there, but his starting salary I want to say is like 69 $70,000 is what they're starting out at in Johnston County. So talked with Smithfield Fire Chief last week. He just was able to put on some more staff, but he's asked five more firefighters this year because of their growth in Smithfield. So that's that's where we're at on this.

What is our in in your in your future plans? What is our proposed location for station?

It would be on the south side on the south side of the district because of our growth and our response time out that way. on if you look at what we've got, but that could change. But right now, that would be where I would say I've talked with several folks. Scott Rogers, who used to work with the county, who who's retired now. I've had several conversations. He is actually the one that sat down and went back through the numbers with me again in 2018 to confirm what station two should have been because in 2009, that's where it said it should have been. And in 2018, it was the same thing. So, I'm talking with Scott about working with me on looking at exactly where to go. But I will say on for Jason Lover's side, too, we're we're going to need to look at another water tower for this town too with the growth because of the that size over there and what happened earlier this year. You know, we need another towel so we can make sure we still have water for accurate fire protection, but also drinking water. So, but um that's what I see. We're looking at it, but I want to do it and make sure we make the right decision on where station three will need to go. Station three also would not be a station like station two. Station 3 is going to need to be more of a residential type home, which would not be as much money as what we're building on these other stations because it's more residential looking. The good thing about that is if you build a station like that, when it comes time for more growth and you might have to move that station, you got a residential home now that you can sell. It's a little bit bigger footprint, but people would buy it because you still set it up as a house. So is where it would be. Rocky Mount has several stations that are that way and that's because they're residential areas. So looking at it from that standpoint questions.

Have you been able to replace the power that left? We are working on the process right now of um trying to get that done. We've had some applications come in. I think we've had nine applications so far. So we'll start that process next week and we'll get a real call on that and see where we go from there. All right. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. And you went from five. You went from requesting five to two. Yes, sir.

The Easter Bunny. Bunny. Easter Bunny. Can't be has been.

That's the real Easter Bunny. Bunny. Uh well, good morning. So, this is the budget presentation for the parks, recreation, and cultural resources department, which includes fiscal year 26 accomplishments as well as identified needs for fiscal year 27. Um I'm going to try to be brief. I know you have a lot of information to consume today. So, these are the funds that we're going to be talking about today that fall under the parks and recck umbrella. I'm going to try to refer to them as their name rather than the number, but those are public facilities, recreation, farmers market, and then the cemetery. So, in your packet, um, and I also emailed it out on Friday, we had a fisc year 26 report that covered, um, activities yearto date for our department. Um, I do have some extra copies if anybody needs one. Um, I don't want to be dismissive of these activities and accomplishments and I want to give our staff credit. Our small but mighty team has been very busy this year and I think the numbers reflect that. Um, I think it was the first budget I went through working for the town that one of the goals that the council set at that time was parks and recreation. And I feel like we continue to meet that goal and that's something that the council should be proud of. Um, I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on it again because I'm I'm trying to be conscious of your time, but I will pause if you have any questions related to any of the fiscal year 26 information. You can always ask me um anytime. I do want to point out the the save the dates

on the last page as well because that's some of the stuff that we have coming up very very soon. uh with the first one being that exciting Saturday that this Saturday starting at 10 a.m. going there no questions I'll move forward question market I guess that doesn't include vendor that includes just what we made correct kind of leading number talking about for the revenues

correct that that revenue is what the town collects from vendor fees. This is on uh the bottom of page one of that report farmers market revenue. Okay. So the 1400 is the vendor fees.

Correct. And then a lot of the the POS the point of sale would be like the farmers market hats and t-shirts and that type of thing which is 490 ft. Any other questions? All right. So, for public facilities, um this is where the town budgets the majority of our maintenance and utilities for all the town facilities. That fund includes uh one full-time parks and facility maintenance supervisor and one 20our a week custodian. As far as for fiscal year 27, we had minor changes uh that were requested in the budget just to account for rising maintenance, utility and supply cost. This is where the majority of capital projects are are budgeted for the town and we have lots of potential projects this year which I will cover on a a later slide for us to go through and I think this is probably appropriate point for me to point out the it uh so we do reply we rely heavily on BC3 um Chris AOK and myself we do have a monthly meeting with them where we try to stay a breast of everything that's going on what they see on the horizon for the town and ask questions to make sure we understand. Um I I don't want to call myself an IT guru because I am not. We rely very heavily on um VC3 for our IT needs. Uh the next slide, recreation. So, this is where all of our programs and events are budgeted except for the farmers market. Full-time

staffing includes uh myself and the administrative assistant. Part-time includes a permanent part-time, which is between 20 and 30 hour a week program supervisor. Then we have two 20our a week parks maintenance workers that help with maintenance both for our recreation facilities and the cemetery. And then we have two environmental educators and 11 recreation aids. And I know that sounds like a a lot of staff. For the recreation aids and environmental educators, we budget that a total of 40 hours per week average for all 13 of those positions. So, with a lot of our special events and stuff, we need a lot of boots on the ground, a lot of help for a short period of time. Um, but it the total number of hours don't add up to a lot. As far as changes for fiscal year 27, we were projecting some increases just for um rising supply, material cost, and instructor costs. the and just for the sheer number of programs that we're doing. The good thing about that more programs equals more revenue. So in theory it should be a net zero impact to the to the budget because you have revenues and expenses going up together.

Next we have the farmers market budget. Um here we have one 20our a week um market manager that is budgeted here and then we also do budgets uh some additional part-time hours um to assist uh with special event days working the information station or the the little trailer there. Uh the only difference from last year to this year that we're requesting is some funds for some additional picnic tables there. And one other thing I do want to point out about this fund. Uh the past 3 years, I think the the council has budgeted about 10,000 in contract services. That's what we use for entertainment at the market, mainly music or if we have a phone party or something like that, we are able to leverage that money, some of the grants that were in that report um to get additional funds to go with that. So, we have the um grassroots arts program program that we get funds through Nash Arts for music and then we were also able to get 10,000 from TDA last year, uh the Nash County Tourism Development Authority for music. Um so, we try to spread those dollars out as far as we can. Again, I will leave these here, but these are hot off the press for our upcoming live music events at the at the market as well. And we do plan on applying for those TDA funds again this year from the same thing. Last for the Forest Hills Cemetery. Um this is where we have one full-time position budgeted at parks maintenance tech which we have just recently made an offer waiting on somebody to go through all the pre-employment screenings to get uh fully staffed back there. Um changes

for fiscal year 27. We are requesting a new pickup truck there. Um we had a used vehicle that we had purchased from Emerald Isle a couple years ago. Uh that has played out on us. Uh we are currently using a borrowed vehicle from Public Works which we are very appreciative of but it's not in the best condition. So we are requesting a new vehicle there. We just recently in the past couple weeks uh completed some paving there. Um if that's one of the priorities for the council there there are still some rough sections of the existing paving there that we could look at redoing. And then there was also a request from a citizen for us to look at doing um paving curb and gutter in the newest section which would be behind the if you're familiar with the cemetery behind the um building towards where the dirt pile used to be. We have moved that dirt dirt pile to the back and then kind of stubbing up a new road that heads that direction towards 64. Which brings us to our last slide and this is where I wanted to spend the majority of time today. This is where we have identified needs and potential projects for fiscal year 27. I completely acknowledge this is a lot of capital more than the town can do in one year. But again, this is things that we've identified, things that have been brought up by citizens. So, I wanted to put it all in one place and just um you know, talk through some of these projects if any of them are a priority of the council for fiscal year 27 and I can go through those one at a time or if you have questions about any of them specifically, we can go that route.

Question. Okay. Why are chairs and council chambers council chamber visual upgrades flooring and town hall under parks and rack? So I just start the top go. Okay.

And I and I will clarify. So um with that public facilities line item that's where all of those projects are budgeted for the town as a whole and Chris AOK which is our parks and facility maintenance supervisor kind of oversees those projects as well. That's kind of why it falls under here is a little unique. Um, so the security cameras there at the top. Um, and one more thing I want to point out. Normally how we do these to get a number, I'll get one quote from a company and then if it's budgeted, we'll get three and of course go through the the purchasing requirements of the town. So it could potentially go down, but this was just to get one camera um at Stony Creek Park in the parking lot itself. Um, one of the things we're looking at in that part of grant is also putting some funds in there for some additional cameras. Um, and at Glover Park, that was actually one camera that's kind of watching the splash pad area and a license plate reader on Memorial Drive, Glover Park Memorial Drive to catch any license plates of people people going in and out of up there. Um, of course, the chairs in council chambers um are a little dated. The the bar on the back of these chairs, the welds keep popping on them. Probably notice there's a lot less in here than there used to be. Once they do that, we throw them away. It's a safety concern. So, just looking at replacing those and again, it's one of those things where we could buy a certain number every year or try to get a lot at at once. luring um police and fire department. So from the restrooms towards the fire department side. Um our custodian has went in there and waxed the floors on the police side. He did not want to go

towards the fire department side because the tiles are chipping up. He said that machine is just going to eat them up. So if we want to be able to clean the floor better, we're looking at replacing those tiles there to be able to do it. Um, new road in the cemetery we already touched on. That's that curb and gutter and stubbing up that road from the building to the the dirt pile. Question about that. Yes, sir. So, would that bring in additional revenue for sales to selling lots or not? It would not.

No. um with that new section. And we are looking at this year making a gravel road on the back side of the um building towards the dirt pile on that side just cuz where we have that new section that's a little bit further down the hill. There is a little bit of an access problem there when you are trying to get close to those sections and and bringing in the vault and everything. Um this would be on the uphill side. We've got curb and gutter on one side of the street, not on the other. And again, just stubbing up that road for future sections to grow. Uh council chambers visual. Again, we just updated the audio system, which um we've worked out a few kinks in it, but I think we've got it pretty good. Now, we're just looking to upgrade this lovely park projector screen system you have in in front of you. Um and again, that that's kind of flexible. We were thinking about going more with monitors and and multiple monitors in here. Um, Glover Parking lot. This one's been one we've been asked about a couple times. That would be paving and lining that parking lot. Um, we did look at, you know, trying to do some different things there as far as doing just parking BMS down the middle, which is still an option. um that to get enough parking burned the cost was around $7,000 to do that. Um without lines, I think it would help some. I don't know how much of an impact it would have. The other issue is the spacing. Um, I I believe we would have to take out that row of arboritis trees between Glover Memorial Drive and the parking lot to get that additional footage to have room to to add those two rows back in the middle. That's how the plans show it. When Glover Park was

built in 2002, they planted those trees and where they've grown wider, that 5 foot makes a difference as far as the required space in there to have those two rows in the middle. Well, they would have to be taken down whether we pave in line. Correct. Put the BS on. Right. Either way, it would And then is there enough rightway to have something there like that or

um I you might be able to do some smaller bushes. I think we do have water I know we have water utility and I think we have underground utility lines and per our ordinance we try to stay we we have to stay 5t away from those. But you could potentially do some smaller bushes. Probably not trees, you know. Um if we could find out how much profit the uh county made on these programs, they might help us do that. Do you think

I think it's definitely worth an ask if they're willing to share some of the cost of these. Um and I do have a placeholder on the April 15th budget for Thomas to come with that report that y'all requested. Um, but I think some of those projects that relate to Glover Park, it's worth an ask of what we can do there. Um, splash pad elements. That was the additional elements combined as a total. Of course, we can break those down into smaller chunks, which is kind of what we talked about. One of my questions. So, is that 75 to like fully lay out the entire splash pad? So, then we could break it up here.

We can break it up. And I think the the cheapest elements that we requested were around 8,000 and the most expensive was around 20. So anywhere in that window

and you know my thoughts on that one again I wanted to include it here with the splash pad being new all of it being new the first season. You know I think it would be appropriate to wait and add an element next season. Uh let the new wear off of all the all the ones we have. Um but again that's up to council what what your priorities are there. Um plumbing issue at the rec center. So anytime we put a lot of people in the facility our sewer is getting clogged. Again thank you thank thankfully poet works is able to jet the lines and clear that out for us. But it is uh it's a common occurrence. The reason that doesn't have a price next to it is I'm we're still trying to work on what the fix would be and what the cost would be there. Um

other than they've we're not 100% sure of the cost. Um you know they've televised a line. Um, I think it's just where you have those three restrooms going into one line that's older and it goes all the way across the floor and then down to Church Street uh is where the sewer runs, but I I can't point to the exact cause.

Our our renters for the facility are clogged in clogging everything up like they do at the prison. the the rentals or anytime, you know, thankfully we've learned and we do preventative flushing before any large event. Um, and then of course we have the number posted and and public works has been good to come if we have an issue during a weekend event or rental. Um, but again, that's a that's a cost to the town and of course an inconvenience to those people using the facility or our events. lighting at Glover Park. Um, that is the price that we received recently, which is actually down from the one I got back in 2023 to add lights to the other two ball diamonds and the soccer field. Um, you know, with lights being added at Miracle Park. This is I think we're going to see more of the tournaments probably move that direction unless we have lights. Uh again, I do think that's one that's worth a discussion with the the county. If the town if the council wants to pursue it, we can pursue some options. Maybe splitting that cost

that for the ones out of Mil Park the light. Um I would have to check if the if that was grant funded or if it was just um through the county's general funding. I think the soccer fields has been a long time coming and that something that would definitely benefit national residents, but the baseball um we have enough to service our citizens, but really that would be the tournaments of the county that are going to get the greatest game at both.

Um wind screens. This is just to to help play pickle ball. It's a screen that goes on the fencing there. Small cost, but it helps the ball fly straighter. I haven't got that request, but I promise as soon as we get those open, that's that's going to be a request coming. Um, redundant internet service at police fire town hall. So, right now we are with Ripple um fiber. anytime the internet goes down, um, we're dead in the water, which seems to be frequently this past year. One of the things that the county does, one of the things that, uh, BC3 had recommended that we could do is get that redundant service there, and it would be with a different provider. If we ever lose internet on one, it'll automatically switch over to the other one, and we don't have any downtime at those facilities. Um this is the cost for that um additional service on an annual basis if the council chose to move forward with that. And with internet service point out Wi-Fi that was one of the services that Cloudwise had provided to us for free through their cloud-based service. They are no longer providing that. That is not something that Ripple picked up. Um, again, it's blank next to it because I do not know. I haven't found anybody that can even service that area to get a price if that's something we wanted to add back.

How often that was being used? I don't um we always assumed that we've got a lot of traffic, people sitting down there during lunchtime and everything. We assumed they were using the free Wi-Fi, but they're still there and it's not working. Um, we've only got one call about it so far that it's not working and we also provide it at Glover Park. So, we do have an option for it. Glover Park here in the parking lot. So, other options for other places Glover Park you're looking for. Quiet place to have their lunch.

You want to put it that way? Yeah. Okay. We'll need the water resources development grant. Again, that's just needing to be budgeted as a project. It's a reimbursement grant. So, just throwing it up here to show what needs to be budgeted for. 15 seconds. What is that? That is the grant we received to do the um bio retention area at the 48 acres of Budding Stony Creek Park. um and the invasive species removal of that that project. Um we haven't spent any of the funds yet and didn't plan to until the ne the new fiscal year.

Uh lights at Stony Creek. This was a price to um relamp all of the large lights uh there. We had quite a few of them out. Um a lot of this cost is renting rent renting the truck. Glo Nash County is revamping a lot of parks around the county, including Glover Park. We did get a price from them, see if we could jump on while there was a truck and a company in town. If we did it this fiscal year, you're looking at about $5,000. Um, which we would have to either budget or find the funds for. Um, demolish 502, that is the house behind the police fire complex on Body Street. And then these last three that didn't have a price next to them. Again, that's we did some paving in both of those areas this year around 20,000 for each. Um there is some more that can be done if that's a priority. And same with flooring in town hall. The carpet is getting to the point where Aaron can't clean it well. It's a little dingy looking. So to replace it um you know with an either an LBTP or a carpet tile um should be relatively inexpensive. Yeah. Any questions for me?

Any questions? Do you need a do you need a fullsize truck or an S10 filter? So, we do have three employees there currently that work and ride together. So, it would be nice to be four-door. Other than that, a smaller, you know, pickup should be fine. We don't need anything really large. We can do we can, which is what we did before with Emerald Aisle. Um, that didn't really pan out for us. Um, I have talked with Jason Glover from Public Works to see if maybe one of their trucks that they are replacing this year could potentially meet our needs better than the one we're borrowing.

I got another looking for a new truck cuz I'm thinking my head I can get something discounted price from kind of money we talking about for truck. Yeah. Sher sheriff sale price for a half ton pickup is probably around 38,000.

Yeah, that 41 I put in here was looking at the four-door options on the state contract. Um, one last thing I want to mention, not related to the budget, but our Stony Creek master plan that we've been working on. Um, I have a draft agenda item on April 15th for that to come to council. I have the draft um should have the draft ready today and plan on sending it out early because it is a large document. If anybody wants it in a paper copy, just let me know. We can print it, but it is over 100 pages, so you may want it just in digital form.

Thank you for everything. Appreciate. Next is public.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. So, I come before you today for the fiscal year 2026 review and future planning. Um, as public works, we have fleet maintenance. Uh, we like to keep the towns uh the town moving. Sanitation um departments and the yard waste. Uh we do a lot of debris removal. Street department is infrastructure and safety and water and sewer is the essential resources management. So we like to be a good stewards to our environment and our resources. Some of the accomplishments this past year was uh we maintained a robust a diverse and re look we maintained a diverse and robust inventory of heavy equipment, municipal vehicles and small engines.

I take my hat off to Kevin Taylor. He he's a a guru whe whether it's whether it's a large piece of machinery or whether it's a weed eater, you know, we we've got it covered there. Um

we built a new shelter out there. So we have our new inventory shelter. Uh we focus on technical proficiencies. Um Kevin's always kind of leading the edge when it comes to um technology. Um with the street department, we did a lot of proactive uh pavement. Uh we use quality patching. Uh, every time we had a utility cut, we always did the proper patching. We inspected and kept the pedestrians walkways, eliminating tripping hazards and ensuring safety. We're fixing to get right back into our sidewalk program, focusing more on our downtown area, the Blooming Festival route. So, um, we conducted clearing of storm water ditches to improve the drainage efficiency. We provided 247 snow and ice removal this year. So we removed quite a bit of snow and ice. There was several Sundays back to back where we did that.

Thank you. Uh we delivered uh comprehensive logistical support ensuring the success of the annual blooming festival under the water and sewer. Uh we ensured uh an uninterrupted um delivery of high quality potable water through residents, commercial and industry partners supporting both public health and local economy growing. We identified over 30 significant water leaks with the most catastrophic one being over there on Break Street. kind of backing on what Chris said and it'll be h we'll talk about a little bit more is we turned over our water storage one and a half times with just that one leak.

So it one and a half times 1.5 million gallons is what we estimated that leak. So that's that's our water storage one and a half times if we had a uh structure fire at the same time our distribution system water distribution system would not been able to maintain um during that event. I kept close contact with Chris um and I think he had provided some additional resources if we were to have a structure fire to come in and they would have to to tanker it all in and stuff. Um completed the rellining of over 200 manholes aggressively targeting INI inflow and infiltration to reduce the unnecessary wastewater treatment cost that we're sending to Rocky Mountain. Successfully initiated a critical sewer infrastructure project. That's your Regency Drive and Essex Roads neighborhood. And also we've done the new water main going to um First Street Extension down Red Oak Road. So those are great accomplishments on our water and sewer division. On sanitation, we acquired that semi-automatic uh refuge truck to streamline the the collections routes. Um we went from one from two people um having to be on the garbage truck to just one. So we've automated that process just a little bit. Um we we did townwide removal back doing well. That was a good decision.

That was a great decision. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Have we made any adjustments on that new truck? So, stop turning about tearing up the garbage container. The the containers the containers that are designed and made for an automatic garbage truck are holding up well. The containers that are not made for that are not holding up. So, so in the 27 budget, I've identified that and are going to look at replacing some of our older trash cans that are not designed for that truck. Has any ground been been broke on the sewer fallout lines for the Essex Road and the Regency? No, sir. Essex Essex Road. We're waiting for

Are we doing anything? Well, we're going to we're going to have a pre-construction meeting on Regency coming up here probably the first of next week because we got the thumbs up from NCDQ to go ahead. Uh Essex Road, we haven't we're still waiting for uh NCDEQ staff to approve um that portable Thompson pump in exchange for uh putting new equipment in the old Suriri lift station that we took offline. So Mike Toulson, he he's still he's still communicating with NCTQ staff about that and I I haven't heard from him anymore about it since last week. But we we did 400 S6 row. We had to pump the septic tank again. So that's third time now. It gets her about two months every time we have to do that.

Hopefully we'll start those projects very soon. Uh we've maintained Nashville's small town charm through proactive litter uh pickup um and we have partnered with local organizations to provide a seamless sanitation logistics for the Bloomman Festival. So setting up the garbage trucks and making sure the Blooming Festival is is garbage free. I'm just going to identify some of our FY2027 budget needs. Uh Nashville has transitioned from a quiet little county seat to a growing hub in the region. As the town of Nashville continues to experience steady residential and commercial growth, demands on our public infrastructure have increased with it. Uh our population, as Chris kind of talked about your rooftops, has grown steadily at an annual rate of 1.63% 63% surpassing the 5,850 residents as of 2024 2025. And that number is coming from a Google search. Um to keep the high standards of service, public public works must scale alongside Nashville's growth. So with our our fleet maintenance divisions and our street divisions and storm water budgets, um I'm projecting a minor increase. I'm projecting a minor increase in funds with street and storm mortar or limited nond non-discretionary cost ensuring we support our current level of service despite the rising uh industrywide material and supplies cost and that is coming um from the oil to change the oil in the police cars to uh the deaf fluids going up to just basic maintenance oil filters are going up. Everything that we have that we're using in these three departments are going up. Percentages may vary. Um but we have to kind of scale along with it. Um for the sanitation fund, I'm

requesting a 25% increase in equipment maintenance funding to address the rising service demands of our aging fleet. And in this, we're not talking about the new one bandit. We're talking about the our triple C, which is our backup truck that we keep having some mechanical issues with along with our rear packer. Rear packer is what we use to do our bolt pickup on every paddle. Um, let me get to my slot here. I'm sorry. There we go. Um, I propose a 25% increase in the essential supplies to continue the systematic replacement of our aging residential trash cans, Mr. Taylor. Um, and that's going to get rid of those old trash cans that we keep having problems with. They're just not designed to be picked up like we're we're picking them up with that one bandit. Um, capital request is approximately $340,000 for an ODB leaf collection truck. This purchase replaces our older unit that has suffered multiple multiple mechanical failures over the past year. Investment in our modern reliable equipment is essential for maintaining the collection schedule and meeting our uh residents um expectations.

How exactly? Uh almost 10 years old, I believe. I can get you the exact date. That's okay. I was just Would it get anything if we were to sell it? We we could sell it. um keep it for a backup. That that was kind of going to be my thing is keep it for a backup for another year or two just just to see.

Um but we could look at even trading it in with with uh ODB. They do offer something, but I think my bang for buck would be minimal versus just keeping it as a as a backup. So, um, on the water store administrative fund, I'd like to request $25,000 to replace the fence around the public works facility. It is in terrible shape. If you ride down Bash Drive, a lot of it's leaning. It provides minimal security for some of our nice equipment in there. Um, and it will be more aesthetically pleasing to our neighbors. Uh we're going to increase the training budget to provide a director SeiWell class as well as the transportation research and training education classes that myself and several other employees will go to. Some classes will focus on snow and ice control, asphalt maintenance, work zone safety, and emergency management for public works. on our water fund. Uh crit, we're going to do a critical infrastructure request funding for a systemwide rehabilitation, including the replacement of 10 strategic valves to ensure that the system isolation during repairs to minimize our customer uh interruptions. Um we had to essentially shut the whole town down from the water leak that we had uh this past winter. Um that is unacceptable in my standards. uh we should be able to valve off certain areas. However, every valve we went to was broken or not working or wouldn't work all the way. Um so we could not do that. Um upgrade four high priority fire hydrants to ensure reliable flow rates and immediate readiness for emergency fire suppression. If you look in the corner right here, this is Washington Street downtown two-story residential structures and I and I don't have an adequate fire hydrant and that's been there since my first go around with Nashville. So identifying that, making sure that we get some of those fuller

hydrants replaced that we've identified. um adjusting the FY27 budget to account for the mandated now 15% increase in bolt order rates for the city of Rocky Mount, ensuring our operational funding is still aligned with our original wholesale water cost. As first

as of as of Thursday of last week, Rocky Mountain had a special call meeting. their director of water resources proposed a 15% water and 15% sewer increase for wholesale um customers. That in itself along with um any needs that we have is going to be astronomical.

And this is going to happen if they vote tonight. This will take effect April 1st. Um, through my calculations, talking with Tresa, we could see a $90,000 increase just in the remaining 3 months of this budget year that we have not budgeted for and are not prepared for. $90,000. And that's just good round numbers based on on what we're using now. I think we can I think we can dig another well from this $9,000. Yeah. But u you know when when a well only does 125 gallons a minute it's not going to come anywhere close to covering well

13 the last time I calculated 13 we need 13 total total total and and that would be most of them running all day every day correct so we're talking about 13 totally get rid of or this better 13 and we could look at doing away. Now, that's not taking into consideration the growth that we're expected to experience in the next 3 to 5 years. So, it's 13 today. In 3 years, it could be 16. In 5 years, it could be 20.

Purchase land, um, purchase land, engineering fees, and then digging it. And then we hope we don't run into a situation we did on Cook Road where we dig a whale and we're good. Correct. Yes, ma'am. How far away from Wilson? Quite quite a long way. Huh? 58. Are they options? Nash County, but they get their water through. get their water through Rocky Mountain. So they go up for Rocky Mountain for that gift, right?

So we'll pay this the the I like to frame it as the the Rocky Mount's bad misfortune is going to affect the entire region cuz not only is Nashville going to have to go up, Nash County will have to go up, Whitaker will have to go up, Sharksburg will have to go up, and Edge County will have to go up. The rate the increase is going to be the same for everybody. It's my understanding bulk bulk wholesalers which we are and all the municipalities is 15% what's proposed and then they've also proposed to raise the rates on their their residential consumers or customers as well in Rocky Mountain in Rocky Mountain that's starting April 1st and this is 15% water and 15% silver. That's right.

So 30%.

Yes ma'am. Um, budget projections from our 2027 budget have been recalibrated to address the notified vendor price increases ranging from 3 to 9%. So, all of our vendors we've reached out to, um, our Kim keys, our chemicals to run our wells, um, our brass, our repair clamps, our pipe to replace stuff or replace water lines with a 3 to 9% increase um, next year. um requesting essential funding to for the renovation of whalehouse 6 to address the long-standing deferred maintenance. And this is going to be this top whalehouse up here. Uh we have the doors, the windows rotten out here. Uh aesthetically, it it looks terrible. We have a lot of rot there. Um if you look on the inside of the the whalehouse, um where we take the samples, the inside walls are starting to rot. Uh we did some quotes and and got some numbers back. Uh we're looking probably $35,000 to do this one and then we'll come back next year and do well number seven. Uh requesting to a what Cy was talking about requesting to schedule replacement unit 101 and 116. They're two 2010 F-150 pickup trucks. These trucks are 16 year 16 years old. A new truck would improve fuel efficiency and reduce emergency repair costs. Uh KO has kind of identified truck 101. I don't know if y'all remember it's a Ford F-150 four-door. That's uh the former director Jamie's old pickup truck. Um it it needs to be replaced, but I think it has a little bit of life left in it. We could, you know, surplus that to to Koy if we would if we were looking at getting one. Um, unit 101 really needs to be replaced with a full size truck. Uh, four-door full size four-wheel drive truck. Unit

116, we are looking at replacing that with like a midsize, something like an S10, a Colorado, something that will be more fuel efficient. Um, that's going to be a truck that we use to ride around and check our wells, lift stations, and so on so forth. Before you go on back to the first one, these um valves are any of these valves under the road to pave the washing street.

Not the strategically ones that we've picked. No sir. No sir. Um a lot of these valves are going to be more like closer to your residential areas to help us divide and and be able to isolate for water main breaks. A lot of our big valves. We have a 12-in main that kind of runs up through Piggly Wiggly and then kind of comes down Church Street. We feel pretty confident we can isolate that. It's just when we start getting into our outskirts and some of our in city or in in downtown area, but none of the valves that we have identified are going to be in the Haven project. All right. All right, with the sewer fund, uh, adjust the FYI budget to account for the now 15% increase in the bulk sewer rates for the city of Rocky Mount, ensuring our operational funding is still aligned with the regional wholesale cost. Continue a multi-year INI um reduction initiative specializing in targeting in the rehab of sewer manholes, mains, and pump stations to prevent groundwater for entering the system. So if ground water enters the system, we pay for that ground water to be treated. So the best thing for us to do is keep it out, especially with a 15% increase.

Um took care of that last year. It's on gone. Yes, sir. So much work. So So in the top, this right here is a picture of what we're doing currently and what we like to continue to do. They go in there and they put this epoxy in there and what it does is it lines that manhole to keep any water from getting in. INI is is is money just going down the down the sewer system. You have a side by side of what we're saving now that we've been doing that. Like if we do, you know, 2024 versus 25.

I've done a little bit of a cost analysis through a spreadsheet taking into consideration rainfall, water usage, and what we're sending back. And I can tell over the course of the past um year or so that we are we are making progress. However, it's it's not going to happen overnight. This is going to be a multi-year um project, but we are making progress versus if you look at July of 2025, July of 2024 versus July 2025 with the rainfall and everything, we sent less water and we had the same amount of rainfall.

So, that's something that we look at. And we also take into account how much water we purchased, how much water we produced in our wells, and then sent that back. But I can get a copy of that for y'all if you'd like. So the savings that So the savings that we making on this line this manhole uh is 15%. We're not going to be able to see any any savings at all. But we're going to save on our end take it back pay back. Unfortunately. Yes, sir. No more. I mean, at some point you're going to you're always going to have some eye. There's no if you put a brand new system in tomorrow.

It's going to have some, but we're doing a great job of tightening up our system to keep this cost the cost as low as we can for the citizens of Nashville. You know, we can't control what Rocky Mountain's going to be. Um, I'd like to establish establish an emergency inventory by obtaining um a dedicated backup pump for each municipal lift station to ensure immediate restoration of service in case of a mechanical failure. Uh we have identified we don't have to we have 12 lift stations. We don't need to buy 12 pumps. We have one pump that could use as a backup for multiple lift stations. Uh but definitely secure the funding for those. acquisition of an added high-capacity bypass pump. The other day we had the the sewer line break because of the tree falling on it. Um if we had another high-capacity backup bypass pump with 1,000 ft of pipe, we could have reacted u in house. Um so just kind of preparing and planning to do that. um the the replacement of the broken guide rails, brackets, float assemblies to ensure that the pump alignment and automated level control within the collection system. This is another thing that we're doing to to look at reducing cost. If we can have a good adequate float system in all of our pump stations, we can reduce our electrical cost. There's no need of the pump to run if it doesn't need to run. We have storage capacity. That's what they're designed for. So, I don't need them running all the time or or drawing it down too low. So, that's another way we can add a little bit of savings. Um, and then on the sewer fund, uh, request for schedule replacement of unit 135, which is a 2006 Ford F-150. Uh, this truck is 20 years old, so it will improve fuel efficiency and reduce the emergency repair expenditures on that as well. Um, personnel needs, just kind of

summarize this, I kind of, you know, did a long justification. Uh the town is growing. We need to grow. Public works needs to grow with the town. Um I'm going to request two personnel. Um there are maintenance technician level twos. Um these positions windfield. Um the employees could work independently. They should have a little bit of experience in water and sewer um and be able to respond to some of these repairs and breaks that we have. We've got a lot of infrastructure that is aging um and is going to need to be replaced in the near future. Uh and this personnel would help respond to any kind of breaks, leaks, and so on and so forth. I did do and I I didn't get this in your packet, but I do want to go over and address um I did a CIP, a capital project, um sort of like what Chris was talking about. Um and since he mentioned, I'm definitely going to back up on it. Is the $2.8 8 million uh for a new 500,000galon water tower. What we were talking about before uh 1 one and a half times our storage we turned over with one water leak. And that was that was a a major leak. It was catastrophic, but one and a half times the water storage. So, we definitely need some more water storage in the town. Uh it's just if we go to flush in a couple fire hydrants in the town, we can start seeing the the tanks drop. And we just need to really look at uh what we could do, not this year, but maybe budget some engineering fees, try to acquire some land in the next year. So

where would it need to be? uh kind of in the same location that Chris was talking about, maybe the um N central high middle school, that area of the town. That's where we could create a triangle with our water towers and it will be best for our distribution system. Jason, we don't really know what splash band is going to do to the head pressure to do. We do not we do not we don't know what the what the water usage is going to be, what the water volume is going to be, and what kind of residual u pressure we're going to have or residual loss we're going to have with that. So, any questions?

Did the Did the engineers said we had we had enough infrastructure to support that flash before moving forward with it? I'm pretty sure we have enough infrastructure. It's just the the residual flows from just don't know. I mean, I mean, I wanted a water patch pad off the bed, but I didn't want it bad enough to take the pressure away from the rest. Think about it this way. You got 248 houses going back in there, too. That's where I'm coming from. Okay. Any other questions? Thank y'all so much.

Have your planning department exact unsustainable are like there has to be something that we can do. I mean it had to be everybody get a state back from from

Good morning and council so glad to be here as always. We're just going to go over the accomplishments and the proposal for the planning department for this year's budget.

Let's talk about no damn story. We're going to try our best not to mention that today, sir. Quickly, code of enforce activity. As you guys know, Mr. Jones has been working very diligently. Here are her numbers as of today. 142 nuisance case, five jumped vehicles. She had three, she did 35 chronic violators. Our chronic violators are the ones who get cited three times in a calendar year. After that third strike, you get a letter from the town saying, "If we come to your property, see this in uh violation of tow ordinance, we automatically send our vendor over there to clean the property." 30 zoning violations. Majority of them come from a lot of our new residents who just under fence permits and sensory builders. So, we've been doing a lot of education, sending stuff out. The front desk finance department's been good. When people come apply for water as a new customer, we get a chance to come and tell them, "Hey, you're going to do a shed fence. come by to town. Let's talk about and see how we can help you out. Trail front yard parking violations, we are seeing them go down, but you still see them lingering around at Woodfield Beach sometimes. So, they're starting to be u numbers going down with that. Eight abandoned structure cases and one minimal housing cases. We also sent out 72 abatement invoices and we do as council always ask us do when we do a nucatement. Once we clean it, we put the lean on the property and bill the owner. Once the owner pays the prop the bill, the lean is taken off. If not, the lean stays on with the life of the property. This just a workload of how we've been looking all season in a bar on a bar chart. Permit and license 167 zoning permits issued as of day. Majority of them are either sensory buildings or single family dwellings. As Chief pointed out in his presentation, Cardinal Woods is doing great. Harvest Creek down there on Breed Love is doing great. So those two are really training permits. 48 sign permits, six fence permits, which we're

starting to see an increase on those. The biggest one is 36 pedal permits. As you know, the town did adopt a fee last year for pedal permits. We were just not getting that many. We are seeing a heavy increase now. People lease pace soliciting. Our town clerk does good putting information on the Facebook page for these companies who come in that's doing cable internet stuff to let them know if you are going to be doing do soliciting come by the town hall to get your permit. So we seen an increase on that. Food trucks have kind of gone down this year. Not what we expect but with it being springtime we know the veno market downtown do a lot of stuff. So we should see them going up. Same thing reduce the cost on those permits. Like give you a yearly utility.

Yes, we did do the yearly one. We only had one person apply for the yearly one. She was the operator at the old store over there behind Bradwell Milling. The green store used to be a convenience store. Now it is a uh Hispanic Mini Mark. She applied for a yearly one and she's already did her 50 bin. So she's told me that business went well. She's coming back to apply for another one probably by the end of this month. You said TRC as you know we uh restructured the TRC. Our TRC kind of met as a as needed basis. Now we have a standing meeting every fourth Monday at 100 p.m. is where the TRC meets. Some main things TRC accomplished this year to meet week kind of helping stewardship along with town manager Lansson UNCC medical center the national arts resoning and the nationals construction of the senior center built labs with puny chun storm water retention between Branswell form build labs and of course all special events before the TRC boards and committees planning board met nine times last year board of adjustments only meets once a year they have not met that yearly commitment but pretty much we have not had any viruses or special use permit requested since we have adopted conditional reszoning. Of course, you know, we prepared all agendas, reports, everything for all of those boards. Downtown service MSD board, eight meetings this year. MSD did get a lot of stuff done this year. Professional development, Miss Jones right now is taking as we speak the CZO class offered by the USC school of government. I myself went to municipal county administration course. Both were taught by the USC school of government. Both these give us professional training and professional leadership skills to continue on working in the town. Historic preservation, that's been a heavy topic for the town with a lot going on. Our historic district, new workload, new responsibility if

approved. We've already started to work with NC historic preservation office. if we adopt this and want to move forward with it. We know right now we had that first kickoff meeting where we got some good reviews from members of the public. But we do want to go back and hear from members actually in the district. We had a lot that night who came out that lived in the district. But we feel like if we done something in spring summertime one more time before we get it to the council, we would get a good headsc to see if we need to move forward. But you know, we do move forward. I'm at the issue coas prepare staff reports agendas recommendations conduct design reviews exterior changes perform inspections and enforcements and also coordinate with shipo and manage the grants this is going to be a lot taking on our department with only two right now and without additional staffing you're looking at slower approvals increase legal risk reduce protection of the historic assets bottom line historic preservation requires dedicated staff if we want to do it right and that's one thing we aim the police for in Nashville plant department is do things right the first time so we don't have to do it the second time.

Can I pause you right there, please? I thought that the um certificates of appropriateness um and all of the review of like the exterior changes and stuff like that would be handled by the board that we put together. The commission would do that. The staff would still have to do like we do for planning board and for you guys is do the uh we would have to do the agenda, the agenda report and also intake all application, go out, meet with the property owner, do the photos, everything we need for that packet. And Bill, you had mentioned maybe doing an inventory to see if there are more that qualify than just what we have identif what the area is first before meeting because right those people need to be invited if we're going to

right and if we wanted to go right now when we did the first one we stopped at 58 it's from everything from the house was the only one on 58 that got an invitation everything from the house all the way down to barn street into the junction all that hub got invitations to come out. But if we want to stand over cuz we do have some houses across date behind the house that do look historic. They should be invited. We can do a second round to make sure they're invited. Also, S Street was on the original list.

I think all that area got letters. Everything in that area got letters. I think once we got to the mayor's house is where we cut the line off at the first round, but we could added all that area right back in there. Also, we need to define what we're going to do and then look at the map to standard and we we went off the map that was provided by the historic That's correct.

If we want to do that, we also would need to budget for the survey to get it disregard how far we want to go. But I guess that will be future down the road. why the position should be split. As you know, Thomas and myself do dual position. She's the planner and the code force officer. I am the planning director also overseeing the downtown stuff. What we're going to do is propose splitting her position and giving an extra person to come in to lighten the load in that area so we can reshow some things. If we split it, the planner will be managing all permits planning. Right now, she's managing all permits planning and code enforcement. If we split it, we will increase in development enforce the workload specializing in efficiency and response time. So what we're looking at, I work with our HR director, Miss Lily, on this. She was saying we can make Thomas the permit tech who does all intake, all permitting, everything that assists me with permitting, reviewing, permitting, processing permitting, all of that stuff, intake for historic stuff. And we decide to have historic commission, all that stuff she will handle. And then the ordinance enforcement officer would now do that part of just all code for. So the ordinance enforcement officer would be doing two-hour parking, trash cans, high grass, junk vehicles, minimal housing, blighted commercial buildings, 2-hour parking in downtown. They would handle all orders enforcement for the town. If you look at other planning departments all over North Carolina, this is structure most municipalities. The permit tech handles intake and public counter service. The code officer handles inspection and violation. The plan staff post on development review and planning policy. What happens without additional staffing? Permanent reviews also slow down. Code force of time slows down. The chronic viral list where we got 32 now drops down. Plan staff is forced to divide time between enforcement and development review. Potential delays for

business and residents seeking permits. Return on investment for the town. 72 code enforcement paper invoices collected or lean improve compliance reduce long-term nuisance enforcement clean up clear neighborhoods protect property buys descri healthy clean positive neighborhoods council investment equals a stronger Nashville faster service resident and businesses stronger more consistent code enforcement better support economic development and a plan department position to manage Nashville field's future growth we did expand some government transparency as you know now all planning board of adjustment MSDs MSD meetings are now online where citizens if they cannot make it out that evening can watch community meetings were online that worked very well when we did the historic one it was live and we heard from lots of people in town that they truly enjoy being able to watch that one live the community meeting we did the other week for the 802 South break street story zone was not live but we recorded it and then uploaded that night a lot of cities in the community right now 95 people went to watch that community meeting. All the citizens in that community that were unable to come that night due to their work schedule have thanked us for being able to give them access to go back and watch and be able to get questions answered. Once again, accomplishments, USC Medical, that was a big one we had over here that's down getting ready to be built. East Point Homes is another one that we're waiting to hear back from. Nash Arts Community Impact with code enforcement. Some key problems at the council vote on cleaning up was Barn Street, Weston Street, Railroad, and Clark. We helped relocate 10 families through the grant funded FEMA mitigation grant. All those families down have been moved out of the Indian Trail subdivision and the last house should be coming down today and we will be closing that grant out with the state and FEMA. We improve safety, reduce blight, enhance quality of life. Host over 50 attendees at the historic homes live stream town hall meeting.

host over 50 people before the 802 South break street meeting. Nine violation of approved fences, 36 for accessory structures. We were able to secure $950,000 with Ben Jones for public consulting for the CDBG grant. Ben and myself are now set the town to reapply again. We have heard that there will be more funding coming down the pipeline for CDBG. Me and Ben have been in discussion about it. So, if it does open up again early, Ben is going to reapply to town again. I told him, please do it. We love the CDBG grants. We feel like that brings a good image to the town. A good image from the council that let people know in the town that we care about you and that we want to see that you are in safe health of the houses regional im mitigation plan with multiple counties. As you know I sit on the Nash Edgecom Wilson mitigation plan helping right there. So we got it adopted position Nashville for future funded opportunities initiated the historic preservation office to work on that stuff. Economic development facilitated facade grants downtown improvements. We updated MSD bylaws, created a new banner program. We think the new banner program works better. Everybody I have talked with said the pricing from the old company was $900. We're only charging 200 and we're keeping it all local by using a craftsman and a true marksman when it comes to creating size. But Tim Glasco, he has did outstanding job with the creation of banners and we truly thank him for taking time. We uh negotiated two developer single family homes on two town own lots. As you know, our new BBA builders, we were able to contact them and get them to apply for the upset bid of two lots 215 South Lumber Street that the town was keeping maintain grass cutting. Now we have a new single family dwelling on it. Also, we have one coming up on South Street we worked on. We increased the zoning fees and we begin brand to MSD. That was one thing MSD told me when we got together was they wanted their own brand that was separate from the town. So, we have the logo contest that will be concluded next week. And of course, we continue the beautifification of flowers all

throughout the MSD TRC. Like we said, we reconstruct under my leadership. We improve in the park coordination. We streamline development. We handle these major projects. And as I think the council does like this, all reszoning and test amendments come before the TRC before they go to the planning board and the council for our recommendation. Lastly, the big impact for 2025, 13 reszoning cases, that is two reasonzoning cases per month. The council has heard 95,000 once again the CDB CDBG multifamily multil infrastructure projects downtown revitaliation initiatives renew streams established identify the new downtown plan department is driving growth in Nashville and as we just said if we could uh get the council to really think on that it would be much needed to bring in additional staff member to help us out council that's my presentation I will answer any question that you guys may have at this proper How many of the 10 families stayed in Nashville?

All 10 of them. Okay. All of them. Yes, sir. They were all property owners out of out of 10 of them, four was rental units and the rest were all property owners. And everybody, we had more than that that wanted to go through the mitigation process, but of course, when you start here and you cannot find a place to locate, they kind of ped out at the last minute, which we truly understand. But now since we tore all those houses down, everybody in any trail sage has been calling my phone and town manager last phone want to know when would the town apply for that grant again because they said if we ever apply again and get funding they will go forward with the program and tear that house down and move to a new location. All six that own property property.

Yes sir. Uh six of them stayed in Nashville. Two of them went on the outskirts of Nashville. Yeah. Aaron went up. Aaron Castellia. He went to Castellia and Miss Pauline went out there on Reg Reg Store Road, but majority of rest of them kind of stay in town. They were renters. They just found a new place in Nashville to rent from a new landlord. If they were probably on, they just found somewhere locally to go. And we did work with local realtors and everybody on this. We tried to tell our people on the program to find local realtors that we were based in this area to work with on it. The majority of them did. I think Aaron found a lady who was local and Miss Paul did. In a nutsh?

Yes, sir. Honestly, we do, sir. Mr. Taylor, Councilman Taylor, we are doing everything we can work with people. As this town continues to grow and we continue to take on more task, historic homes, it's going to take more for me to work on that. So if we can re shuffle some stuff and work with HR director Miss Lily about how we should do it. She's given me a great game plan of bringing somebody in as the water supports officer getting Thomas in so she has experience working with shipper and stuff to give that direction intake and then I can just finalize everything. Any other questions from the council? You did good. You didn't you didn't. You did good. Thank you sir.

We'll take care of that money. All right. We pray.

Good morning, Mayor Hansel. Thank you for the opportunity to have me here today presenting.

We're glad to have you here. So, I am going to be sharing some updates from the HR department regarding our continued commitment and we will also be outlining our recent accomplishments as well as some future goals and some pressing needs to further support the town's mission. So, this slide it has the word serve. As you know, this is our model. It is leading through sincerity, engagement, recognition, vested excellence. At the heart of everything we do is a simple philosophy which is people first. So for us, employees are not just the line item. They are our town's greatest asset. And um these aren't just words, you know, on a page. They are our daily standards that guide us on how to treat one another and how we represent the town of Nashville. So by continuing to prioritize the well-being of our team, we ensure that we are empowering our highest level of commitment to our community. The Pulse of Nashville. So to better understand what the Ps of Nashville stands for, we look at the dedicated teams that keep our town running. And it starts with you all. Our governing body setting the policy and vision. That vision is carried out through our daily um routine by our public safety team, the crews and public works. They are the ones who maintain our infrastructure, our planning team, which is shaping um our growth. And of course behind the scenes it's our administration finance and then we have our parks and recreation library teams who provide the quality of life our citizens deserve. And um in HR our role is to support the people in every one of these circles.

Town landscape and growth. The estimated population of Nashville um in 2026 is estimated at 5949. Nashville is growing. Um we are seeing a growth of about 0.9 or 1% annually. Since 2020, the population has increased roughly by 5.25%. So, our community, as you can see, is on the move. With our population reaching nearly 6,000 residents, Nashville has seen again over 5% growth. While this growth signals a thriving town, it also creates a direct increase in um operational demand. In order to maintain high service levels, our citizens um expect, you know, what our citizens expect from public safety to infrastructure, we must ensure that we have a stable, competitive, competitive, compensated, and expert workforce. They can scale alongside our growing population. This next slide just talks about some of our HR accomplishments. Um so we I am very big on engagement and transparency uh making sure that we are bridging the gap by improving internal communication across all departments. What that means is just that I have an open door policy. It means that anytime that any one of these department heads or even our staff or employees want to come talk to me. My door is always open. They are more than welcome to come in. uh I have brought more awareness to our benefit our benefits that we do provide. Some of our employees didn't know how to uh download their dental cards. You know, sometimes their dental cards, vision cards are mailed out and they can get lost in the mail. Uh I've been sending them out flyers letting them know how they can access it. Our uh medical insurance as

well so they are aware that that's there. uh recognition and morale. I've been working on that. Um you know, it's can be as simple as sending out an email that says happy birthday, happy belated birthday, or um just in any way being there for our employees because again um we you know our our employees are our most important asset. We have continued to use NeoV that is very successful. Um we use uh utilize it to recruit. We were currently recruiting, well still are recruiting for our two senior firefighters. Uh we were recruiting for our maintenance park technician and again that put a position an offer has been made and we are working on the background check and the process that goes behind the scenes on that. Um as far as HR goes, um I'm committed to leading with best-in-class expertise. This month I just earned my BBA in HR and I was awarded um a scholarship from para which is the um public sector human resources association. It's one of the biggest ones in municipal government. It's just um so that mean that is just a certification I will be working on soon. And then for future vision pursuing other HR certifications, higher education to continue to lead Nashville. Next, we're going to talk about some needs. Um, now this here, it doesn't mean that it needs to go into effect today or, you know, within the next fiscal year, but we are going towards this. So, we'll start off with um perhaps in the next year. My envision includes addressing two of these key areas will which in the long run are going to save us time and money. So, first we need to look at staffing needs.

Um, we will be requesting a another position. We talked about potentially maybe starting off with a part-time. It's going to be a backup a backup person that backs up HR, um, our town clerk, and our town manager. Um, and the reason for this is because we, what this person will do, um, we haven't thought of a name just yet, so I'm just using administrative assistant or a communication specialist. um they're going to be hand uh handling data entry, helping with invoice processing and um to ensure accuracy and also compliance. So with um everything being digital online on the web, there are more requirements that are coming. So this person would be able to help us with audit purposes or just acting um as a professional liaison for our community and any internal inquiries that come our way. Um but again our presence is growing also um with social media. So with that um and Lou's done a fantastic job of you know providing real-time updates. But let's just say Lou's out or she's sick or she wants to take a vacation. So we need to have someone that would be able to back us up. Um next up we'll talk about performance and merit software. So once we have our pay structure exactly where it needs to be. this is where this would be very beneficial and um the reason behind that is because right now we've always done a salary study. So whether it's you know a few departments one year and then we focus on um non-public or public safety the next year we we've seen that regardless where where we're headed it it seems that we're never there or or you know we're behind. So with a merit system in place, if we were at the pay

structure where we needed to be, then maybe those costly salary studies, and by costly, it's not that we're outsourcing them to someone, but I mean internally where we're having to adjust salaries or do um emergency salary adjustments with us being in the right pay structure. Then with a merit system in place, we could just focus on cost of living increases and then merits in place, which a merit doesn't have to be the same exact amount every year. Of course, you would decide that at the end of the day. And then we could look at those merits, whether we base it on across the board for say if you were to approve a 2%. Do we look at everyone that's performing based on merit and then do a 2% across the board or do we do up to a 2% which that would mean based on performance like our high performers would get the 2% or ones that are just meeting expectations or needs. Do we focus on a 5% a 1% so on? But again, this is something in the near future um that we could start potentially looking at and planning for. The next slide focuses on retention. So within the last 12 months, um we had 12 staff members who we lost. These were full-time, part-time or retirees. And the departments you see here are just the departments that um actually lost an employee. So HR as you know we had one resignation there. Uh public works within the last year we had four police had one fire had two.

What's the right column? The right column is just showing you how many employees are in the actual team department.

Yeah. So that number can look scary. So police lost one compared to the 25 uh employees they have fired um recently actually in March lost two. Um and then they have a total of 21. Uh we have person rack. So person rack they had two resignations. One was a retirey then we failed it. Then of that um we lost that other employee and now we're getting ready to fill that. So that's why you see two there. And then I've also included I kept the part-time position separate but um overall we have 18 part-time part-time rec positions and we lost two part times there. and library isn't on there because they kept everybody.

I think what you just pointed out is key to this as well. Like, you know, I feel like some of these are um unique situations where Trey left because he's becoming a full-time pastor where we had a retiree. Like that to me is not a retention problem that So maybe the the verbiage is where we're going to the next slide, but this is more of again full-time, part-time retirees. It's just more of time public works is pretty good for parttime people there when I was a teenager too, right?

For the parttime parks and racks. Uh, one was an adult that we lost to a different they took a full-time position correct and one was in school. Yeah. Uh, fire, we have two resations again as of March. Um, there could potentially be more within the next weeks to come. more of our staffing stats. This just shows you the last five years. So, this is a 5-year snapshot. It highlights the clear trend of where we've been at the cost of um just as an FYI, the cost of turnover is a silent budget um killer. And what that pretty much means is that, you know, sometimes we get these employees, we train them, and then if they don't stay and they leave, we have to turn around and train another employee again. So that's taking time because we have to show them either if they've never been in that type of work field, we have to show them the work or we have to show them the the way town of Nashville does it. And then so if they're only staying 6 months, we're only getting enough time to train them and then we're turning around losing them. Um and then that took time from our current staff as well because they're having to help train those employees or they're having to pick up the slack for those vacancies. Um, so when we lose an employee, we don't just, you know, lose a person, we're we're losing an investment because that cost us money. Um, the solution to that, if we're losing them, of course, to go to um a bigger municipality or something else, would be to retain our employees. of course when we lost um an employee as Kate mentioned to um a different calling than you know we were going to lose that employee anyways or um but one of the things I've heard is um well there isn't a lot of room for growth. So again with our parks and rack part-time position

where we lost one to a full-time position um that we could see that as in well we didn't have a position for them to go into as well. So we have to also compensate our team fairly because again when they're having to pick up slap for someone else sometimes they're having to do more work and more work um can lead to burnout growth versus staffing levels. Um, so the reality we face is that Nashville is growing. Um, but our headcount is still stagnant. We don't get a lot of new positions or there isn't, again, like I mentioned, a lot of room for growth. So, one of the things that was brought to my attention by staff is that um because most positions are filled. So, I had I just recently did some accent interviews with our firefighters and we're like, well, you know, when we came on, we knew that we were filling the team, filling that department. So, what that means is that there they they knew unless someone was going to retire or someone was going to leave to go somewhere else, there wasn't going to be room for growth for them to look at. Um so again um our planning, public safety, public works administration teams, they're they're seeing growth and it's outpacing our capacity. So when demand goes up and staffing stays the same, it it can lead to burnout and burnout sometimes is what can lead to more turnover. So when I mentioned the exit interviews that I had with the fire department, that was some of the things that the staff were actually mentioning to me. And that is how also I became aware that that within the next few weeks we may be losing more staff. It hasn't been confirmed. We haven't

received the resignations, but I wouldn't be surprised if we did get two more. Um, so some may say that we are a training hub. The town of Nashville is a training hub. Um, what does that mean? That people come here, get trained up just to lead to the next best thing. And respectfully, we cannot afford that because we are train again like I mentioned, we are training these staffs. We are putting resources, money into these staff. And then for them because word of mouth or I call it the ripple effect because they heard that the next neighboring town or you know municipality is offering them more money then they turn around and leave. Um we're going to get that anyways. Some people are going to leave and sometimes that's fast. You know sometimes it's best to part ways but we don't want to lose our good staff, the ones that have been here for years. um due to compensation or due to that they don't see the career growth or that we're not supporting them. So sometimes, you know, like I mentioned, a personal leave is the right move for both sides, but we want to make sure we're not losing the good ones. Next, we're going to I'm going to show you just a small comparison. Um, so you'll see some positions are mentioned here. Not every single position or every department was mentioned, but this was just some that I picked out for you to have a visual on. Uh, you do have a salary study that was provided to you and we also have a salary review that we did from the League of Municipalities that can be emailed to you. The reason we did not print it out is because it is about 400 pages and that would have been

too much. Um, but from what we found out from what was surveyed, it's kind of clear that our current pay is falling behind the market. So to ensure this wasn't just a guess, we looked at that huge packet that the league provided to us. Um, and we compared seven different towns in comparison to get these salaries. And that's the breakdown of that salary review that you do have in your hands. Um, and specifically two towns that were kind of sticking out there were Butner and Williamson. And they kind of fell within our population in our structure. Williamston more in line um because they are around the 5,000 population. Butner is a little bit larger. They are in the 8,000 population. However, they did mirror us um when it came to our growth, our services um that we provide and again our positions that we do have. Um the conclusion is that we are a little a little behind compared to those two. If we took the average salary compared to all seven towns that were reviewed, it does show that um Nashville has for whatever reason stayed behind on the market. Um so

do we know turnover rates for those sets or these two towns?

Um no no we don't. That is the information that we would probably have to pick up the phone and call those towns if we wanted to have that information. I did have to call Butner um because they for two positions just to see where their pay was at because they didn't report it to the league. Um but if you would like that would be something that would be valuable I think because you never know exactly what it is that's incentivizing people to go whether it's 100% money and And really it comes down to that and they might say growth and you know career path and things like that but at the end of the day it is actually money or it could be a combination of those things. Yeah,

that would be and Lou did just email you guys the salary study from the league. It's 300 and some pages 420 as well.

Yeah. So that would be good information that I can get to you all and provided to you. Um, we we just want to stay where our neighboring towns, municipalities are at, you know, because we don't just want to there, you know, with money it's always complicated because we don't ever know someone's going to say it was due to salary or it was due to other reasons. It could have been a resignation, a termination. Um but when information is public such as salaries and public information is getting put out there and and then on social media you see people sharing information and then you see town of Nashville at the bottom. It it doesn't always it doesn't you don't want your town to be known as the one on the at the bottom of the list. Um especially wi with our location where we're at because we are like right in the middle of we're right by 64. So, we're right in the middle of either Nash County or Wake County and and you know, we're within a driving distance where sometimes we're not going to be able to compete with bigger municipalities, bigger counties. For example, Johnson County. I've heard people say, "Well, we're living in Johnson County." I recently came from Johnson County, and at the rate that they're growing, they're massive. So, we would never be able to compare to them. But we do want to be able to compete with our surrounding area and not lose one of our employees due to that only reason, you know, which is compensation.

I would like I would like to see how close we are to to Zebulun and Wake Forbulin and Wake Forest. Okay. The one that shocked me and I don't know if it's accurate, but we should find out. um something got posted on Friday with police department and we were below spring but that was concern. Yeah, that's starting salaries for police. They got a huge range.

Yeah. So yeah, what it is is um and and that's conversation we've had as well is that uh for example with police is sometimes what what other municipalities are doing is that they they're focusing just on one team. Um, and one of the things that came about in an article that I was reading, um, and I want to say that it was Chapel Hill and I can't remember off the top of my head, it was three different municipalities. I know Chapel Hill was one of them where they were saying that this wasn't a public safety year, but their main focus was going to be on public safety because of retention

and also losing staff to other municipalities that are offering them more money. And that is just because of the type of work it is and no one wants to do it no more or no one wants to risk their life, you know. So, so again the article was reading that they would be talking about that and putting it into their budget. Um, even though it wasn't their year, um, but that was where their main concentration would be. Um, but sometimes those departments are just things that you do have to look at one by one because for example, Wilson County, um, city of Wilson, I'm sorry, not Wilson County, city of Wilson, they hadn't done a salary study in years and then they had to do one not too long ago for their police department and they raised the starting salary for police officers to 55 and that's straight out of the academy. Um, and then we had Rocky Mount that was on city of Rocky Mount that was on the news two years ago that they raised their starting salary to 60,000.

We can't use Rock, but that's why they'll pay for that. Don't throw it out there. Correct. And unfortunately, that wasn't a good decision for them. No, it was not. Um, and and it brought more problems to their situation. But it's just things that in general, just speaking to this, that we're looking at that they knew that it was a problem. Maybe they had other problems with that, but they acknowledged that their pay needed to go up for these. But I don't but I don't know if I don't recall us you losing any employee to the city of Williamson or No, but I think this is a really good example. But we have lost but we have lost we have lost to Zetti to Wake Forest and when yeah we um one of our fire departments is going to Durham

Johnson County

and Johnson County like what you had said as far as us trying to keep up with Johnson County Wake County like we just can't we cannot somebody want to drive an hour to and from work and do that then that's on them. I like what you did as far as picking these two towns because I'm just looking at like average um household income or location, you know, like where are they close to and and what other things are they competing with? So, um looking at Butner, that was closer to Wake Forest, their household income was 72,000. Um and so that was a little bit higher than Nashville. Looking at Williamston, um their average household income was 40,000 versus us, which is 61 to 68,000. So I think when we're comparing our citizens, this is a pretty good dip into like what we would be expecting for population size, household income size, where the location is. So yes, we're not losing anybody to either one of these, but I think this is a a good snapshot of expectations.

Um, and the reason I didn't choose Sabulin, but again, that's information that I can get that's easy to just pick up the phone and, you know, call them and ask them for their information is because they didn't have a lot of the positions that we currently have. um their population has grown. Window was really close to Nashville years ago. Um and but then they grew so now we can't compete you know so so at some time they were very similar in size to us but then with the housing market and everything you know after co um and they don't have all the positions we have. So they have more they're able they have more funds where if they only have 12 positions they're able to you know give that out or do special salary adjustments for their staff. So whereas maybe their starting pay is different as far as on the books goes or what's public they have room for a hiring range whereas we don't have a hiring range where you can come in and negotiate your salary. it's going to be um either really close to that starting salary or you're going to or we're or if we're going to negotiate we're going to give you that 5% increase at the upfront but then there is no incentive afterwards. Um so that is one of the reasons why I didn't focus like on Zebulun when spring cup um but again that is information that I can't provide to you. The next slide shows you phases um like phase one, phase two, phase three. But another thing to note is that there's no dates, meaning that this is something that we can work towards after more discussion. It doesn't mean that it's even going to go through or that we've agreed on it. It's just something to look at to have a plan for our future. Um, phase one would be a cost of living increase. Um, and again, that's probably the closest

one because that is something that if you approve and it is adopted, we can potentially look at implementing July 1st um of this fiscal year. Uh, now there isn't percentages here. Um, but I when we do get more into this, I would be proposing a 33% cost of living adjustment and that is just based on CPI information and what other municipalities are doing. I am on a list serve that involves other HR administrators and towns and some of them were already starting to put 2.7 2.9 3.1%. So, I think if we go by um by what is um re like what everyone is going to probably be doing around our area, I would probably be suggesting a 3% COLA. Um this 3% would provide more purchasing power to our employees and and is still within the market norms of what other government entities would be doing. And um Social Security did already give their rate and I want to say that they're they're going up 2.8. Ryan, do you is it 2.8 2.8%.

Spend it all in one place.

Um phase two would be my next recommendation is we sh we shift more towards market alignment. Again, market alignment for me would be that compared to other towns that are within our population or size um or that have our positions um with a plan that some employees would receive a 2% adjustment. Um and then some other employees, specifically our one of our bigger departments, public works, where it wouldn't focus on just a 2%. they would focus more on the position and where they are on the pay structure and where they would need to move up to be more average. Um, when we reviewed this information, we did not put employees at a percentage above because we do have numbers and that's there and again it's within the salary study that we did. Um, so it didn't put anyone way above average or maybe even where they should have been. So that's something to keep in mind that this was based off of information that was provided to us from 2025. Um, but let's just say that these other towns come in and they do a cola increase and then they do a salary adjustment. We won't have that information because it's still too soon. and that is what they're probably going to be implementing in 2026. So again, we put employees as close as we could to the 2025 average. Um, and that information has been provided to you. So again, I don't have the exact figures, but it is it did show that our public works department is very behind um our town hall and then our police department as well. Now this four-phase plan it's more again

like I mentioned like a road map. So it it doesn't mean that it has to happen today. Um if we were to go with phase one and phase two, phase one could become effective July 1st. Phase two after further review we could implement it come January 1st. Um and then phase three would be approval for the needed positions that we would have to further discuss with all departments in you of course um because results have shown that we are growing. So a lot of these departments do need more positions. Public works need positions. Fire needs position. Um planning and development needs positions and again a town hall needs a position. and that one position that if granted it would be a person that does it all because they would benefit HR um probably helping somewhat with front desk as well where adds some coverage if someone needs to go out to lunch or they're in a meeting and again our town clerk. um phase four is that if we could knock some of these out and be where we need to be, then we wouldn't have to focus on a salary study again. Or let's just say that you're interested in seeing what the salary study has to show. Um then we could continue to do that, but then it doesn't necessarily mean that it would mean that we would need more increases. So then if if we were at a comfortable place, we could focus on a merit base going forward, which on the long run would save us money.

So why wouldn't we switch phase 4 up to like phase one or phase two? Exactly. Why wouldn't we switch sooner to a merit-based system so we can start rewarding our high performance employees? I was just thinking that it was going to be too costly to do it all within one year. So, if we do a cost of living come July

and then we do our um salary adjustments come January, then we could do um a merit base. But then where within the fiscal year would it fall appropriately versus if we correct if we do a cost of living in July, we do a salary adjustment January and have in place a merit system, then it would probably be the next fiscal year because we would probably do it, we could either choose to do it towards right when the new fiscal year begins, which would be July, or we could choose to do May in Octo like start the process proess of doing the merit performance um in October and implement it depending on where you were at come January.

I guess like in I guess it's maybe we just don't have all the information or we have too much information. I don't know what it is. But just in looking at this one right here, yeah, there are some that match completely. There are some below and then there are some that are well above what the um salary based study that the I guess like me had done. Yeah. So if we did a cola across the board, it doesn't fix those that are well above. But if we did a merit base, we could bump up some of those that are at or below that deserve to be higher.

Correct. So we we talked about that. Um, and the reason behind it was at first we were thinking of doing a COLA and then doing the salary adjustments for those that were really below. And then the question came up, well, we knew it wasn't a public safety year, but we wanted to look at it across the board across all departments and keep it very consistent. So that is why um we if you see some columns have a 2% so those that did not benefit from the salary study we were thinking a 2% across the board increase just to keep them competitive which would be that of our fire department for example just using them as an example. But then our department that was like really behind would except for like one or two employees was our um public works department. So the the reason in public works you might see maybe one to three employees that are well above it's because there was something that was done a few years ago prior to me where it was based on years of service to the town not years of service or based on overall experience or years of or just the or the position. It wasn't the the when that salary adjustment was done it wasn't based on the on the position in itself. was done as years of service to town of Nashville. So some of course that had been here a long time benefited from that.

So it is added compression. Um and compression is that one of those employees could be managing or supervising five staff and three other staff are way above them. Um which shouldn't be that way. So we are trying to also fix compression. Didn't we do didn't we do a merit price base increase a couple years ago is for some of the departments I think we did for the fire department and for the police department did you a couple years ago I don't know if it was merit it was an increase it was an increase I don't think it was merit no it may not have been merit but we did it because everybody

some of them some of them got a big increase and some of them got a marginal increase and that may be the 2021 um study that I'm talking about I don't necessarily know what it was called then. However, it wasn't it it was good for those that benefited out of it, but not every last year I put on council in this meeting that we call it merit, but it's not merit. We're just giving everybody something and we need to get away from that. I said that this third year in a row said we need to give merit to people that have done great and do great and

and not give merit to the whole town. But you can't get merit give merit just like in public education till you get people up to where they need to be because then it's in vain. Yeah. cuz cuz if I'm making low low, you know, below and I'm working hard, you know, I'll get a little but I mean, you've got to get everybody on a fair level where they need to be before you can honestly give merit and it not cause ill will among your people.

And that is why it's towards the bottom because that would have been the perfect picture. If everybody was where they were supposed to be, then again, you don't have these costly salary study situations. You would have a cola due to cost of living inflation and then you would have your regular merit and then we would just be budgeting today potentially for a merit, right?

Um where that doesn't mean everyone will get it. That's up to you whether the employee whether you get it or not supervised. But then you have a performance appraisal in place that can back up that data, that information based on this. The employee signs off on it, meaning that they're they know, they're aware. So come next year or the year prior or 5 years down the road, if we were to do a salary study again, now you have information why this person is so behind this person. I mean, I hope we wouldn't wait 5 years, you know, um to to figure out that something's wrong with this employee. her act, but then you would have information to actually back up that shows the results that this person was not performing where they needed to be. But that is how it usually works. So, um, a salary study can be done every other year or every two years or 3 years, but it doesn't always mean

that the results are going to come about where we're below. But if we've been doing these salary studies and we have continued to be below and then we do them again and it shows again it's because we're not staying up to market or we're not fixing the problem. We're just putting like a band-aid and saying today you just get $1,000 increase um for annual and but that $1,000 increase didn't get you where where you needed to be based on the market. It was just here you go um to keep you quiet for this year or happy content so that you can you know continue to show show up. So um but it doesn't mean we don't have to do it. It's doable. Um there there's a lot of systems out there. We we have one right now but it's paper format. But if it had meaning behind it, then it would be doing us more justice. So potentially we don't have the funds to buy a performance or appraisal system. Um, Neo gov does provide what they call perform. However, it is very costly and when and usually it's on a contract base. So let's just say they do three years, then you would pay one amount this year and then the next year you'd pay another one, but only the first year you're also pay an additional amount because they're helping you implement it. And then there's, you know, um backup help assistance if you need to call them. However, it by costly, this is just a rough number, probably 14 $16,000. But if we already have a performance in place that's paper right now this year and that would save us money. Then if we actually implemented and gave it value meaning that there's something behind it and that you this is the deadline and this is when you get your performance and it means something then then you would benefit from it. Another thing with merit is that merit is usually you

have to be you have to be able to grade someone on their performance. So a probationary employee would have to understand that they wouldn't be entitled to a merit until after the probationary period. Um so it would just depend on when we implement it when the employee gets hired. So let's just say we implemented effective in October then an employee that was hired in January would benefit from it but someone that's been hired in July wouldn't but they would be next year. But if we started them on a competitive salary um then they that would be okay because they know what they're coming into and they would have something to look valuations of all employees. Yes, we currently are. Yes.

Um but that but again employees aren't motiv aren't motivated towards it because there's nothing behind that yearly evaluation. It's just here you go. Thank you. And that's that's why we got the merit. Yes. Right. But we got to fix the problem before we get the merit. Merit will be great. Yes. But I watched it move uh ruin public education. The merit pay.

And and merit can be whatever you want it to be. So again, if you want it to be based on a percentage awarding high performers, then that's an option. Or if you want it to be across the board that as long as you're meeting standards then you do a percentage then that's something there as well combination where you do a higher percentage for those top performers and then a lower percentage for that. Yes. But some people want to come to work and and get a job and go home and that's okay and some to work happy loving to be there and some moment and groaning and that makes a difference. And and that's why earlier I said sometimes when some leave, you know, turnover isn't always bad, but sometimes it's not a good fit. And I need

Yeah. Um and and you know, it it puts it back on the supervisor as well. Um because when you're doing an appraisal, then again, I don't expect 5 years to go by and you finally come to me and say, "We had a problem." Then where was your coaching? Where was your documentation all along? You know, the thing of it is I agree 100%. I mean, it's embarrassing when we're below someone like spring. It really is and we need to fix it. I don't care if we go and phase one, two, and three. I mean, this is something we really need to get.

I mean, I would love to implement this. You you give me the go and we'll work on it, you know, but again, I I didn't want it to all feel like too much because with this, there is a cost and it adds up to everything else we need. But if we were able to find a solution, one of the options, you know, that I said saving money is keep the paper evaluation for now and do that. Um, again, another thing was it it took about 2 weeks with me and Tresa going back and forth doing the salary review because again, sometimes you do have to pick up the phone. You can't just rely on information that's given to you. And that saved money because a salary study can cost up to $50,000. And we didn't look at it based on the name. We looked at it on titles, positions, and what these, for example, these other two towns had the structure because that is again why I mentioned that we didn't just focus on Wendow, Springh Hope, or Zebulun. We wanted to find the towns that were similar to us, not just maybe in population, but also the structure that we currently have as far as positions go.

Questions? Any questions? So you need to keep in mind too, mayor, it's it's it is embarrassing to find out that we are lower than Springhole. I understand that uh Springho did get a raise, but they but they do not have a town manager to cost part of that crap right now just like M just went through. So I think Spring is hired. I've heard I heard at a meeting the other day. They have. They have. They have. They have. Okay. But um would you get you know I get what you I just want us to do right but I certainly don't want us to get the situation right now was in

but I don't think we will but that I feel all of our leaders have integrity and I think we're on the right track and we just need to as I always say this element a bite at a time we don't have to bring them out there. Thank goodness and that's that's a good thing u mayor and we talked about that as well. That is why unfortunately as much as we would love to give our employees the highest salary or put them way above the average, it wasn't something we we did. We came in and say at least to what 2025 shows, whatever happens 2026, we don't know.

Um but yeah, so we, you know, we want to clear give the clear message to our employees that we care about them and we want them to stay and we don't just want to be a training hub. We want to be a destination place. All right, so that is all for today. Do y'all have any more questions for me? Thank you so much. I think you've answered all of our questions before we got coming up which Lou is going to give quickly. Uh Trussa didn't have anything as far as a presentation for finance. It's a reload and go and library is pretty much the same. He's fine. He just

he was he was making his presentation pretty. So, he's going to hand it we're going to hand it back to you in just a minute. So, I'm hoping we can finish by 1:00 if you guys are okay with that. We can take a break if you guys want to come back, too. I didn't bring snacks this time cuz last time I think like five pieces of fruit were ate and like four donut holes. So, I want to eat all right. It is It is noon. You guys want a break for a half hour and come back? Yeah, let's go ahead. If we pass out, this one's fast. And watching you got

Do you want us to go grab grab you something real quick? I'm right now. You want to get some naps? Go get some. Go buy a whole case of navs. Yes. Okay. You want orange or orange or square round? That old cheese in there. Old school style. Old school style. I didn't eat right then and I didn't eat cuz I was six last night. You were what? Oh, you were. Yeah. Yeah. I used to keep in I always do, but I brought my original the one time I don't bring it. One time you bring it to Har.

That's right. I'm going to bring it next year no matter what. In some of our other workshops that we're having, I'll wait for Bill to get back. Miss Brenda, you know how students in school can't pay attention when they're hungry, right? I'm one of those. Oh, no. Yeah, we need to put some more water back in. No, that I do know. I I think the tax drink, but I'm not sure. But they just seem to be disappearing. Oh, that's probably keep that open. Yeah. Well, the aid is AC doesn't work back there. So, we've been keeping the door open. So, the temperature stays a little more. We got a lock and a box and fix our icing.

Is that a lot of Yes. Got squirrels running through the ceiling. Pile of some sort of excrement of spider roach something in the bathroom. That's the men's room that I had to use because the women's room is still out of water. Oh, back here. Yeah. And the men's lock. No, the men's did not close. Well, that's what I was told to leave the door open. I don't know. It's been out of order for like 6 months now. I have not used I was told leave the door because that was that was a Jurassic World that went through.

I've never heard that. I know likeing across that's rest. There must be no insulation up there whatsoever. Okay. Sounded too heavy for a squad. That sounded like a raccoon or paw to me, but hey.

All right. So, this is the town of Nashville admins accomplish accomplishments and budget request. Well, the down button. Um, a year of progress. We had strong fiscal management, infrastructure improvement, increased transparency, and community engagement growth. Um, town manager leadership was strategic planning and oversight. He had budget development, department coordination, and grant management. Um his the infrastructure projects this year were Red Oak water extension, Essex Road sewer extension, Regency estate sewer extension, sewer manhole ceiling projects that are ongoing and the three-phase power upgrade at South Creek Lift Station. Um, our economic development was the Nashville Storage Units, the Freedom Industries, Project Bailey, the UNCC Health Medical Clinic, Brazil Family Farms Expansion at the Nashville Business Center, Build Labs at the Nashville Business Center, and a joint water detention pond at the Nashville Business Center. And that was very short of Ry's accomplishments because he was busy and we didn't do it. So my over my town clerk overview um we had a big big project this year that got put into place was our new website. We have improved communication with real-time updates. We have easy access to agenda minutes, videos and public notices. Mobile friendly and userfriendly design. It's a central hub for all town information. Modern and professional look for the town. It supports economic development and growth. It has even easy navigation to the departments and services and promotes community involvement and participation.

Um, better service and engagement. We're going to cover that a little bit with online forms. Um, if you look here, we didn't have a lot of forms online before. Um, we have some. We have all of these. I don't I'm not going to go through them all if you don't want me to, but all of these are all online that are automatically sent to different departments. Um, the bulk pickup will go to the finance department for the girls up front. Chang chamber reservations go to me. Um, we have public records requests for both the police and for me. Um, me and Caleb both get a notification for those and then we respond to those. We since we have those we have seen that uh increase um sit in a complaint or suggestion. We've had that a couple of times. One time sometimes good sometimes you know a complaint mainly about water and potholes. Um which we fix I send to Jason and he gets right on them. Um and those are the other kind of different ways that they can do online forms. as with all with the new website. Oh, where did it go? There we go. Um, so with this new website, we have email and text alerts for meetings, outages, and events. Um, and we have where people sign up for these. These are for the subscribers. And the board of adjustments information, we have 28 people signed up for those. for downtown strong advisory board. There's 218 people signed up to receive information from those planning board, 228. Town announcements, um since we sent out our water, we put it in the water bill this last time, um it jumped from 200 to like 432. Our town council meetings where they will get agendas, um have jumped to 259. And the town council news, thank you

Megan, very very much. Megan does the town council news. She sends it out once a month. It's now got 432 people signed up. My newsletter. That's the town council news. I love that.

That's the town council news. Um got a lot of people signed up for that. Hoping, you know, as we go and we grow, we'll get more people signed up and as they hear about it. Um our social media growth, we have um so on Facebook you can do they they give you some breakdowns. So, this past year, I ran this in from July to Friday, um, we had 1,571,617 views, which was up 377%. That's in 2026. This year, yes. From July of 2025 to Friday.

Wow. Um, we had 1,500 new followers and our follow uh so our total followers are up to 4533 which is up 51.9%. Um, we had 12,275 interactions, which is, you know, like the thumbs up, you know, whether they made comments, stuff like that. So, we had 8,000 reactions, which is sad face, happy face, thumbs up. Um, we had 1,600 comments and I have to tell you like 99% of them are let's go back 98% of them are positive. I was going to ask that question.

Yes, we do not have a lot of negative comments. There's occasionally someone that says something mainly they just like to get on there and be snarky, you know, not not from the usually from the same person. Yes, it usually is from the same person. And I think if I like have like Facebook stopped them a little bit that they don't even live in town. But hey, it's okay.

Um that is they're a part of the community. And um 1766 shares. So a lot of that is um if I put a road outage or a water break or a pothole or something going on or some of the events um trash pickup changes that gets shared. So, social media has really grown. Um, I didn't do it from when I started, but it is it is has has really really risen. Um, the community outreach that I've done this year, I did Blooming Festival. I'll be doing Blooming Festival. I did it last year. I'll do it again this year. We had Halloween Street with the council booth. Um, that was fun. We had a great time packing out a lot of candy and I've started American 250 planning meetings. Um, and hopefully we can really having struggle getting people to want to be involved. Um compliance and records, we've had um 19 public records requests that were received and responded to. Um uh but I've talked to some other clerks and they have what why am I doing? Um they all are up on just odd things. Nothing individual just like want to know our procurements and I it's just that's mainly mainly finance.

Are these citizens and like fancy or is it No, it's just some honestly most of them are just some weird little website that that Yeah, but it's everywhere. All of them are getting like like me and Tracy and Nancy who work in Dores like it's just like a broad broadcast that they send out to lots and lots of different information. So Nancy just calls Yeah, she just calls or emails. She doesn't fill out the form. Would you really want that? No, I would not. I'm perfectly happy with emails.

Yep. Exactly. Um, oh, did I stick one in there in the wrong spot? All right. So, the budget request this year. There you go.

Oh, so our That's right. I I thought it was the other one. 2026 priorities are infrastructure investments, public safety needs, economic development, and computing community improvements. That's kind of a ranking you know for which is every year. So budget request for this year for me um for the town. So our ADA compliance the American with Disability Act has prohibited discrimination by state and local government since 1990. In 2024, the Department of Justice published a final rule explicitly requiring all government websites, SAS mobile apps, and other digital contact and priorities meet the specific accessibility standards. This marks a fundamental shift. Municipalities can no longer wait for accommodation request, but must build digital services that are accessible by default. The mandate is clear. No residents should be denied access to essential government services because of disability whether applying for permits, paying taxes or assessing emergency information.

What that mean? Okay. So, how that affects us? So, that how that affects us is we have a lot of PDFs on our website that are a service the forms for requesting things. Sean all where is he? Oh, he went to go get that. All of his forms are pretty much PDFs. He doesn't have a software company that does all that. PDFs are not readable by screen writers, screen readers. So, okay.

So, like I have I have like sign minutes. Mine aren't so much because we do have a link when I upload them they go. But I do put our signed ones on there. But it's mainly finance has some PDFs. I I have a few, but Sean has a lot. Why are they not readable by students? That's rough question. It's cuz they're all usually scanned. It's It's a weird thing. We've got another meeting on the 30th with a company that I'm getting ready to talk to you about that probably could explain it a lot better. I actually had computer issues. Luckily, Koi set in on the meeting. I was trying to get in on the meeting. My computer froze, shut down. It was a mess. So, by the time I got

What's the answer? How do you So, the answer is um a new software that automatically converts all PDFs on the website to to a readable format. Something that can be editable like not a word.

No, no, they can't edit it. It's just that the screen reader will read it. So, the company is um $4,100 a year and plus a 5% uplift every year. And I put on here a one time because at the time I thought so, but I went through the contract there was not a one time,000. Um, so it's fixing the problem. It makes all documents accessible. It converts all PDFs into HTML transcripts. It works on existing and future documents automatically. It makes documents searchable, readable, and mobile friendly and handles even scanning complex documents. There's no need to manually remediate thousands of PDFs. So, if we were to go in and individually try to convert all our PDFs, that's they were talking I mean, what were they what did he say? pin the

so they've got this new software that's compi that they patented it there's the only ones that have it civics plus will go retroactively through our website automatically and update all old PDFs and it runs in the background on any new ones that we update so we don't have to worry about it moving forward other companies you can pay somebody to come in and manually do every single PDF it's going to get you up to par for now but then you've got to be very conscious you put on and there was a cra that's what I was trying to figure out how much remember how much that was to actually pay them to manually come in and it was it was a lot more than that a lot more than this exactly

civic plus well yes civ plus well civic plus houses our um ordinances so we use them for because they bought whoever we used to do it with so they're a really large company that does a lot of government work. So, it's called Streamline. Oh, it's called Streamline, but they were bought by Civics Plus, which I don't know if they did that after your after the meeting or not.

So, that's not a big request. We Yes, we would like a person, but um Lily covered that. Um but that's the one and it's really um it's really not a request. It's a mandate. We have to have it done by April 26 of 2027. So, we really don't have a option on this. And what is the uh penalty? So, we could be sued or

we could be sued by any ADA per any person that could not and there are people that that's what they do. I had a clerk um cuz it's not in I had another clerk friend who had a guy come in recorded the whole thing about well how are you handling any ADA request and at this time because we can she was like well I would sit down with you or sit down with somebody and we would answer all the questions and we'd write in and I'd write in the answers but that is no longer anything that we can do. So yes, we could be sued. Yeah, I could be sitting around waiting to have an opportunity soon. Exactly. Exactly.

Mhm. And I take it if Santa Claus missed something, we would still have the argument that we've hired somebody and do this. Exactly.

This is probably too. Yes. Well, and and another thing like when we put pictures up there, we describe it. So, like if you look at our website, if I I've not ever got a screen have a screen reader or know anyone who has one, but when we put a picture up there, we have to describe what the picture is. So, when a screen reader, if you hover

the mouse over I I've never done a screen reader. I think it does cuz it's for blind people read to you what they're looking at. It's like a TV program that like reads out. So, and that's why we have to describe whenever we upload a picture, we describe that picture cuz like if you go to code enforcement and you hover over a picture, it's like house with debris in front.

And we now have on our website where we uploaded a um we have a with granicus that before we could ever submit anything, it captures and tells us whether or not it's compliant. But problem is about all our PDFs. So we get rid of the other program. What program? The one that tells you No, that's just part of our website package. That's just that's built into the website package. That's the website package doesn't have another package that no to go through all of our old stuff and convert it. I I doubt it. Maybe

maybe if we hire somebody, we could get it all done and then they would be the ADA compliant person. I mean, that is a real possibility. I don't think we can hire anybody for no $4,100 a year. Not unless they're working one day a week. No, I'm done. So, thank you. It's my next. All right. Our final one then is the uh PD shot. You got 30 minutes. 30.

I told everybody 20. Nobody's stuck with it yet. DC3.

Mark, thank you all for your time. I will try my best to keep it under 30 minutes down here.

Down here. So, I'm gonna do a quick review of the uh last year and as well talk about the three issues per se and uh some of the things we've accomplished. All right. So, as of right now, we're averaging about two community meeting uh community events a month. um that does not include the things that we're tasked to aside from a lot of these are parks and race events that we either do alongside with them or we partnership with them. Um and then some of the other ones are just officer initiated events as well. Reading at the uh kids place to be. Uh we did cookies with a cop I think last Friday at the uh senior center. Um just an astronomical amount of community events which is good. Um it fits into the six pillars of law enforcement which I'll talk about here in a little bit. Um, this past year we ran 15,166 calls for service, which is an all-time high over the past 5 years. U, we pull these stats straight from Nash County Communications the same way I pulled the other stats from everyone else in the county with the exception of Rocky Mount because their dispatch is not our dispatch as well. Uh, right now per capita, we're running about seven times per capita. Seven times the call service the sheriff's office is and two times the call Rocky Mount is per capita. I know that seems hard to believe, but it is a very reality. Um, this year was our second, it was our highest year following 2021. There's really no rhyme or reason, but what I can tell you is this year we experienced a extremely high rate in child sex crimes. I don't know why sexual assaults and child sex crimes are going up, but we did do some proactive things this year to try to curb that and make sure that they know that we have a hard stance not just on narcotics and violence, but also on children. Um, this year we arrested 521 individuals. That's almost two people a day. Um, that's a lot of people in custody. I think sometimes Nashville gets the perception that we don't do a

lot. Um, I'm here to tell you that two people a day is a lot of people for three people on a shift. Uh, this year we saw a noticeable increase in firearm seizures. Um, this is just 80 interactions with people that we seized illegal firearms ranging from a wide range of things. Um, last year it was 23, this year it was 80. U, we've noticed that juveniles are carrying firearms a lot more frequent. Um, and these are also every single encounter that an officer deals with someone that had a firearm, but this is also not documenting the things where we did not discover a firearm on your day-to-day interactions. Um, the job is becoming predominantly dangerous. Um, we're seeing that people don't want to get into the career as much anymore. Um, there's a reason why we issue a bulletproof vest in a gun. Um, good news though, uh, this year we only submitted one insurance claim and chief, correct me if I'm wrong, we didn't actually submit it. five. Um that was an all-time low for us. Um I'd like to account that we started doing after action reviews. Um part of our accreditation process is we had to implement after action reviews with specialized instructors um who are on our part-time staff. They come in and they talk about what you could have done, how you could have done it better. Um this right here worked this time, but next time it could get you killed. Um and brought a lot more awareness to some of the things. Um this goes from use of force and also vehicle maneuvers. Um, if you look at 2024, 2025, some of the discussions we've had is the difference between a wreck and an intentional action. Um, I think that, and it I don't know that there's a simple solution to this, but the league has advised us for uh pit maneuvers to file an accident report. Well, talking to the highway patrol and every other local agency and haven't done this job a while, when you intentionally hit someone, that's a use of force. That's not an accident.

Um, the reason being, and there's pros and cons. Uh the pro side is is when we file the insurance claim, we get the money for it. We can get the car repaired. The downside to it is our fleet's not extremely large. Um whereas the highway patrol, they refuse to do accident reports because it's not an accident. Accident is an accident, not an intentional action. Um they have cars that they can back fill them faster until restitution is paid out in the court system, which our court system is backed up. But good news. So hopefully if we can continue this, our insurance rate can start to drop a little bit. Uh narcotics seized by type. I'm not going to go through this much. Um there are drugs in Nashville. That's roughly se 76 kilos of narcotics. Obviously marijuana being the highest. Um but it is prevalent in our community. And then grants committed. Now note the years prior. I pulled that from Mr. Lansing's master list. Those are grants that were approved every year up until this year. This year we've already been approved for four and then three out of them we were already denied. But this was an all-time high for submitted grants. Um, we have someone in house that writes grant. I don't want to say his name because he'll get taken advantage of, but he writes our grants for us and we take good care of them and we are hoping to get stuff through them. They're not always as large. Um, it can be something for as simple as a a ballistic vest for a K9 or it can be flashlights. Um,

all things that we can try to do uh to get money that doesn't impact the taxpayer because that impacts my wallet too. Now, where do you get notification of available grants? Does he search those out or she search?

So, I get a ton of emails uh either through the National Academy or through the North Carolina Department of Justice, the North Carolina League of Municipalities. And then he also is in some forums where some local law enforcement area will kind of brainstorm some things. And then there's some that's just general public safety like the firehouse subs grant, something that both the fire station and the police department can submit for. And some of these grants are very, very narrow. um you can only apply for one or two objects at a time. Um so it's not as broad as you know maybe requesting funds from the federal government. This is more so specific items. The BBP grants which we haven't participated in the last 5 years. Um that right there is about $500 back and the league gives us $200 per vest. Um this year we had to get six vests to back fill the vest that weren't bought the previous year and then to also make up for the ones the year before that that weren't purchased. But I I believe that's a good number and I hope that it goes up. I just hope the approvals go up too. But we're standing by

you. I'd like to think that maybe it's a numbers game. Uh social media outreach. Um transparency is a big part of law enforcement. Also this exploit of law uh of law enforcement. With that being said, uh we did not have much interaction on social media platforms over the last few years. We kind of took that as a side hobby. Something that we can't always manage. Uh with more transparency comes more news reporters. Uh which means that more time on the weekend spent replying to emails, not just to Nancy, but we have a press release uh mailbox now that goes to 52 new news outlets. Um and every time you send something out, Nancy may she's pretty adamant. She gets every one of them. Bill may respond to a few of them, but you sometimes get CBS, uh, NBC, it just depends on who was interested in the topic at hand at the time and what what they're trying to press. U, not going to dive into the numbers too much. Lou touched on this. Uh, there's a program called Insights on Facebook that you can run if you run a company. With that said, uh, as of this morning, we have 7.7,000 followers. It went up. Um, it's not to say that we are doing a better job. And I I poked at Lou earlier. Uh, tragedy brings people together. Um, tragedy also brings nosy people and I would not expect that number to go down. I would expect it to go up, but that doesn't mean I'm doing anything that she's not doing, even though I threw the little jab in there. Um, you know, people do care about the parks and wrecks events. I know my wife's on there and she stays informed, but the kind of cold-hearted reality is when bad things happen, people want to know about it. And that's where most of our following comes from. And we have taken a proactive step to be overly transparent. And I think some people have found it shocking just how busy we are. But I think it's also good to note that, you know, yes, we call it Mayberry and it's safe. But there's nowhere that's 100% safe. Nowhere. Um, and it has been kind of chaotic. Um, but it's a it's a it's a

good thing that I think people know. It brings awareness. uh with that the interactions uh we've seen a thousand some percent increase uh and we're also working right now to create a podcast series to talk about issues in law enforcement issues in law enforcement as it directly relates to the town. Um he was a chaplain in James City for 32 years. They did things a little different there. He's a trained negotiator. He's a trained crisis intervention uh expert and we have outfitted him and we plan to keep him around until he decides that he's ready to lay down. So, it's been a blessing in disguise. He stops by almost every day, talks. Uh he comes and does ride alongs with the officers. He doesn't get paid.

He does not get paid. Well, we need to honor him in some way at some time. We we take care of him pretty well. I promise you. But that's 31 people underneath the command of the police department.

Now the three issues that I want to bring up today um is the no upward progression. We created something and I spoke to Mr. Lansing early on about project blueprint. Um it stands for building law enforcement upward progression through retention incentives, education and non-competitive tiers. You may have heard Lily talking about the merit pay and this and that. Um and you had a lot of good questions and I really wanted to jump up and be like well this is what Lily means. Um, so with merit pay, we we all do police department uh in-house evaluations on our employees and then we do the town police department evaluations. Um, ever heard of the carry the stick? We have all the stick in Nashville. We got no car. Um, but at the same time, if you're going to offer a car, it has to be standardized. There has to be something that you can evaluate it based upon, something you can grade it upon, and then for training and certifications, you have to have a guidance system that says this percentage for that. If not, it could be easily construed as we're just giving this because of this and then

you we'll give this and it can get misguided very easily. Um I will tell you that when we did the progressions, I talked to Mr. Lansen for weeks about it. Um I don't think that we can do it all fiscally responsible in one year with my issue number two. And issue number two is regarding pay. Um I know a lot of you have said, you know, oh, as long as we, you know, we're not asking for a ton of money and I respect everything that you're saying, but I provided you a lot of data. Um and it's backed. I gave my salary study to Lily. She corrected my three or four mistakes and then she built upon it as well. So, you'll see two different salary studies and what she sent you trying to say paper. I did not say paper.

Um, but the only documentation I gave you from the League of Municipalities regards to the police department. However, I did include the entire salary study for the town and its findings per position. Um, trying to look out for everybody as well. Um, note that issue one cannot be fixed unless issue two is fixed first because if not, you're going to run into a continuing issue of what we already have experienced while we are in the pursuit of trying to correct things. Um, and then issue number three, I'll touch on that a little bit later. Uh, but it's being operationally sound without dated and a lack of office space. And I'll briefly talk about the good things that have happened and some of the stuff that's kind of up in air right now. All right. Project blueprint could find a pretty picture for it. Um not can't be fixed without the other issue first. Um majority of our police department has degrees or their veterans. Um which means that they've made a lifelong commitment by spending a ton of money or either going on the GI Bill head to to school to obtain these degrees. Now, I'm not saying education trumps social skills, life skills, and life experience nor wisdom. However, when they make an investment, folks, I'm not going to go into what the database does, but it's something that we use for intelligence when it comes to cell phones. It's roughly 13 to 16,000 a year. I reached out to Homeland Security, my former boss, and we now have that system completely free to us. Uh, we got rid of some technology as far as the phones. I don't believe that every nook and cranny in a building needs to have a phone. We have this beautiful thing where when you call me, I just get an email and then I call you back when I'm available. It's a blessing and a curse, but at the end of the day, it makes it where you don't have to have phones everywhere. Uh, most of our command staff has issued phones as well as our detectives, and you can't always answer the phone when someone calls. That's why I like the voicemail with the phone number, and you can listen to it on your phone. Um, and then best practices for use of force and vehicle pursuits with the after action reviews. I touched on that earlier. I'm

not going to go back over it, but I do believe that it brings awareness to some of the things that we saw make our insurance go up in today's climate. Uh we are having to use use of force more which is not a good thing but it is the job. Um one of our claims this year that we didn't file was an HIV exposure. It's a reality of a job. You get into a fight with a combative subject that's bleeding everywhere and spitting on you. You have to get tested. Um I don't want to go into the details too much. It's protected by HIPPA. But those are the realities of the job. Um, and then I talked earlier about the uh proactive work against uh people that choose to exploit three and a half months of field training. Anyone care to guess how much money we've spent in 10 years on people that have come and gone just for three and a half months? Yep. $1.1 million. Um, that's an astronomical amount. And the breakdown is shoes, hats, training, that's it's necessary. You have to have it. Um, a duty belt, uh, their class A uniform, uh, their badge, their name plate, all of those things go into it. All specialized. When you leave, I can't take your hat and say, "Hey, throw this in the washer and wear this." Uh, you can't do that. Now, we've done some things at the officer level to try to curb cost. Our new uniforms, if you notice when they take off their vest, if you happen to be around them when they take off the vest, you'll notice there's no naming. Um, and that's in the hopes of if we get the person that comes in and stays 6 months, we can reissue that shirt hoping that someone might want to wear it. Um, but the equipment deteriorates quickly as well because they're moving around a lot in that equipment and they sweat a lot in it. If you ever see a cop in a sheet beer cooler, it's because it's a brisk 33° and in a summer day that is the most feasible place to hide and get cooled off real fast. So if you were to take 38 officers and a god I hope this does not happen and you were to say all right now that we are targeting be because the

last process we ran we had 51 applicants and out of 51 applicants only two were hirable which is months of interviews background checks that it tied up my entire command staff and we could have made progression. If you noticed I said that I wanted to have my NCLA and my risk assessment done before July 1st. It's not going to happen. We had to do hiring processes, we did interviews, and we had to do background checks. And a background check for law enforcement is very stringent. Um, now if you take 38 employees over the next 10 years, now that we're seeing other agencies are sending people to the academy because it takes the expenditure off of someone that doesn't have a job either straight out of college or military or just they grew up in the community and want to be a police officer. That price would be over $2.2 $2 million just for the academy, the gear, and the field training money, which we will never get back. With that being said, you will have spent almost an entire PD budget in 10 years just getting someone here for three and a half months and then 7 months of the academy. That's an astronomical amount of wasted taxpayer dollars um simply to have someone come in the door and leave. And I did not figure in the amount of money it takes for someone to train them. It is a twoperson job. it takes a trainee and a trainer to train someone which means that if you take the cost associated with training an employee along with the person that's training them that number would be higher but I tried to keep the numbers realistic and very low just to show so the next issue is investigator office space and I'm not going to touch on it much me and Mr. Rans are working on some alternative solutions right now. Uh but I know since 2019 we've moved five times and we have a joke that I'm not going to say in here, but it's four detectives and that is a lot of moving around. Um we had black mold issues. We had a employee go to the hospital because of black mold and luckily nothing has come of it. Uh but at the end of the day we looked for a solution that would fit

them and at the time Mr. Lanson found God's grace and got us in free space at the county building at the old narc office. Um, but right now we are about to be evicted from that. I say evicted, we're not in our lease agreement. That's just a joke. Uh, but we're about to get picked out because of the opioid response task force where the federal grant came through for the county and they're going to to utilize that space, which means that now we're going to move six times. Um, but the good news with that is the long-term solution. We have been working on a police department. Um, I think we've been making good strides. We've been trying to make the use of all the space and look at a 30-year growth plan. And also, you may have heard um Dan from BC3, he talked about sieges. Uh, sieges is a real thing. Uh, levels of security in a police department. We will not be able to assume any of those uh accreditation standards in place. Um, we are looking at the accreditation standards while trying to formulate the police department and the plans. Um but it is it is a real thing. Um you have to have secure facilities access controlled. It may seem minute to some but it's a reality. We can't obtain those things. And I appreciate you the league. They recognize 15% price cut to what? They recognize a 15% price cut if you obtain the risk review through the league and you obtain another 25% insurance cut if you go through uh NCLA. The state has recognized both and so is the league with the insurance purposes. So what does the community expect from us? Two of those we control which is professionalism and accountability. My command staff's job is to ensure that through stringent policies and oversight that through leadership and management both at the same time because they mean two completely different things that our officers are professionalism when they they deal with every single person in the community. Um I will tell you that most of the people they deal with do not reside in the town of Nashville. Um, out of all of our crimes committed, over 96% of our offenders did not live in the town. You have to realize you are at the

90°ree intersection of two interstates and people hop off those interstates all the time and we end up dealing with them, which means that we're not dealing with the natural people you see that might be a little, you know, we know them all and they give us trouble trouble. You're dealing with someone that you don't know anything about. Um, and then accountability. We hold our officers extremely accountable. The other three are things that come based upon the community uh which is the trust, stability, and experience. We can have all those things in house, but what does the public's perception of how the police department is ran means more because that goes back to the six pillars of law enforcement. What does the community think of you? What does the community think when it comes to legitimacy? So, that brings me to public safety equity. um creating lasting relationships with the community based off trust. Not trust as in you trust me, I trust you. But does the community trust me? They don't know my name. Sometimes a lot of them know my name. But it means when they see me, they associate me with character. Is my character high or is it low or is it dog crap? Um and when you lose someone, you cannot put a monetary value to relationships that have been built over 10 years. You cannot do it. Um, we have a supervisor right now because of monetary value. He's looking to go somewhere else. He lives like 0.1 miles from town. Everyone knows him. Um, and this is not saying we're doing this for him. It's simply this has been an issue for far too long. Why don't we take a look at it? When you lose him, you lose someone the community has relied upon, someone has trusted. When they show up on a scene, they know that person. When you were at the county and you showed up on a call for service and they knew who you were, it made the world of difference. Look at Carlos Riggs. Carlos Riggs never needed a search warrant. Carlos Riggs would respond to that house, the person that told that officer to just pound him and they let him in the door because Carlos Riggs had character. Um, and I I say him because he was a good friend of mine and God rest his soul, he's not here anymore, but you can't attach monetary value to an

officer and the the interactions with the community. I've heard people say it's a stepping stone agency. I disagree. I think that we are coming out of that curve. Uh people want to work here. I've had many people reach out to me and say, "Man, when you going to hire me?" And then when we get around to the pay, they're like, "Oh, no. We we're not going to do that." Um it's a pay cut. Um and I know you can't compete with some of the surrounding agencies, but we can be comparable. Um and and here's the questions I I kind of bring to the forefront. Is the immediate issue of a budget today worth more than 10 years of expenditures and maybe just doing a little bit more for the ones that do for us? Um because that $2 million number is scary when you look at the police department budget right now. Take out the $90,000 and less of money because that's not tax base numbers and that's only about $300,000 less than a whole PD budget. Um and then why do we settle for last place on a lot of these things when at the end of the day you expect more than last place out of us? Um and just because it says average on a salary study doesn't mean that your officers aren't above average. you shouldn't compensate them above it. God knows if I could, I'd give more money, but I know we can't pay them what they're really worth, but at the end of the day, you can at least beat average. Um, now with that being said, I have slightly good news. Kind of unorthodox. Um, in our budget right now, we're asking for one new vehicle, only one. Historically, we asked for three to four. Um, our vehicle line item is at the very bottom. That number will not change with the exception of the lease program. I think is one of the worst things that we have done as a town. You can ask Tresa. Uh the lease program, it ensures that every four years that we replace cars. However, there's a lot of strings attached to those four years with the lease program. Buying cars outright as long as we keep a mental note that they need to be replaced because that is the mode of transportation to provide public safety

to people. Some cars can make it 5 years, some cars can't make it two years. It just depends. Um, with that being said, the upfit cost for a car right now for an unmarked vehicle is roughly $10,000 and for an unmarked vehicle, it's anywhere from 27 to $38,000. If you haven't been in a police car, it is a cockpit of a fighter jet. They are the real deal. Um, they are expensive and it's not something you you you penny pinch on. With that being said, my solution is as Pucket came out of retirement, went back to Zebulon PD, that left about $22,500 on the table. I'd like to re allocate that to salaries. Um, out of our vehicle uppit cost, you'll see in my proposed budget that was probably in an agenda, you'll see a plan A and a plan D B with a bottom number that's really high. Well, I put both in there in case one fails. So, you see an accurate picture of if you subtract one, what's left of needs. But I think the more pressing need is this. Um, because you can have all the greatest leadership in the world, but if you can't take care of your people, at the end of the day, they're not going to stick around. Um, also if we take the money that's in the equipment 500 equipment under 5,000 line item, that's roughly $90,000 right now and you reallocate every bit of it but 35,000 which is everything for equipment that's essential and then one vehicle update and reallocate that to salaries that gets us closer. And then comes the fact of if the 3% happens, well that will get you to average pay. Um, with that being said, that just means next year we're 3% behind with the COLA because we're including COLA to get us to the number we're supposed to be at. Um, you'll also see that the travel training line item went up as well. Uh, North Carolina Highway Patrol Highway Patrol's driving track is $550 per student that goes. Um, right now we are on a hot streak where all the training is revolving around deescalation. Um, verbal judo tactics, defensive tactics and driving.

Planes are down. I want to keep planes down because insurance has doubled up. Um, these cars are fast. They're they're basically mobile weapons. Um, and that goes both for a citizen and that goes for the person that's in the cockpit. I want to make sure that they're safe. And I think $550 per per employee to get them to a driving trailer where they really push the limits on your car. And it's not our cars they put the wear and tear on. It's Mustangs and Chargers. They have roll cages. They wear helmets and they drive those cars into the ground. But it shows the officer what a car is capable. And they know their limits. They water the track with fire hydrants and they do uncontrolled spins. They do controlled spins, regaining traction. And when you're in vehicle pursuits going over 110 mph, those are all things that an officer needs to know how to do and needs a refresher. I don't know why in our basic law enforcement training, we do driving and firearms. And then you come out of the academy and the state mandates that you only do firearms. But if you look at fatalities of a law enforcement officer, most of them are related to driving. Um it's a reality. When you spend 12 hours on a road a day and then 10 minutes home and 10 minutes, you know, back to work, you're more prone to be in an accident. You're on the road 24/7. $550 for potentially the cost of life. That means not much tax. Um and then the only other two increases was the 3% industrial increase for ducing subscriptions and software and uh software and data support. Uh just that's the industry standard is 3% pretty much every software system goes up. Uh the numbers not astronomical. I think one's like 3,000 and one's like 7,000. Um money does matter. I understand that. But if we can't afford the equipment we have and the subscriptions we have to investigative techniques, then I don't I don't know if we're doing justice for our community. And I'll take any questions you got. Your handouts, you'll notice that the top one is the supporting documentation solely for just the positions within the police department. The one that Lou sent you, I think, is going to be all 400 and some pages to save you time for the

police department. It's all right here. And I highlighted in orange the agencies that we chose based upon population uh and based upon full-time employees within the town. And then I highlighted in purple the town of Nashville's. Um I chose two above, one on track, and one below to give a variety, none of which are our immediate area, but they were all comparable. Um and it just goes to show that the differences in average pay for communities that are like sized. And if you were to do the costs for service based upon those, unless they are surrounded by interstates, I don't think you'll find it as high. Uh the second one is Lily mentioned that she was going to provide you with salary study. Um just to make sure you're getting an unbiased opinion from both her and me. This is the one that was sent that she corrected. Um she has added two to it. So I would lean more to the caution of hers, but just so you can see that my numbers were here. You can do the math yourself um just to to make sure it's tracking. And then the very last sheet is just the findings from the salary study with where we kind of place as a town. Um, and it's not just PD. I'm I'm advocating for PD, but I want you to understand that it it's more town when it comes down to it. Um, you know, these are our tax dollars and I think that, you know, there's a certain level of understanding you have to take care of those that take care for us. a town's supposed to offer uh services, police, fire, public utilities, and that's our that's our purpose. And I want to make sure that as an all we're you can't make informed decisions if you're not informed. You do with it what you please, but I want you at least to have data.

Any questions for the chief? I have so many questions from all of today, but I need to formulate them and go to appropriate parties after this. Yeah. So the budget

so I can respond to this bud. Oh man. I just appreciate all y'all doing good. If I could, I'd pay you more than anybody else. But it's a lot to really get at, study, pray about, cry about, whatever else. But anyway, I pray we make it work. Well, we're probably under more influence from the outside of this budget than we have been since I've been here. More more pressures. You you've heard from the department heads where where they see the needs are uh where we need to spend more money. Um you know, the real reality is on on the taxes we've we've done well. We've we've increased our taxable value quite significantly from the current fiscal year we're in until what we're projecting, but it's still only going to bring in $222,000 more. Um that that's that's general fund. You know, the proprietary funds aren't quite as tight, but you know, this year versus past years, we're going to be bringing some decisions back to the council to have to make you know, even even meeting in the middle of um compromising. I just don't see how we're going to be able to cover all the services we're currently covering at the current level we're covering them at without some type of increase in revenues. Now, we already know we're going to have to do water and sewer because that that's coming directly from where we buy our water and send our sewage. also arranging the tipping fees 5%. Sanitation with tipping fees 5%.

Yeah, that that's general fund. Um the rate study we have for water and sewer is being finished. Um we should have that the April 15th meeting to go over with you guys about. But um you know it's going to be it's going to be a challenging year to get this budget put together and and still provide our next budget meeting.

Well, our our next budget meeting um can bring that over the budget work sessions. Yeah, I was going to put it up there. May 13. We only had one meeting. Yeah, I got it on the screen there. May 13th.

May 13th. You one one thing to keep in mind too in town Nashville you we're right at 6,000 people and the amount of services that we provide for a town our size is is a lot. I mean you compare us with other towns similar in size. They don't have the park of wrecks we have. They don't have the police department and the fire departments to the extent we have. Their public works doesn't do what our public works does. They don't have a library. I mean, the the list just has crappy tails is all I'm saying.

Well, I'm I'm not saying that. What what I'm saying is we do a tremendous amount with what we have, and it's something to be proud of. Um, you know, public works wise, we're probably going to have some recommendations for the council to consider when it comes to uh bulk item pickups, uh, yard waste collection and pickup that will save us uh, time and wear and tear on some of our vehicles, but it will be a reduction in the amount of service. you know, maybe not having bulk pickup every Friday, maybe doing once a month, maybe going to a spring and fall cleanup instead of doing any bulk uh item pickup or come up with another fee for bulk item pickup.

Um if you call in, you need a bulk item, you're going to pay additional above and beyond that $28 for sanitation. Well, that would be fair because then we wouldn't be punishing everybody. Mhm. Those that use it would pay for it. Um the the yard wastist collection, you we got two days a week uh two or three guys driving around picking up pine leaves all all season long. A lot of towns their their yard waste collection for pine leaves and regular leaves is seasonal. Look at stuff like that in cutting salaries for our people.

We we talked about maybe having a location where citizens could take their stuff on on a given day themselves. um pros and cons with that. You know, first con is if it's not supervised, you're going to end up with

Yeah, you're going to end up with beds and dressers uh and and other things. And you know, uh pro and count on on on cleanup day, spring and fall. Um it it comes in from outside of town. It's it's more than our own customers that are bringing stuff. Now, how much that is, I don't know. A a good thing about that is it gets the attention of the scrappers and the recyclers. So about half of what's actually put out ends up getting picked up because somebody else helped themselves to it already and made off of it. Like I said, co pros and cons, but you know, our our general fund, 60% of it goes to public safety, which is police and fire. And police and fire are 80% wages because they provide service. So it it it puts us in it puts us in a real challenging position. You know, rate of inflation hasn't slowed any over the last three years, and some argue that it's even even greater. But, you know, it was pointed out to a meeting I went to last week that uh a fire truck that cost 518,000 in 2019 is now pushing a million dollars in just a short amount of time. And then on on top of the escalating operating costs, you got the capital costs which are increasing exponentially. And and I feel when it comes to wages too, public safety is had a faster increase than all of our other departments compared to our our our peers around us. they are just fields of uh professions that have increased greater over each year faster than than other professions and that's again just the reality but so

and another thing too we're going to be faced with I mean uh listen mention mention vehicles and stuff we got to worry about unless it changes dramatically fuel cost is going to escalate just like this 15% simply getting out of rock and running. But I'm going to tell you two about the past weekend I paid $4.99 for diesel gear. When I got down to Atlanta was 589. Yeah. And that's a lot when you got when you got vehicles that runs, but it takes more than $15 or $20. Like I said, you got you got to spend $70 to fill your own personal vehicle up with I don't know if those fuel costs are going to come down. We can all cross our fingers.

Fingers, but that's it. You know, in July, what you going to do? Well, like like I said, when when we bring this budget back, it's likely not going to be balanced like we have in the past years, but we're going to need input from the council on how to accomplish that and there's probably going to be some tough choices that we need to study all that we received today and just chew on it before we meet again each one individually. Yes, I was ready to just share that that um increase in the property tax almost all of it is going to be up with elders because of the the rate increase. So

So you know we we have a new state treasur when the new state treasurer came in um increasing the local retirement fund contributions for the employers for both uh police and then all others. They're they're going up and because we are We are a member of the state health insurance plan. That's how we provide the health insurance for our employees. They the new treasures put in a 2.4% increase uh for anybody that's in the state health plan that's also a member of the state retirement on top of their new hire.

So I I mean dress is right that 220,000 is going to be consumed just by that alone. And uh I'm not sure why the new state treasur decided to do that. The old state treasurer had said all the funds are solvent. They're they're they're healthy. They don't need the contribution rates don't need to be. But evidently they they employed new actuaries and ran the numbers and and their increase is coming. I I am going to reach out to our local state officials uh elected uh and ask them if it's possible for them to propose a bill that would allow us to get out of the state health plan. I don't know if we'd be able to do any better on our own. But right now, it looks like we're being severely penalized for being in the state health plan and having no options. If we weren't in it, um, we might be able to go to Walmart, Blue Lacrosse, and Shield or Etna, or maybe get in with a consortium of of other municipalities and find comparable health insurance with benefits without having to pay that 2.4%.

It's worth looking into. It's worth asking the question. Yeah. Any other questions? Good news. You know, we've got a lot of projects ongoing and we're going to continue with those. You know, we got the manhole uh manhole ceiling project. We got that 1.5 million from Nash County to do that and we're continuing. Once we get that done, then we're going to do televising of sewer lines and find the ones that are leaking and slip line those. Like Jason said, we're always going to have eye and eye, but keep it down as low as we can. That's going to help us with our bill with Rocky Mount. There's no point sending clear water to Rocky Mount to be treated. No.

Um, you know, we got Essex Road sewer extension. We've got Regency State sewer extension. Those we got grant money for to help. Um, that last Don Davis community uh project fund. We got repurposed from Regency and Essex to looking at getting rid of the uh Regency lift station itself. Um, every time we get rid of a major lift station, it's it's you know, I don't even know how you calculate how much money you save. You just truly do. When we got rid of the Elm Street lift station, it's probably saved us over a million dollars in operating expenses already. And that was just done in 2017. It really comes back to benefit you when you can get rid of those stations.

Any other input? If not, do I hear a motion for us to adjourn? in order to burn a