Board of Aldermen - Regular Meeting

and then somebody else. Can you do me a favor? [clears throat]

Good morning. It's uh 11 o'clock and I am soon as I pull back up here the agenda. Yeah. Want to welcome everybody to the January 7th, 2026 meeting. Happy new year to everybody. Uh so call to order and uh like to ask alderman Kip, do you want to do the [clears throat] invocation, please? If

we could all rise for the invocation and remain standing for the pledge of allegiance. Bless this town and may it remain a beautiful and friendly place to live. We pray that this board makes fair and informed decisions this morning. We also pray that our police officers, firefighters, and members of our armed services here and around the world remain safe as they risk so much for our security. We also pray that our town be spared the ravages of hurricanes and other natural disasters throughout the year and that everyone associated with this town remains safe and secure. Amen. Amen. Mark, you want to lead us in the pledge of allegiance, please?

I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Um before before we start, um remind everybody to please silence your phones if you have them, including me, just to make sure. Uh yes, or turn them off. Um and with that, I'd like to have a motion to approve the agenda. Second. All in favor? I'm sorry. Any disc any discussion? Discuss. Y

um so I would like to pull from the consent agenda item E and move it down to item after item E in continuing business so that while we have um representation [clears throat] here from our contractors we can have that conversation also um I wanted to okay before you leave that so just for my notes all you're doing is taking E and [clears throat] put it down after we get the um the Becker Morgan discussion. Correct. So the [clears throat] change order we can discuss with the conversation with Becker Morgan. So combine those two. So it comes out of consent and then moves down

and then um the finance department I have questions there. So however we can address those. Okay. I I do as well. I mean, the consensus could be we can leave that on the consent agenda, but Alice, if you're okay with that, have Wayne answer questions for us rather than pulling it off the consent. And he's here, I believe. There he is. Is that is that okay? It's a consensus thing unless All right. So, that as long as they're here and we can ask questions. Okay. Any any other changes? Um, yes. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Under new business, I would like to pull the discussion of the ebikes. Okay. um mean deleted. No, I would like to pull it and put it back on the agenda for the March meeting.

Okay. And which one was that? Uh new business A. So, it's going to come off of this one and then you'll resubmit it for Yeah. I'll be able to submit some information next month and we'll put it back on the agenda. So, Feb the February. Okay. Oh, all right. So that way it gives me time to give information to the board and then we could take action in March. Ready to go. That's it. Just quick uh clerical things. I spoke to the clerk earlier um on pages one and pages three of the packet for open forum and uh they just need to be corrected from alderman singular to the plural. So it's throughout that document the past minutes and this upcoming minutes.

Can't hear them. Thank you. Second. Okay. So, do I hear a motion to accept those changes? I make a motion to accept. You uh you think they're watching the There it is. I'll second. Okay. All in favor? I We're getting feedback [clears throat] from some place. I That sounds like the Carters. Oh, who are on the All right, let's have the Carters mute themselves. Not muted. [clears throat] All right,

for clarification really quick. So, sorry. Go ahead. Um, are we just making those clerical changes and we're approving the minutes with those changes or are we moving the approval for those minutes to the next meeting? It's your call. What she's asking is [snorts] whichever works easiest. I I don't think we need to reinvent the wheel. It's just a changing of one letter in those words. You want a motion to amend the minutes as suggested? Yes. Okay. So, can I have a motion to amend them as suggested? I make a motion to make the amend the changes to the minutes past and present and then have them accepted at this meeting. And have them accepted at this meeting. Beautiful. A second. Second. All in favor? I. Beautiful. Thank you.

Thank you, Alexis. [clears throat] Alice. Thank you, mayor. Good morning, everyone. Happy New Year.

Happy New Year. I'll start off first with some uh staffing updates. Uh congratulations to um our uh former chief William Younger who recently retired. His last day with us with the town of North Topsel Beach was on December 31st. Uh we thank him for his seven years of service to the town of Nortops Beach and his 48 years of service in the law enforcement field. Uh we had a gathering before the holidays uh where he was presented with uh plaque as well as some other momentos. Um it was great to see him and his family here. His wife, his uh granddaughter was here as well. So uh we wish him and his family the best in their in their next chapter in life. Captain Paige who is with us this morning. He has been appointed um pleased to present as interim chief um as of January 1st um with chief's retirement. So um thank you Captain Paige if you want to stand up.

Good morning. Thanks for having me. Of course he's here [clears throat] questions too.

Of of course we all are. [laughter] Uh, also included on today's agenda under new business is a budget amendment and contract ordinance to award uh, the police chief recruitment services to MG MGT Impact Solutions LLC. Um, and as for a maximum not to exceed $26,000. Um, that is a new um, uh, an item on for the board's consideration approval later on in the agenda. PTC number eight uh potential tropical cyclone number eight storm event. Um work has resumed this week as scheduled. The project is expected to be completed within three months. A project update went out on Monday advising use of the Jeffre Beach access and the work plan. Uh they started on a southern the southern third of the project which is south of the pier. Uh truck hauling of sand is expected to begin uh today and will last a few weeks um before they move on. Uh similar to previous projects, a portion of the parking lot at the Jeffre access will be cordoned off during the work week. Uh this will be open on weekends. The northern twothird of the project from the pier to just south of Topsel Villas will occur after that using the Jenkins way access. And we expect that to again to pick up um that part in approximately 3 weeks. The specific work order uh for uh working north of the pier will is of course dependent on tides and water levels. Uh this is due to limited beach wis in the northern section. Phase four grant closeout. Uh, a letter was submitted in December to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality indicating work is completed with an accounting of the interest earned on the um the advanced funds and the unspent funds which total $2.8 million. A request was made to use

unspent funds for additional repairs or to extend our current contract to consider additional work in phase four if we're able to do so. So, that'll be a conversation that um I'll have with the engineers um once I get a response back. I also received correspondence a follow-up yesterday saying that they are still considering the request. So, which is a good sign that they're um open to that.

I think the concern that we had on that one was the issue of interest in the issue of unspent funds and whether we could actually use them. Were we restricted on where we could use them or we had to give them back? So, I think that's great especially the documentation. Alice, thank you. Yep. Sure. Yeah. It was just um important to get that submitted before the contract expiration December. So um hopefully we could um either get another contract amendment going to do more work um and and get in writing that they're agreeable to uh letting us keep the interest which was as if you recall a little bit different because usually they do not and even according to the contract they do not give you the funds upfront. It's a reimbursement. Um but they gave us the funds up front. FEMA and um state update on old projects mainly uh revolving around Florence and Dorian. Uh GWI and I continued work uh throughout last month and this month on uh requests for informations and closeouts uh for Florence and Dorian. Um currently uh 2,433,23866 is in payment processing which is a good sign which means that um we should expect receipt of those funds hopefully within the next couple months based on when we received money when it hit that um part of the process um recently. [snorts] And then 11,448484,42316 is currently in the RFI process. Um, which is request for information. So those are things that we're still going back and responding to um and and they're working with working with us on so that those funds can be released as well.

I would direct people to take a look at Wayne's report. Um, if you look at the detail behind this in the finance report, there's a lot more detail. There's a lot more detail involved in what you just described in terms of where the money is, the cash, and everything else. So, I'd direct you to take a look at that if you will. I know you gave us a summary, but it's in the finance report. There's a lot more detail there. Thank you, Ellis. Sure.

And, um, last but not least, the holiday initiatives over the past, uh, month. Thank you to everyone who participated in the pet photos with Santa uh, before Christmas. We had approximately 50 pets um with their owners who attended um for pictures. $292 was raised for Pause for Purpose. Um so it was a good uh first time event and thank you to our staff who assisted with taking the photos um Devon Lexi [laughter] and um setting [clears throat] up everything up. uh grinding of the greens uh we is taking place this month which we previously announced. Um any resident who has an undecorated um tree still left over from the holidays, you can recycle it by dropping it off at the Jeffre Beach Access parking lot in the cordoned off area. Um you have up until January 15th to drop those off. Just make sure they're undecorated again and dropped in the cordoned off area. Um we will have free mulch available for pickup after January 15th. So once that's completed, we will make the announcement that it's available. Um also, um I coordinated once again with Southern Metals Recycling to recycle Christmas lights. So if you have any, um strand of lights that are not working, we have a bin set up here at town hall out on the front deck. Um you can deposit those strands in that bin and we will recycle them for you. And just thank you to Southern Metals Recycling for partnering with us again. Um because it's something that's done free of charge that there's we don't have any costs associated with.

Okay. Any questions for Alice? Yes. Um Alice, when we go back to staffing updates, what is our current staffing situation with a building inspector? Do we still have a position in the budget and are we still using a contractor? We still have a position in the budget and we still are using um our contractor um that we have an agreement with and we're also using the county services. Yeah, we have a contract with the county right now. So, do we have a number of hours from the county or any commitment on time?

They right now they are working um is it three days a week? Um and I will be coming back to the board probably if not next month, the following month. um about the plan forward um with building inspections in general um because as you know there's been a shortage of building inspectors throughout the state. Um a lot of communities are hiring um inspectors are in probationary status um that make it so far um you still have to have somebody that signs off on everything and overseas um which has been the same person that everyone is using that we use which really isn't the solution. Um, so [clears throat] I'll be coming forward to the board um probably next month um to talk probably more about um an agreement more with the county.

Okay. And then on the um trash cans um so if you got left from GFL extra trash cans, you know, do you just put them out and they'll pick them up? Do you have to call? What do we have to do for that? If if you want to, you could contact GFL and let them know at the customer service number. You could also um it would help if you let us know so we can track it right now because we're still waiting for the finalized um inventory list from GFL on can. So that's all still being um worked out. If they can just report it and let us know, we'll we'll get it taken care of.

And then if they didn't pick up some of the old one, the same thing. just just let somebody know. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Because I before the holidays um we worked um with GFL to and facilitated a lot of the roll backs and um got a lot of the carts rolled back and um you know, a lot of that straightened out. So, um we're we're almost there. Okay. Laura, I I had my cans [clears throat] weren't the old ones weren't picked up. I sent them a message online. They picked it up the next day. So, anybody that didn't get their bins picked up, please contact them. [snorts] They'll pick them up almost immediately.

Yeah. And if they're not getting a solution from from GFL, they're welcome to reach out to me um and I'll help facilitate the process. [clears throat] All right. Thank you.

Continuing on with trash, um a lot of the smaller um town beach accesses, of course, they've taken away the trash cans for the for the off season. It seems to be a pretty big problem. I've had people talk to me about it. Um people uh I don't know who um are leaving trash just sitting there. The rest Yes. And little gift bags from puppy dogs, too. Um uh I wish that we could get the garbage at least one put back at each public access. What? There was a delay in them delivering those cans to the beach accesses, but it's my understanding they've all been delivered to this point. So, if there's any missing at this point, I need to know so that I could

Yeah, there's not at the follow back up. There's not one across from me either. Yeah. Okay. You might want to just have somebody look because I think our policy is we don't we leave those out there, right? Yes. They're there all season. So, if you don't see one, let me know. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else? I would say the the I work the request citizen request. I used that and uh they were promptly addressed. So I would encourage anybody that if you go online to the town website request um you can fill out an online request and it is handled by staff in a timely man. Yeah. Perfect. [clears throat]

All right. Um open forum. Alexis, do we have anybody signed up? Yes, [snorts and clears throat] we have three signups. Um, the first one is Miss Donna Frell or Faren. I can't tell if the pen gave out or not.

Can you hear me? You're good.

Okay. My name is Donna Ferrari. I live at 148 Seagull Lane. And I'd like to address the light ordinance or lack thereof. I am a fairly early riser and at like 4 in the morning the lights that are illuminating from the street to other people's properties, you know, seems to be obsessive as opposed to their own properties where the light would have a motion sensor in order to, you know, determine if there is some something going on in their neighborhood or their and their household. But they're currently directed across the street and we're not talking about street lights. We're talking about building lights as opposed to a sensor. I want to know what can be done about this because it's almost actually going into people's houses. Almost like you'd be concerned that they had a peeping tom. So, it's very disturbing to me that these lights are so illuminated and so bright and not just on their own property, but you know, illuminating everybody else's property as well. Uh, when could I expect to hear something back in reference to this?

Well, I was going to say, Alice, I think you can look into it to find We do have a lighting ordinance. Okay. Okay. And so I don't know the particulars, but we're actually, you'll see it later on the agenda. I'm coming up with what I call bucket list or a punch list of stuff so that when you bring stuff up, we can make a list of things and then just and then get back to people in terms of when they're resolved or not resolved either way. Okay. Thank you. Well, thank you very much.

Uh the next I have is Jeff Meyer. Good morning. Happy new year and welcome new board members. I'd like to know the status of the ongoing question on access through North Thompson Beach. Uh I know there's been some lawsuits andor discussion. So I'd like to know what the town's status is on that and what the town's stance is on that issue. Could you explain that a little bit? Okay. Just one. What? I'm sorry. I did I didn't understand what

Well, there was a question on allowing the public to cut through the reef. Okay, that's the question. That's the question. And I'd like to know what the board's the status is the that the board's aware of and what the board's opinion on that issue is. That's all I got. Next up, we have Joe Summers.

Good morning and happy new year. Congratulations, Richard, uh, for being mayor. Excellent choice. [laughter] Um, thank you again for all you do. Uh, just briefly, walking the beach and, uh, been resident since 1989. Uh, I think we need better signage. I may have mentioned this before. If you're on the beach and you're looking for your access, we were at Access 19, Laura and I. Um, the signs need to be large. fairly large and you can see them from both sides. That's the key. So, if anyone needs help, they need to know, okay, come to beach access 19. You need to be able to see that whether you're on Topsel Road or on the beach. And it's probably true for all our beach access. So, Alice, I don't know how that could get done. I don't know if it's Enslo County responsibility or ours. Which is it? We uh about approximately a year or two years ago, we initiated a program where we put signage the emergency numbers on the beach side because there was no beachax numbers on the beach side. um if there are some missing now or it sounds like there are some that are may have went missing

if you're not seeing them or so I know the one Joe's talking about at BA19 the one small little one is bent and twisted and you can't see the BA19 side from the beach side and it's loose okay and I don't know in that whole stretch right there whether there's any new signage or Okay. Okay. We'll we'll follow up and and check all of the um the the signage on the beach side. Is it are you specifically asking on the beach side or the parking lot side as well? It needs to be both really. Okay.

For safety. If anything happens, someone on the street needs to say, "Oh, I'm right at beach access 19." And they look up and there's nothing from the street side. Or if you're someone's drowning and they look over, there needs to be a sign as big as this that says 44, 43, 42. No, it just has to be a sign that says beach access 19. I'm at People have cell phones. I'm at beach access 19. Somebody's drowning. Get here quick. Uh, now [clears throat] you got to have perfect vision to see that sign from a distance. Really perfect vision. Could you could you give us your name and address? Oh, I'm sorry. I have it.

Oh, you got it. Okay, never mind. You guys they call me Joe Summers, but I'm a man for I did that. A man for all seasons. That was St. Thomas Moore. Just a little right next to Laura 26 Bermuda Landing Place. Thank you, sir. Yeah, thank you. It's it's it's probably the time off season now is probably a great time for the for your team to go out there and take off. Okay. So, we'll put that on the list, too. Thank you, Jeff. Yeah, I'd [clears throat] just like to state also I've had that same concern for years and years and people say the Jeffrey's lot and if you're a new resident, you don't know what Jeffrey's Lot is. So, uh the tourists as well, they're not going to have any idea. Okay.

So, if the if they have more than one name, possibly reference more than just that one. They're all assigned a number which have been marked, but but visible is a different story. We'll follow up. Okay. Thank you. That's another thing to put on our punch list. Thank you, Alexis. Anybody else? That is all. Okay. You okay? Sorry, I didn't get here in time to sign up. We didn't see you with those sunglasses. [laughter]

I forgot my glasses. It was in the car. I ran in. [clears throat] Uh my name is Keith Wilkerson. I'm 149 U Seagull Lane. And I was just interested in the um hiring for the new chief. Uh, I'm a taxpayer here like everybody else and we're all trying to watch our dollars and I'm not sure why we're spending money to go an outside agency. Um I'm a retired police captain from New Jersey, large department New Jersey. So I have some experience and uh it's it's generally been looked at like it's a bad move for morale to go to an outside agency and uh it's not I don't think it's an accurate All right, let me I have trouble speaking because I was wounded on the job and I've got [clears throat] problems. But um the uh we could do it right right here. I feel like uh you know uh offic uh Councilman Malcolm is a uh retired officer from Virginia Lieutenant Ranking Officer and I spoke to uh Mayor Grant and told him I'd be willing to help out. And uh it seems that you know if you go to an outside agency, they don't know anybody but the town. They don't know anything about the department. This department was a mess when Bill Younger came in and uh he did a great job. He's got a good got department going in a great direction and there's good morale, good people and uh I think he'd be better off to stay from in the ranks. Um, I know that he had a high opinion of um, Captain Paige, but you know that's and he seems good to me, but I mean I think we could sit down and talk about it, but I just think they spend all that money to go to an outside agency who doesn't know anything about the town and we're going to hire an outside person from the

town. They don't they're going to take years to learn it. Why do that when going in a good good direction? You got somebody can keep it going that direction. It won't cost us $20,000 to get some unknown officer. If the department needs help, uh if town needs help, there's the association of police chiefs that'll help you out for free. So, uh you know, that's about all I have, but so thanks for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. [clears throat] Thank you, Mr. Wilkerson. And we have had numerous discussions and this will all be addressed uh coming up in new business time. Okay. Thank you. [clears throat]

Okay, that's it. That's it. All right. Um public presentation hearing coastal engineering report.

Hello. Let me uh turn off that blurring. Can everyone hear me? Yes, sir. Okay, great. Um, I'm Fran Web. I'm coastal engineer for the uh one of the coastal engineers for the town of North Topsel Beach. And we'll just kind of go over the the coastal project summary. I I'll share my screen.

Is that showing up for everybody? Yes, Fran. Okay. Uh here we have uh just the the January 2026 update. Uh happy new year to everyone. Happy new year.

Here is just an overview of the North Topsel Beach shoreline oceanfront. Uh from down in Surf City up to New River Inlet, we have the the five phases. Uh they're they're different lengths and they they got delineated probably about 2008 or so. We've just kind of kept going with it. Minor changes here or there. Basically, the entire shoreline has been, you know, nourished within the last two years except for, you know, the the the area we're working on now. Uh but basically there we're we're actively working on all sections of the shoreline. Down here in phase five, this was done about two years ago. The beach is is doing well and we'll just go over these individually. Phase four was last year. This is the the big one that is coming up in planning that's up to 2.6 6 million and that would be along the kind of the the the entire northern half of the of Northel Beach shoreline. And then there were some some minor projects uh up in phase one and phase two last year. And then we will be talking about the project that is happening now and that is uh the the the dune restoration for phases one through three. And Alice mentioned a little bit of that as well. Uh here's that the the core project that happened last February. The it was only about 77,000 cubic yards. The the UN the Army Corps of Engineers does this every other year and in this this spring we will see plans for the upcoming project and we'll just coordinate with them. It is their project and it is the primary uh the primary point of the project is dredging which is beneficial use. So they're they're more concerned with the dredging than than the placement but we are we have always tried to emphasize that we really

need that placement. Uh and here's the phase five shoreline. It is it's holding up well and this was a a beach not a dune project but the beach and dune system are working well and they held up well to you know hurricane Aaron and in recent uh high wave and water level events. Similar similarly, phase four is a similar uh kind of idea where it uh the the nourishment occurred last finished last year and the beach and dune uh are are pretty healthy here along this way as as you know you'd hope after just one year. But the the beach looks good. And here is just some images of the uh the the project. And then this [clears throat] leads right into well we'll go up to the disposal area 143 the beneficial reuse and placement and this will be the phases one through three. It will be the largest nourishment for North Topsel Beach ever. Uh between 1.9 and 2.6 million cubic yards. The the less the the next biggest was in 2015 with phase five and that was about 1.5 million cubic yards. So this is you know significantly larger. Uh the easement coordination continues with the state agencies. Uh and then the the permit application will go in after that and then the board and the mayor and Chris Gibson are are working on kind of the funding strategy and the grant strategy that that goes along with this that is you know obviously very important for the project itself. The project itself is it's a it's a good project and it's it's been youth done a lot, but you know obviously the funding and the grant funding and that is that is kind of a a major element to this and and the mayor and the board is is you know working on that.

This is potential tropical cyclone 8. Uh this is the it it can it continues to be processed. We have no control over FEMA timelines. Uh the the processing, all indications we have from FEMA staff that are kind of that we talk with is that it is moving. It's ongoing, but it is it's moving even more slowly than it usually does, which is not great, but uh all indications are it's moving along as planned. Uh this was the critical dune restoration last spring and this was just those areas where there was really little to no dune. The the dune has the sand even without dune uh vegetation. The the the dune has held up uh you know over the last this the the fall when when we did have those high wave and uh water level events which is good. And then here's where we are and Alice mentioned this already. This is the truck haul that that began today. It it began on Monday, but that was, you know, the the mobilization uh and just kind of prepping. And then the active truck hauling did begin today. I talked to the contractor. Uh I talked to the surveyors and then, you know, we're coordinating with the permitting agencies. [clears throat] As Alice mentioned, they're they are using the Jeffre access as soon as you get onto the island. And there they do have that cordoned off. This is almost a replay of the the phase 4 project that ended last year. Uh when trucks are going in and out of there, there might be a temporary kind of stop, you know, the flagger out there just to allow those trucks in and out. It should be very temporary and it's exactly the same as happened last uh year where basically they're using the Jeffre access and going south. Uh this is the same crew, it's St. Wooten that is doing it that

that did it phase four and they also did a little bit in phase one and and phase five and it's the same crew chief and they're they're well they're they really know the project. It's it's it's a good seasoned crew. Uh the surveyors, the survey team, TI Coastal, they they know these these projects really well, too. The truckers are ST Wooten truckers and then there's the Walton truckers and and I spoke with the Walton trucking agency. We have a direct line. Uh they're they're good too. And obviously if there's any kind of you know trucking issues, uh you know, let the town manager know and then we can sort that out. Uh the one element that we didn't bring up and Alice I wanted to talk to you was about uh sand fencing and a lot of folks have put out sand fencing and obviously with the dune restoration uh some areas there is no fencing and but there are some fencing in some areas the contractor can pull them up. Uh sometimes they're like almost 80 to 90% buried. And in that case, we would probably just the contractor we would probably just put sand over them and just when they become uncovered, then they will start working again. Uh but the the sand and so I will coordinate a little bit more with Alice on that. There's not a whole lot of sand fencing in some of the areas, but in other areas there is. Uh and so this is just the the update. Uh the new river inland management plan. The draft EIS is you know is still under review. Uh and then dial court is working on the biological assessment and the essential fish habitat. Uh those are appendices to the DEIS and the the draft environmental impact statement has you numerous appendices. Unfortunately,

uh this project is, you know, be started in January 5 and it just it's continuing now. It does, you know, as Alice mentioned, it will be several months. Uh but it it, you know, we'll we'll kind of just keep everyone updated. We'll have weekly updates of where the progress is and where they are going. Uh and then that will be here later this week and I'll get that to Alice. uh DA 143 that's moving forward but obviously it's it's a it's a very complex project especially from the grant funding side. Uh so getting an early start on that and then the the critical dune restoration was completed the phase 4 was completed looks good. Uh, you know, lots of recent projects have been completed along the beach trying to keep it all keeping up with the the the erosion and uh and then I'll continue to work with North Topsel Beach uh regarding funding and and all the FEMA reimbursement issues and we'll just continue to just coordinate with the permitting agencies as needed. And uh that is my presentation.

Any questions? I've got a few, but All right. Um, [snorts] one is a favor. Do you remember the spreadsheet that you put together? It was an Excel spreadsheet that showed all the projects, where the money's been spent. Um, if not, I you know which one I'm talking about. Could you up could you update that for everybody because that that gives us a better idea of what's been done [clears throat] over that period of time. And I think that was very helpful when we were explaining uh things before as to where the money's gone. [clears throat] on the face on the new stuff. I was very angry this morning because there were trucks on the beach and I realized it was our trucks and I wasn't angry anymore. So, they're actually they're actually moving. I looked up and there's a dump truck going down the beach. So, um they're actually out there and I'm sure Connie can tell you the flagmen are out there.

The flagmen are out there right now. So, um and there's been a lot of sand dumped at uh you know there right now. So, um, do you see, you know, it looks to me on the pier, um, I saw the the markings that they got. You were talking about the sand fence. I was out there yesterday just looking. [snorts] They've also got, I'm going to call stakes. I think that's TI coastal that puts them out. Some of them are in the dune. Some of them are on the beach. So, [clears throat] if they're is is because somebody asked me that when I was on the beach yesterday. Does that mean they're putting sand all the way up where wherever those stakes are? because there was like there were some on the some on the dune but then other ones were just on the beach and so you know if if nothing else I I don't know what the difference was in those two except that I I noticed you know just different placements on those and I was wondering if that means there's going to be more sand in some areas or the other just because somebody asked me that when I was on the beach yesterday.

Yeah. Yes. Those uh survey stakes are you know they indicate kind of where the project is going to stop and start and you know how much material is going to be placed and then they'll you know shape the sand and and then try to hit those and the b the dozer operators are usually pretty good but yes that is where the uh that's where the sand will be placed and and yeah the dozer oper there's little flags on all the [snorts] surv Yeah. Yes. Exactly. Okay. And then there was two Please don't move that. Yeah, there were two TI coastal. Where's Chris at? There were two TI coastal guys in a truck yesterday out there as well. So now it's moving along. It looked like they only had it marked up to the pier. So I assume that's the first phase. So

correct. Any other questions? No, but we just heard France say don't move those. So yes, don't move those flags. Don't move. Trying to get more less. U the only question I have is uh and this may be for Chip um is the wildlife that's not going to be a hiccup on the DA43 but we can discuss it whenever you speak. That'll be Yeah, that'll be when I want to make sure we don't miss that. And I think Larry will give us an update on that too, right? Anything else for Thanks for Okay, thank you. So the next item is approval of the consent agenda and I think we've talked about is moving E on the consent agenda out. Correct.

So could [clears throat] I Right. So, could I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as modified by Laura? A move. Second. Second. All in favor? I discussion. Any discussion? We were talking earlier about the the finance report. Um, were we going to address those questions now? I'm sorry. I should have made clarif clarification for that is we're going to do that but we have some questions for the finance people and since the uh the team is here as well we can do those outside it was just to get that information out there but I have questions and I know Laura does and other people as well. [snorts] So

I do have one request. Um staff had informed uh the manager and myself that the hazard mitigation plan um to appoint a town representative. That application had been withdrawn by the applicant. So that would be need that would need to be removed from the consent agenda under the planning department report the resolution. Yeah. Okay. So remove [clears throat] that from the it's not specifically sent out but you're saying it's not part of the program. We won't be executing that. [clears throat] Okay.

And um I had a question and maybe for council to um the board of adjustment and the committee reports the board of adjustment date for the report from staff uh showed 2025 is the next meeting date just needs to be corrected to 2026. I don't see a need to pull it. Do I need to make a recommendation or motion to make that modification or does that staff make that correction? I think staff can make that correction. It's just a scriber's error. Yep, that's perfectly fine. New year, we're going to do that for a couple months probably. Thank you, Alice. Anything else? No. [snorts] Uh vote. All in favor? I. All opposed. All right. Now, we go for the long part of this this program. Larry, you're up.

Oh, [clears throat] we I'm sorry. Let's do this first. question.

Wayne, you might as well come up.

So, I already gave you a heads up on what my questions were going to be. So, uh my question is when I'm looking at your finance report, right now we're doing pretty well versus budget, revenue, and everything else, right? Do you see any glitches in terms of meeting like do you see anything we need to adjust going forward or do you think um you know the I talked to the finance guy for the county. They feel pretty good about sales tax. They feel pretty good about that. You know what's what's your view on where we are?

Yeah. So I think our position right now is good. We're in good shape. um in most all of our revenue categories like our our tax collections and things like that we're tracking way you look at like December is like your six month mark so that's about 50% of the year uh and we're tracking in the 60s7s and 80s in most of the categories and collections um and then looking the other thing that I look at as a whole is like look at our expenditures how we're tracking against our budgets um and most of them are pretty close on track a couple are even a little bit uh under which can be a good thing. Um uh so right now I would say our position is strong. We do have a you know a good cash balance. Um a couple things to keep in mind with the cash balance is uh you know you always want to keep a cash reserve for emergencies. Uh like the LGC uh suggests at least 15% of operating budget. Um but a lot of the coastal communities as we all know and prayed for in invocation uh occasionally storms come up. So um try to keep a little bit more as a cash reserve in case of an emergency because those when they do come can add up very quickly as most of us have probably experienced at some point. So yeah, I would agree. We're in good condition right now. And just just on that issue too, on the Cass issue, you'll see when you already know this about bringing the Carters in. They're the ones that did the modeling. Connie and I were talking about that last night. They saved us millions of dollars when we refinanced. And as I understand it, we've got one payment left

in May on the on the old it used to be called the USDA loan. Yes. Everything else has been we got to find we got obviously we got the firehouse and the fire truck, but putting that aside, right? beach projects. That's the last payment, right? Yes, [snorts] I believe that is correct. Which is which is incredible when you look back and that was what 12 or 15 million dollars Connie when we started. Um and so I think that's that's very good and that's and Carter's if if the board goes that way that Carter is going to model this stuff out for us to give us an idea of what that looks like in the future. Okay.

So they'll be talking about that when that's presented. But as Connie knows that's we that's the group that we used before we did all the refinancing and stuff. And we will still we'll still have payments that are coming for the PCCA project as well. So yeah, but I'm talking more just the debt the debt piece of this thing. Um, and if you looked at the audit that we got that's that showed where we are cash balance and stuff why, but also if you remember Chris cautioned us, we were talking about the big beach project is you have understanding FEMA is a reimbursement type of thing. And if we hopefully not have a storm, the last thing we want to do is wait what last time three or four years before we actually did the project because we didn't have the cash. Right. And

what he said is make sure you've got the cash if something happens that we can get the work done and then get reimbursement on it. So, um, we can talk about that later, but thank you. Okay, Laura, you had some questions. [clears throat] Questions, whatever. She's new. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. On um account number 10 35950, vacant lot, whatever. We're spending like 33 grand there and I didn't see that we had anything budgeted there. Is that something that we need to budget, you know, now look forward to budgeting and what are we spending that money on? I I I'll speak to that because that was addressed during um the budget time.

Okay. Um before Wayne came on board and we removed that vacant lot fee from the fee schedule. So we're no longer collecting that. Okay. because there was no clear the board um had I did not that was staff's recommendation because we were not comfortable with charging that fee when I never really since I've been here never been really given any clear answer as to what the purpose and the intent was when that was passed. So we have a year so we removed that from the fee schedule so we're not collecting it. Okay. So what are we doing with those funds then? I can address the you're you're seeing a balance there. Yes. On year

that's unspent money. Yeah. And that that also was an accounting error from several months back that uh Deborah and I with GFI [clears throat] uh GWI, excuse me, uh found yesterday. So that is being corrected. It didn't show up at the time of the report because we did the the accounting correction yesterday. that was actually accommodation tax collections that were input into the wrong category. So, do we need a a budget amendment to move that back to the general fund or

uh No, it wouldn't be a budget amendment. What I did is uh the way we handled that. It was actually a deposit transaction. So, I void the original transaction and then put a new transaction in allocating the funds to the proper categories. So that 30 3303 uh was an accounting error from about four or five months ago. Okay. So we're correcting that. We corrected it yesterday. Okay. And then I noticed that we voided a bunch of checks on the run. Can you explain what happened [laughter] there? My fault. I'll take the blame on that. It basically was a printing situation. I used a different printer. Okay.

And it printed in reverse instead of number order. So the check numbers did not match up. And the only way to correct that was to void them and reprint them. Okay. So all those vendors have been paid though because we had a significant check there to a contractor [clears throat] and so that was paid. Yes, they were. It was it was voided and then new checks were printed immediately with within a few minutes. Okay. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Anything else? Anybody else?

Quick question because I am the new guy. um on page 39 of our packet which is 13 of the budget versus actual uh fund 31 that investment income and I think it was explained last month but I just want to clarify the the 496% difference in in the investment income is that FEMA state reimbursement or is that an accounting cleanup that we discussed last month? uh a large part of the why we're tracking so far ahead in the investment you on in fund 31 if you look on page three of the the summary report it says it's under the capital project each maintenance thing if you look at the highlighted section right there

yeah item number C and there's there's a note to fund 31 a large part of that comes from uh the uh project with uh DEEQ that we were we spoke about earlier phase four yeah Yeah, just I know and I know you're you're new to this. What happened on that one was um before you got involved, what we were showing on budget purposes that we were way over budget in terms of interest income that we were getting and it looked like it was this year and it wasn't right.

And so if you look at this schedule, you'll see that the interest occurred during those period of time. So, it's by year because as Alice pointed out, even though their contract didn't provide for it, the state sent us the money up front. Okay. I just want to make sure that was the same. That's all. Yeah, it's the same issue. And then what Alice just clarified is she's reached out to them to find out two things unused on the and whether we can use um whether the interest is still ours, right? Um she wants if we talked about it, we want to make sure it's documented before we do anything with that money. Yes. [snorts] Okay. Whether we can use it there other places and she's working to document that. Yep. So we have the cash. The anomaly in this thing is because they made the nice error in our favor by sending us the money early.

Instead of us having uh the the to have to pay it ourselves, we actually got the money early, got interest on the money. And that's also reason that there's an over that there is overpayment because the project ended up costing less. But if it had been a reimbursement project, we would have only submitted. So it wouldn't have been an overpayment. Right. So we're correcting the error that was done in our favor by sending us the money is reflected in the schedules that he's got. Is that a fair way to put it? Yeah, generally that's one of my favorite issues. Yeah, the the funding from environmental quality or a lot of the state it's going to be cost reimburseable and for whatever reason they send it up front. So yeah, exactly what you just outlined,

right? And what Alice had done before was to make sure that we were segregating those funds so that we understood that because you did a lot of documentation to make sure that they weren't asking for it back that it was okay for us to get it. Um I I remember you were you had a lot of stuff in writing making sure that every that we could hold on to the cash because it was a concern back then that they would ask for it back. So anyway, that's that's [clears throat] the issue. Is that fair? Yes. Yes.

I just want to make one note. Thank you for taking personal responsibility. All these numbers, transposed, eyesights, printers, everybody wants to take a sledgehammer to a printer. First of all, thank you. That tells you you have the right attitude to perform this job by taking personal responsibility. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Any other questions? Correct. Yep. Uh thank you. Thank you. And Laura, you wanted to ask you had other questions? Yeah, there's a I have a question on the permits issued list and is that from inspections or planning? [clears throat] She's asking who generates a report.

There should be one for building insp my question is on the PNZ permits issued list. Um, on that one, we've got the issue date. I'm wondering if in this report structure, we could have when they submitted the application date. Yes, ma'am.

Okay. So, and if going forward on any of these kinds of reports and I don't know under the new portal I imagine it's capturing the submission date so that on any of the reports we can produce we ought to be able to reflect the submission date and then dates in interim if there has to be corrections or you know the progress those dates and then the actual approval date. It's almost like a gant chart type thing, right? [clears throat] Okay. Thank you. You you're just looking to track the things as they occur. Right.

Right. If we get questions or you know timing is a big deal. So that's it helps us address the timing questions. It may address the timing questions but it's not going to [clears throat] It may indicate a lag between the time that they applied to the time that the permit was issued. It's not going to give you an accurate snapshot unless you contact us where the applicant may have submitted an incomplete application and where staff has had to wait for those documents to be submitted before we could actually issue the permit. So when you're

but I'm assuming those notes are made in the new system, right? As to what the reasons are for, you know, things going back and forth. Everything is documented. So we would have to pull that documentation and send it to you, right? But the dates are helpful. And also on this report, the permits issued list, I can't tell on here. There's some of these that don't have what the project was. any of those that you have a question on, just feel free to send them to me and we'll send you the details on them. Okay. But even for the public, because this is in the packet, if they can see it was a deck, it was this, it was that, like I'm sure there's a column we can pull for that, right? Okay.

If if you'd like to let the town manager know what specific fields that you want captured, then I'll reach out to citizen servant and take care of that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions for our staff? Great. Now, Larry, I'm not used to sitting down and making this report. I may have to get up and run the other side.

The uh I I am uh I'm going to be making the report from our Monday, December the 15th, uh Beach Inlet Sound Advisory Committee meeting uh that we had. and we've not been having quite as many meetings because we've been uh waiting for a lot of things to happen. I.e. they've talked about the money and for the project going forward and there'll be more talk about that and what we're doing with that. But anyway, the uh the the the the minutes from from that meeting uh the first thing I did when we had that meeting was I advised that that I was stepping down personally from uh being a representative for phase five on the Beach Inlet Sound Advisory Committee uh to now serve as an alderman representative on that uh on that committee and which then opens up a spot so that I think the I think that we are we are advertising or have been advertising I don't know what the status is for for someone that might be interested as an atlarge member or as a member of phase five uh to conduct that. So it's my it's my intent and and the mayor has agreed to that that I'm going to remain uh on that committee uh that I've been chairing for the last few years. uh we will be uh we we will be February February of 20 or 21 I forget which uh we when this was formed [clears throat] uh we Mike Mike Mike uh was u normally the he he started a committee and he was the chairman for that first year I took over the second year and I was I've been chairman of that committee for the last uh two and a half years uh full-time So in February is when we vote uh for positions. So in

February, our February meeting of of this year, we will be voting for a chairman for that committee for the for the balance of of this year. And so that uh that's that's where we are with that. Uh manager Darian, she made she made the report that that gets made to the board pretty much. there might have been some some difference uh because of the timing of when the meeting was, but uh she she made her report regarding the beach projects and the the turtle season and and all the the things that were going to be taking place. uh she reported that the beach access 43 at Marina Way had been completed and I think we they've talked some about that and uh talked about the access 46 across from Oster Lane has repairs underway. I don't know if they had been finished or not, but anyway, this was this was back in middle of December. And she reported that the town has continued to work with TI Coastal for phases one through three for the beach reourishment project, which is what everybody's talking about. I mean, that's that's that's our our main goal right now with with BISAC is to to move towards getting that project started and and completed. Uh we also had a report from Chris Gibson of TI Coastal Engineering. Uh it was a very similar it was a very similar presentation that was made before the board of alderman uh in November or December, I forget which, but had not been presented to our uh committee. And so our committee members had not been plus there had been some some new things happen and we discussed some new things that that took place at that and that we've uh

and one one thing that uh the we we we're talking about dune planning and reourishment and various things. We just talked about a lot of detail stuff that was that was happening there and and a little later in this meeting. Uh we'll be talking a little bit more about that specific project and some of the things that we're definitely doing. So there's no sense in me telling you what that meeting report was about when we're going to talk about it right here in just a few minutes. But uh we did we did have uh we are we are negotiating some through the wildlife department and there's other avenues and all that we're looking at in order to get our our permitting moving forward for that project and he identified that to our to our committee and we will talk about that a little bit later in in this meeting. So, and uh we're and he he acknowledged that uh you know that the town's portion of of the cost for the shallow shallow draft inlet fund of 33 to 35 million would be somewhere around 12 to$13 million. But we'll again talk about that some in in just a few minutes. Uh from that uh from that that pretty much ended that meeting. I did have I did want to say one thing to to to the folks attending the meeting and those that might be looking online at the meeting. Uh we're hoping we're hoping that the that going forward uh that we'll be able to make more reports to you through through the in [clears throat] board of alderman meeting. Uh it's one of the most important things that we're doing. uh it's one of the most important things and most financially straining uh amount of monies that we're going to be spending going forward and so and everybody seems interested in it and and

I've had some reason to believe that some people are feeling like they were not getting enough information about it and and that might have been true if if you were not watching or attending the the BISAC committee because it did not seem to be as in-depth sometimes with the board of alder and not not blaming this just saying that that seems so I found that some of the questions and things that we've been getting indicate that they were not you were not as aware of some things as you ought to be for it to be such a major project. So so we have discussed and we're going to make sure that we try to correct that going going forward in the future. I will we'll read one last thing that makes me know that this is the case. I had a after our BISAC meeting after our BISAC meeting I had an email uh that said ex excellent meeting thank you and this is this I don't mind he doesn't mind he sent it James Shaw and and he sent it and saying that Cody Joan me Peter blah blah blah by Zoom left with a feeling of optimism about our beaches dunes and inlets knowing we are trying to row in the same direction. Great things are happening. Please give my regards to Chris Gibson from all of us at the St. Regis board. Tremendous work and I really feel things are happening. Yes, the video is accessed easily on the town website, but I also posted it on the VOD uh portal at St. Reges and the owners have had it placed on a group of Facebook page. Much appreciation has been shared by all. Please give regards to Rick Alice and the strong team in place moving forward. You know, we we get a lot of grief. I like to put something out there that's it's a positive thing. But what that did tell me is is that not enough people are seeing the presentations that are made and it's no way that if you're not if you don't see that presentation, there's no way

that we can tell you everything that was discussed and how the money is going to be gotten and and spent and and all these things. We we do have full full presentations uh that are printed just like the Fran Wei had here today. Chris Chris and them put out the same type of thing to show you everything that's going to be happening. Anybody that is watching this that would like to see that can go back to the December the 15th uh Beach Inlet Sound Advisory Committee meeting online and it you'll be able to view that and you'll be able to see that presentation in its entirety and you'll be able to see the slides. A picture's worth a thousand words and you can see that versus just listening to what's being said. So that's not part of my presentation to make about the the the the results of our meeting that day, but it's just to tell you going forward what we feel like. We also feel that it's a very important thing and we're spending a tremendous amount of the town's money. No matter how much we're borrowing, it's still a lot of our money that's going to be spent. And you deserve to know everything that we're doing. And so if you if you're interested in the details of it, you can you can watch those or watch when the presentations are being done here at the board of alder meeting. And then if you have questions from that, you can contact us and we'll be more than happy to to to do that to you. This is something that we've been doing for the last five years and and we're or four years, whatever it is. And and we're we're just now getting to the point to where we're going to start seeing some coming to some fruition in in the phases one, two, and three, which is where we have some of our major problems. So, ju just know that we we intend to try to do better getting the information to you. Mayor, that's all I've got unless uh there's any questions.

No, I what I would say is I would direct people. I thought that was a very good meeting that we had. I thought Chris did a great job and I know that the feedback I got was, you know, it it put put the rest some of the rumors are out there about what was going on. So, very good meeting. Um, all right, moving on. Um, board of element liaison. Um, I've talked to a number of you. [snorts] I think I talked to you as well. Um what I would say to our new members is when we do this, we will do this every year. Okay? And so the assignments or whatever that we do now are not, you know, cast in stone. You all have four years um as you're looking at these type of things. And so what I was, you know, and then I'm going to use Connie as an example, um and actually talk to Alice about this. Connie has more history of what's happened in this town than frankly probably all of us combined. [snorts] Um and [clears throat] so when we talked about this, the idea was to make sure that we cover the stuff that we need to cover because we got some things going on and do a transition. So in some ways uh knowing that history and we've talked about it is very important for some of these things. For example, in the revetment, which we'll talk about in a second. So, I talked to Connie. I I think I've talked to everybody here, but generally my recommendation on this, obviously, I don't get the vote. Um, is BISAC is um right now it's Larry and I and there'll be something in February. I'm willing to serve on that. I think Larry needs to be a part of that. Um, he's been husbanding that. Um, and so keep that as it is now, but if we want to change it, if somebody has a strong opinion in February that wants to take my place, I'm willing to consider that.

[snorts]

um [clears throat] Thompson Island shoreline and and my feeling on this and again Connie and I talked about this, Larry has been the one kind of pushing the beach issues for us and so the focus has been kind of to let him continue in that role. Um and then to give him whatever assistance he needs, Larry. Um [clears throat] so with Topsil Island Shoreline Protection Commission, [snorts] um I would suggest Larry and Kip. [clears throat] Um, keeping in mind that that meeting and other meetings are open to the public so that anybody that wants to go, it doesn't create a quorum or anything else. They're open meetings. Um, I went to one, Larry. I went to the last one because I'd never been to one. Alice attends all of them. [clears throat] They're interesting. Um, but again, it's, you know, you got to make the other thing is if you do these assignments, make the commitment that you will do go to the meetings and things like that. For example, I go to the county meetings twice a month and 90% of them have nothing to do with us, but you don't know that until you show up, until you have a discussion with those people. So, make that commitment. Um, [clears throat] Army Corps of Engineers shallow draft EIS. Um, Connie, you've got the history on that. Um, and I would suggest Kip [clears throat] with that. And some of these I think we did. Um, yeah, [snorts] we did BICE, we did shoreline before. Uh Laura, we had you and and Connie with the North Carolina Coastal Resource we [clears throat] did before. Um federal and state legislative um at the last one we did myself and and the prom um and just see where that goes. And I think Larry, you're going to talk a little bit more about lobbyists and stuff like that as we go into that [clears throat] CIP. Um Laura and Connie. Okay. Parking committee. Uh Connie and Mark. Mark has been willing to let his parking lot be used for free parking.

I just wanted to see if he was awake. No, [snorts and laughter] I'm I'm awake. I won't I won't make any I mean your personal parking space. I won't make any comments to uh other people asking if I'm awake or not. But uh but that is with that though. I've served with SP Plus before we got to Surf Cat. So yeah. Um parks and recreation. I've got Connie on there obviously and and uh Kip that seems to be stuff that you like with one um kind of change on that. That's actually a dormant committee that we need to active inactive with one suggestion on there. I think the bike lane needs to be under parks and recreation

um because I think that that is part of what we're talking about going on and everything else. And it's also a committee where we can have non-elected people serve on that committee. Correct, Alice? Because, you know, just like BISEC, and I think we've had that before. Well, the events right now are really facilitated u between me and staff,

right? But I'm but I think the revive the parks and wreck and and that kind of stuff. I know Connie, you've got some ideas about what you want to do and Kip, I'm sure, as well. [clears throat] But I think that my recommendation is that when you guys are looking at that that you consider the bike lanes as part of your mandate. Um [clears throat] because we're getting a lot of questions on what's the status of that, what's going on, and that is kind of a recreation type of thing as well. Rick, [clears throat] on that note, Rick, um, for parks and wreck, I don't know if it's something they could look at, but taking a more recent survey of all the other lots that the town owns and potentially expanding our parks and wreck.

Okay. No, I think that's great. I think that I [snorts] mean, my if if it was up to me to make the mandate, my my mandate would be I think we need to do I think Ellis has done a great job of putting stuff together, but it can't all be on her [clears throat]

uh to get this stuff done. And I don't think that's a reasonable thing to tell the town manager she ought to be looking at vents. Um, as you know, one of my critical path things is we need to support the jazz festival. Um, we need to and other things, but we can do other things. U Kip, you've talked about whether you do, you know, ride with a cop or you do things like that. And I think that, um, with you two involved in that, um, taking a look at the bike path stuff, I'm assuming we'll come up with some some ideas. Anyway, that's just my suggestion. You guys need to think about that if you're if you're those people. Um, [clears throat] Revetment, Connie, and Larry. Larry, that is a beach type of thing. I frankly personally want nothing to do with that committee. Um, [clears throat] and Conniey's the one that's got the history on that. Um, that's been going on forever. That's been going on forever. Check [clears throat] signitories, I think. Um,

yeah, you, me, and Larry and Larry. What is that? Check signing. Yeah. And going forward on that, Wayne, we need to speak with you as to getting a better scheduling, understanding how to schedule who's doing what with each week. So, we'll work with you on that. Yeah, that's a good one. And also, Wayne has been very good, Larry, about I don't sign him anymore unless he signed him first. [laughter] I said, [clears throat] I'm not going to be hanging out there, Wayne. We had a discussion about that. [snorts]

Um, Chamber of Commerce. I think we have very mixed views on this today. If you're asking, my recommendation would be Alice is the one that attends this. I'm not sure what we get from them. I know we've we've cut stuff down. If somebody has a strong feeling that they would like to do that, [clears throat] um, that's up to them. Mark, I know that's not your favorite group. Um, so I didn't put you down as something like that. We can just leave it as Alice and if if you want to do it, Alice, if you can't attend, I'd be happy to. That's fine. Okay. All right. I'd be happy to hand as well. That's fine. But those but those are open to the anything like that and we'll talk about on WASA. I'd like to continue because I'm pushing some things right now about the rates. Um and the commissioner is the same way.

Do you need a backup for Wasa? Um I don't you're welcome to attend. I don't know how that works. Okay. Um but what I would do is I would let you know if I can't make a meeting Laura and then if you would go that would be great. Um, [clears throat] Jumpo, Laura, and Mark. Um, no, I'd like to be taken off Jumpo. Okay. So, take Laura off that. Mark, [clears throat] um, anybody else want to be on Jumpo. So, that silence was deafening. No, I mean, obviously with my background and I I can give it a whirl. Okay. All right. Thank you, Kip.

Um, Camp Lune, Laura, I think you ought to continue on that. And a heads up to everybody, everybody here is going to get invitations to things over there which you are welcome to go to. She has been very good at going to those things. Um, and so I think that it's open to everybody. I I would I would suggest we just leave it as Laura understanding that, you know, if you've got an issue, let people know. But more than that is everybody's invited to everything anyway, right?

Yeah. Um, but the one thing the alderman need to know is it's easier um once you get a base ID, which I have. So if you want to attend events there, [clears throat] you have to go through that process of getting the ID to get on and off base regularly and that works better if you want to go to those events. So I am going to an event there tomorrow night for New Year's. Um the commanding general will be there and Kip is going to go with me and I will rotate around invitations to invite people. Um but we're going to ride together because I already have the base permit. Did you get did you get did you get an invitation for that, Mark? No. Okay. We got to [snorts] make sure he gets on the list. I I got one. Okay.

Um the other thing too is as a courtesy, if you get an invitation from them and you are not going to go, please respond and tell them you are not going to go. All right. [clears throat] Because it's it's just a courtesy. They extend those things out and you'll get a tickler for them if you don't respond back too. Yes. [snorts] [clears throat] So, um All right. Coastal Resource Commission is Lauren Connie. We already agreed on that one. the Greater Topsill Community Alliance. I think Alice, we talked about that. It just really doesn't exist anymore. So, I don't think we need to handle that. That's my recommendation. Um, I'd like a motion to approve that or have a discuss. Why don't we make a motion to approve and then we have a discussion? Is that fair? [snorts]

I make a motion to approve the board and liaison assignments as discussed. Okay. Do I hear a second? A second. Okay. Discussion. So the only thing I would say for those of us that are now getting on committees we haven't been on or anything or don't know I we need to know how where we find the schedule of those meetings and you know [clears throat] get people the full year schedule so that they can do some planning for those committees.

Yes. So um now that I once this is approved um I'll be able to send out everybody's schedules. That's no problem. I keep track of those. Anyways, um I just needed to know first who was going to be. Alexa, they sent me um Frankie sent me the schedule for on was I mean they publish it anyway, but as I get that stuff, I can send it to you. The county meetings are every Monday. Yes. Or twice a month. I'm in contact with their clerk for that and it's you know it's it's 11 and and 6. Um and the fun part of those is usually Lisa, myself and nobody else that attend them. So that's always good. We [snorts] do have a presence at the county meetings. That's for sure.

So, for the meetings that we're all assigned to and there's, you know, is there a way to add those to the calendar, too, so people know when those meetings are taking place? When you say add them to the calendar, are you asking me to create calendar invites so that they're on your online calendar that shows our meetings that you can search? Can we put those meetings on there or is that too many meetings on there? Um, so I think what you're asking about would be utilizing Munich code to add these other meetings. I think that's going to get very complicated. The town it's going to be too many.

So not all of these are either here and a lot of these are on an as needed basis. So they're not if we could maybe do a flat file of their list of meetings just so others would know when those meetings were. Do you know what I mean? With a flat file, Ricky, instead of being an interactive calendar, what I was going to suggest is when you get the list of the meetings from us, you can just circulate an email, right, to let people know because I put them on my calendar as soon as I get them. But I meant the public because they don't know when these other committees or meetings are happening. Oh, you're talking about our committees.

Yes. So like if somebody in the public wants to go to Jumbo, you know, they could still be on our web page and just see a flat sheet that shows all the Jumbo meetings or that shows all the chamber meetings. Just a one, you know, just a web sheet for the year. It's just something for us to think about because we mention them. That's going to be a very busy schedule. Yeah. How many people know what junko is? I I would I would propose that that the the staff the staff take this under advisement what we're asking and to come back with what makes any sense or doesn't make any sense to do and

all in favor? I opposed. All right, let's move on. Trey, who's not here. [laughter] Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Do we need to amend the agenda because Trey didn't show up? Uh, no. Go ahead. Uh, for proposed rules of procedure, we're just going to ask that this be continued to the next meeting. Uh, we're still working on it. What did I forwarded you guys something that when I was looking in the old stuff, do you see that? Was that rules of procedure, too, from like 21 or something? Those are Yeah, those are the rules of procedure that are in effect now. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why

I was looking through old minutes. I was trying to find the Carters had put together a schedule showing how much money we had. So I was going literally going back through every set of minutes to figure out where that was and I just Yeah. this popped up on one of them. So I forwarded it to those guys. So we had talked about the board's ethics policies and I did find an old one. Had you all seen that? I think the ethics policy has been approved and is on the website. I think the current one is up for the board. Okay. Yeah, because there was an old one. Okay. So, just for clarification, we're asking for a motion to continue this to the February meeting. Correct. Yes. Okay. Okay. Can I have a motion, please?

Uh, I make a motion to move uh from continuing business item C, proposed rules and procedures to the February 2026 meeting. Second. All in f I'm sorry, discussion. All in favor? I. All opposed? Thank you. All right, now we go to the good stuff. Sidewalk man.

Good morning, Mr. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen of the board. Um discussing this this month the uh trying to get an approval on the specific locations for the proposed crosswalks. The uh the update on this is I've received response from my point of contact at the DOT who has reviewed these locations and approved them. Um uh approval not not equating to uh approved encroachment agreements. But but in terms of their review of the locations, vehicles per day, uh safety studies, things of that nature, they concur with the recommendations. There was one, not to get ahead of the the locations, there was one that was not approved by the DOT that was submitted and then it's right out here in front of town hall. That's the Island Drive, New River Inlet Road intersection.

Um, but if you'd like, I can walk you through the the geographic locations of the of the ones that were approved um for your review. Um, and then my hope would be to to get your approval to move forward and I can submit encroachment. That's fine because I know I have some questions we talked about. So, go ahead.

Yes, sir. Uh so the first location is the proposed crosswalk at the surf city campground. [clears throat and cough] Uh essentially somewhere in within the vicinity of that property. It's not specifically geoloccated to that exact spot on the roadway. Um but that that is the uh approved or the recommendation that was approved by DOT for the southernmost crosswalk in our town limit. Can we go to the the next location, Ricky? Uh this one is uh beach access 2 if my eyes are not failing me. Um this is one of two locations that are county owned beach accesses. I just want to make sure I note that specifically. Um again high higher amounts of vehicle traffic and foot traffic crossing at those locations. Next one, 11th Avenue. Uh same same went into this geographic location. There's a high amount of pedestrian foot traffic uh specifically due to the the complex on the south side of uh of Island Drive. Next one. This is the one that was disapproved or not recommended by DOT just due to traffic patterns and and uh very very difficult to navigate safety concerns with with crossing points. [clears throat] This would be beach access one. That's the the second of two county accesses. And then the very last one.

Yeah, this this one's um also a little a little tricky to navigate due to the fact that it's it's a state road that terminates and transitions into uh both town owned and private road areas. Um the initial recommendation made was specifically for crosswalks um within this location. Um NC DOT did add um that they would need to do a further review and study regarding an all-way stop before giving any support or approval for a for a stop sign to be put in whether it's four-way or or singular. [snorts] Um, outside of those specific locations and the DOT response, I did inquire to the the Osprey location. Um, and I did not receive a response. There is no inclination towards anything that is being processed. Um, I can reach back out to them again for confirmation, but it was omitted from the just everybody's memory. They they were working with we had been notified that they were working with DOT to get a crosswalk at Osprey because they've put their own beach access in. they they leased a part a part of that parking lot and so I just wanted to make sure that we made sure that was considered. I can I can try to reach out or Alice you and I can try to reach out to the Osprey people to find out what the status of that is. So basically what do has said nobody has they've got nothing going

there is there is nothing intelligence was that they've been working on this for a while. So [snorts] yeah, again I I can confirm just to make sure I didn't infer something that I wasn't supposed to, but but specifically in that email I had asked is there anything ongoing and and I didn't I'm going to reach out to Osprey anyway for for we can talk Alice we can talk about that but the other thing too is if you remember I talked about putting up the 35 sign up there uh that they were in favor of but I'm still waiting for them to come back to us because I think that would be a good thing to do by those parking lots. So, I've got just a couple of questions we talked about. Yes, sir.

One of the things that I think that um I I met at the county meeting on Monday. I talked to the chairman and a number of those people and they have allocated a million and a half dollars to work on their beach accesses and stuff this year. And so, I let them know that they don't have crosswalks at their there too. They were surprised especially they they thought maybe the one was by Peter's Park. Um they haven't committed to it.

Okay. But I put the bug in their ear um that they they probably have the money for it. Um and so I think they'll wait and and so my my feeling on this is if we if we're going to do the crosswalks, let's do it and then we'll talk to them about getting the money back. I don't want to hold it up. I think these are critical enough from my my position and we can talk about that as a board. The [snorts] other one too is the other one I'm concerned about is the one that you've got up there right now. Only because the feedback that I've gotten from people is they think that there's a beach access right there. I drove up there and looked the beach access they're talking about is a private beach access that people use. It says private property don't come here. And [snorts] so people understand that we're not

if there's a crosswalk there, we are not endorsing that. That is a beach access because it is not our beach access. Yes, sir. You've been up there. Do you know what I'm talking about? I do if if [clears throat] Ricky if you could zoom out of that location. There's a little sign there that's kind of hidden right where you got your arrow. No, not there. Straight up. Right. Right in there. There's a little sign. Uh it might be the one that's just to the left there. Yeah. Ricky, could you close that little popup window in the right hand side, please? And then scroll back just a tick more to to zoom out. Mhm.

Um just just to illustrate to the public that the closest access points in reference, it's a little bit hard to see, but if you look directly below that large yellow icon, there's a very thin yellow line and a green marker. That that is beach access 45. Okay. Um that one is that one there, right? It it's off the beaten path. That's the one that's tucked away in the Dolphin Shores properties. Um, and then the next closest one is Beach Access 46 to the to the north side of that on Right. The one the one I'm talking about is if you look at your little bubble. Yes, sir. Right around where that house is on the corner where the where that uh vegetation is. Mhm. There's a sign. You can tell people use that as a beach access. I'm just telling you it's not We're not saying that's a beach access. Correct.

So people understand if the crosswalk goes in there, we're not telling people they can trespass on somebody else's property, I guess, is my point. Yes, [snorts] sir. No, the these are just in the vicinity of public accesses so that we don't have a large amount of public if they're walking up and down. The feedback that I got from people was, "Oh, this will help us get to the beach access." And I'm like, "That's not our beach access." Well, if they're come, they can access the beach by going up the street. My point is there's a there's a path that people are using that is a private path. Yes, sir. That has nothing to do with the town. That's my point. That goes directly to south of the reef. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah. It's directly south of the reef. Everybody goes down the dead end road. Everybody tries to walk that path. Everybody tries to jump the fence. Some cut the fence.

It's not marked as your point. Correct. Absolutely. Uh while we're on that screen, if you zoom back in real quick. Um there is a stop sign on the southern part of that intersection. Um since Seagull and Gunny Sergeant are our roads, could we not put a stop sign on Seagull and on Gunny Sergeant? cuz I don't think gunny sergeant even has a stop sign. We could the way I understand it, we still require an NC DOT approval. Okay. All right. Just anything to just anything to slow them down and and make them use New River Inlet Road as much as they can. Yeah. In in relation to the guidance from the town and and what direction we want to go in, I'll be happy to to post any approved signage. It's just making sure it goes through the appropriate

I'm a little bit confused. I thought the Ben going back by Tiki Bar. I thought that was still the state road. It is. Yeah. And so it's that's why I [clears throat] said it's a combination of state own if you're looking at at seagull that's this way correct that's ours but the one that's going south right is still a state road. Yes. Yeah. There is I just want to make sure people understand that we don't own that road. So I think Mark that's why it's got to be you know in front of your business is still the state road. Correct. Uh we brought this up eight nine years ago at St. egregious about trying to either put speed bumps or speed humps on that area and it was less residential then than it is now. Now it's even worse with all the new homes that have been put in. Yes, sir.

So, uh we really and truly need to slow that traffic down going that way and push everybody on New River Road. Plus, we have to maintain Seagull. The state maintains New River Road. So, the more traffic on New River Road, it's on the state. whereas they wear seagull down. We got to repair seagull more often than we need to. So Chris though, what you're asking for from the board is an approval of the crosswalk list and that just lets you go forward with NC DO on the encroachment agreements. Correct. Yes, ma'am. So what I don't want everyone to think is if we approve the list, we're going to get these like tomorrow.

Oh, this is preliminary. just just to make sure that whatever I was submitting to the DOT wasn't of my own interpretation. I wanted to make sure I had the right locations to where we didn't have in agreements. To follow up on your point, too, the other thing to be careful about is I'm not sure I'm in favor of doing Villa Capriani crosswalks at that cost for these. I'm assuming most of what we're looking at are going to be the painted ones. um you know because I think in terms of going to the county if they decide they would want to put money in for something else that's up to them. Um but we're talking if you guys remember these are big dollars if we go if we go with the other one that that was that was a lot of money. Yes sir.

So you want approval from the board you want approval from the board today of the list to go forward on the locations. Yes ma'am. Is this the last one on the list? Is this the last one on list? One other thing I'd like to ask with all the other crosswalks, it's simply uh just one crosswalk from inter coastal side to the beach side. This crosswalk, are we looking at four crosswalks around there? Because when it rains, nobody's going to walk certain parts of that road. So again, I I'll defer to the board, but I'm always going to try and grasp at the at the most safest possible thing we can install, which to me is a four-way crosswalk. But if it just needs to be a one or two direction or or north and south ends of the road. I just want to make sure that everybody knew we weren't looking at just one crosswalk on all four parts of that road.

No, sir. Yeah. You need to give a recommendation on that, too, because I don't I don't know how that's going to work with DOT on something [clears throat] like that. Well, I believe, if I understand them correctly, that they're going to look back at that in terms of the four-way stop or a stop sign against Mark's point option. Yeah. Um, so that'll impact. No, he's just saying it's not just crossing the road there that because of the intersection, it's going to be more than one. So, yeah, you need to be able to cross every section of that road safely because what happens is that south uh west corner down there at the very bottom is nothing more than a pond when it gets a little bit of rainfall.

So, just a a process question. Can we do this by consent? Are we really since basically he's still got to go back and get this thing worked out. What exactly are we approving? Alice, [snorts] what do you need? He needs approval of He needs approval of the list. So, I make a motion that we approve the list for Chris to take forward. Alice, is that what you need? Just to clarify, the list that we have that you're um going to go forward with, the encroachment agreements are still going to come back to the board uh once we have them for approval.

Um just to clarify that. And what we're applying for the application we're going forward is all thermoplastic painting pavement types of signage and not the Villa Capriani style. Correct. At these particular locations

that that's the hope the the issue and it was part of the DO's response for as an administrative note is um basically they're saying uh FL flashers are going to be a requirement as part as per these locations. There's been there's been standard developments since the last time we did a crosswalk installation where something more like Villa Capriani is the standard. So in terms of strictly signage and and paint or striping um DOT's response is that they call them uh I apologize that's fine but RFBS rapid reflecting flashers could be a solar panel with a flashing light on top of it too. So

as long as they meet that minimum DOT requirement for flashers. What is the do we know the cost on the that minimum requirement right now? So if I'm using if I'm using Villa Capriani as the the reference point um that one yeah 30 is Villa yeah dollars right around there when it was materials labor and installation it was sitting right about 30. So so if we're looking at Villa Capriani type crossings at all of these areas that's $30,000 per location plus we're assuming the maintenance going forward. Yes ma'am. I well just just come back to us and tell us what their recommendation is, right? Because we wouldn't be improving anything today. We just saying move forward with the list and

and if they come to Mark's point, if they come back and say you have to put A, B, and C and then come back to us to get that approved. And I just think we need to check with council. There was a motion on the floor. It was seconded. So I think we have to go with that before we move any further forward. Is that correct, sir? All in favor? I I

Thank you. Good afternoon. Happy happy new year. Appreciate the opportunity to to come before you. Um my name is Ernie. I'm a principal architect with Becker Morgan Group in Wilmington. Um we are architects and engineers. Um, we've been enjoying working with the town on your your fire station number two. What I thought I would do today is kind of give everybody a briefing of what's transpired the last several years. Several of you are are new and maybe are not aware of these kind of things. Um, and then we can get into more detail about the specific project. Um, this goes back actually to a feasibility study we did. Um, this may have predated Alice in 2021. Um, we actually sort of figured out that, yeah, you could put a fire station on what was a very small site, a very low site. If you recall, the old station was a metal building rusting. I think the elevation of the slab might have been plus six. I mean, you could see the the water right from the, you know, from standing on the slab. It was uh it was no question it was needed. No, that was an easy feasibility study. uh we were engaged and started roughly in the early uh 2022 uh on the project and began to work through the site issues and so forth. As you can imagine um being near the beach, being in a in a a flood zone um high wind zones is a different kind of a fire station than something you might build in the middle of the state. Uh so we went through the design process um in 2022. uh had some modifications to the flood plane that were required. Dealt with Deb on that in October of that year uh completed and got our uh variance on

the flood plane issue early 23. Um we got to the point we call construction documents and that's this is what this is a mini version but it's 110 sheets here that represent all the organizations that we hire to help do the project. Uh it's civil engineering which means sight. It's structural engineering which keeps the building from blowing away. The architects which wrap it and keep the water out. Um mechanical obviously for air conditioning and u plumbing. Uh electrical for lighting. U we had [clears throat] ventilation for fire trucks. Um so on and so forth. A lot of people involved in this. Took takes a lot of time to put this together. And this is what is really the the bid set and what the the construction job was was built upon. Um couple little um things that happened during the process. As you can imagine, takes about six months to get site plan approvals. Um the project uh got its early approvals um in the summer of 2023 and then we were in a position to to be ready for bid in the fall. A little bit of LGC matter in the fall that kind of, you know, drug things out a bit. Uh but then you we we helped you advertise for bid. Um I believe you got six bidders. They range from a low of 6 million to a high of 6.38 million which pretty tight range considering um a pretty good bidding environment. Uh from that point um the town entered into a contract with WB Broly and that was signed on the 5th of March in 2024. So that's when the the construction clock started. Um, what I wanted to do is stop with something right now, and this is based on just some things that I've I've the impressions that I've I've had that I wanted to kind of make sure we we were clear on. As I stated, we're architects. We are not construction people. We're not contractors. We're we're we're the

designers. We are creating for you a picture of what we hope the project will look like when it's finished. And then we put these 110 sheets together with our six different engineers out to public bid. and the contractors figure out how to do it. So, it's not like putting a bicycle together for Christmas where it says take the frame and put the wheel on and then the seat and then the handlebars. This is a picture of what the whole thing looks like. They figure out in what order to do it, who to hire, what materials exactly to use. They are the ones that go to the grocery store and buy the food to make the meal. We're just kind of setting it up. So, I've got a and um I've only got six copies, but I wanted to to pass this around I did a little uh chat GPT as well and produced a pretty fine example of of what the roles are of the contractor, the architect and the the owner. You guys are the owner. You have the money. You have the land. You have the problem that needs solving. Our job is to design you a solution, create a set of documents from which the contractor can put his prices together. But from then on, the contractor is responsible for getting the job executed. On the second page in blue, I've highlighted some specifics about schedule because I know that's of of interest to you. Um, what I can say is that we are trying to be as diligent as possible in answering any issues and questions that come up. Um, be responsive to the contractor, be responsive to the town. Um, we've been here on a regular basis. We deal with with Chief Sard probably daily. Um certainly um at least many times a week um and in fact there's a a meeting in in an hour or two uh that we'll that we will be at. So you're let me hand these out as well. I got a couple of renderings if [clears throat] you haven't if you don't have copies.

I we can go bigger if you'd like, but just so that you know what you're what you're getting for your money because I think it's important to to understand that um this is about 11,600 square ft. Um the building will resist 157 mph wind loads which is certainly in the category 4 kind of level. Um, in order to improve the the seasonal flooding issues that we've got, we've elevated the the garage bay, the apparatus bay from 6 to to 8'8 8 in. So, you're 2'8 higher than the the the grade used to be. That's going to help with most of the coastal flooding that we get on a regular basis. Now, since the old fire station was there, the new flood level is is plus 12. Plus, freeboard means plus 14. So 8 ft higher than the current ground is where the actual occupied floor is going to be. So the firemen are going to be on an elevation at plus 14 ft or 8 ft higher than the ground. So they're going to be high and dry throughout the whole thing even in a really significant situation.

Does that include all critical equipment too? So it's it's basically everybody there basically anything right like we build a house here you can't put that stuff

exactly anything that could that could be fritzed out by by water has been elevated to that 14. and the things that could not be elevated like uh the washer extractor dryers um the elevator machine room that's can't be elevated that's been flood protected and that'll be subject I guess of one of your questions we get into the change order so um there are four sleeping quarters of two beds each so it accommodates eight um one of the things that we're doing in modern fire design that we didn't used to do is we try to separate the messy stuff uh the contamination from the clean area. So, there's a middle zone, kind of a cool zone, a yellow zone. And in that yellow zone is the decontamination where they can wash their their fire material off. Um, they can dry their equipment, store their equipment, keep it safe, and then go into the house side, which is essentially a living space. And that's clean, it's dry, it's not contaminated with any fumes, chemicals, uh, and so forth. And that's going to really provide a much better long-term environment for your staff. Um, and which then I think then translates into really better recruitment because then you've got a modern facility and it's a place that that folks are going to want to want to work. So, um, so that's the the the long and the short of of that part of it. Um, moving forward, um, I think I might have handed out one of the pieces of paper. Uh, hold on a second. Let me make sure. Nope, I got it. Um, like I said, the base bid was $6 million. The contract value was um a little higher than that. We accepted a couple of alternates. And since the job's been under construction, we've we've changed the roof to an all metal roof um at the chief's request. Uh the job is now according to the pay application that we

last received which was the end of November the job is 61% through the money. So um it's 58 the way through and according to the schedule that we were given most recently which was the end of November uh the the cont the contractor is expecting to finish in June. [clears throat] Uh what else can I add to that? That's that's that's [clears throat] the summary I guess of of the project. Um so progress meetings are happening. How often?

There are couple of different kinds of things. There's a regular owner meeting that's going to happen today and it happens every what two weeks. Uh, and then we meet verbally, virtually with the um the the contractor's management guy once a week. And and who's the current PM for the contractor? This guy named Matt. And then he's got a job a job guy in the field named Hayden. Okay.

And in your opinion, usually the owner has their own PM. And I see maybe a miss on our part as the town that in this project we did not hire our own project manager to represent the owner of the project because we understand that architects aren't project managers and architects aren't organizationally on the ground in the field. So, um, if that was a miss on the town's part, I'm hoping that in future maybe we would look at having our own PM to represent our interests, you know, and be the owner's rep. Yeah, I can say that I've seen it both ways. Okay.

It really depends. Um, what I'm seeing now, and again, this is more for future reference. Um, and we're doing this right now in Topppsel Beach. They're doing the basically the same kind of a project. They've actually engaged the contractor now in what's called a design build operation. So that's what we're doing on wasup. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's smart. That's a structure going forward because there's none of this then, right? Because one one party owns the whole thing,

right? And if and if you think [clears throat] and and anybody that's put together a bid on anything. I mean, we we're basically incentivizing the low bidder to find the the gaps, to look for the holes, to, you know, find a shortcut and what have you. you know, we're really not incentivizing the builder to look out for your interest as much as they are their interest. So, is that a mis perhaps? Perhaps. Um, I've been doing this for for 40 years. I've done 40 or 50 fire stations. We've got 200 construction now and two that have just finished. And it's typical that these these take 12 to 18 months to build, barring a hurricane or something like that. So, um, I know you're frustrated. We're all a little frustrated that it's it's taken this long, but I I don't want to get into speculation, and I think our your attorney would would stop us if we did. Um, if something more legal becomes of this thing, we want to make sure that you're in the best position you can be um to be successful and we're going to try to help do everything that we can do to keep the job on track. Okay. No, I was just looking because you gave the list of like owners and you know responsibilities of everybody and I have seen it both ways too

but that's just a model we could look at differently in other projects. Sure. Sure. There's also another project that uh OJ is doing right now which is kind of interesting which we can structurally you turn it over to them and you say this is it. This is the amount you take responsibility for everything. Yeah. And if you can do it cheaper fine. Um, and that because of anyway that's off the subject. When I'm looking and looking at the money again, original cost six plus if I'm right with the 10 you're looking at right now and I did my math, we're only about two and a half% over the original cost. Kind of surprised me. I thought it would be a lot more than that. That's where Yeah. [clears throat] Yeah. I mean, typical is that going to be I mean, look, there's going to be changes. I saw what you're proposing today.

Ballpark. We're still because what do we take out Alice? Five is the loan. What was the loan we took? I think it's five. That's right. So, [clears throat] we didn't take out the full 5.6. All right. So, we got 11 for that. So, we're still in terms of money that we still Yeah. And I I believe we recommended that you keep about 5% in contingency is usually a pretty fair number. And I would expect I would expect that to be be similar.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and something too, I mean, going back all and I wanted to find out for myself, we first estimated the job at about 5 million in 2022. Well, that shows you how much prices have gone up and um we're we're doing we've we're working on our second fire station in Ory County and it's probably gone up 25% just in two years and mo mainly on for them it's been the site work that's been a big big challenge. But, uh, construction prices and anybody in in real estate can tell you it's just it's kind of out of control. Any other questions?

We had, um, an agenda item on the consent agenda for a change order for flood vents and so were these just not anticipated or they just the prices changed or

No. Um, we had worked with a flood engineering group to figure out the amount of open area necessary. So what would happen is if the water reaches above the 8'8 in then these flood vents are going to open and let water come in and go out. So we we worked with them to size the the numbers. They came up with a group of 16x6 vents and we dropped them on the side of the apparatus bay. Um that that was was part of the change. Um when we got into the actual procurement part, our structural engineers said, "Well, I've got, you know, 157 miles an hour worth of load here. I'm not crazy about having such a big opening. Is there a different way we can do this? He wanted to have reinforcing every eight inches vertically. So we said, okay, instead of one 16 by 16, can we have two 8 by6s? So that's what the the change is reflecting is we had to redo the the the reinforcement and and double the actual number to get the the prescribed flood area vent requirement. So that's where that came from. So

any other questions? All right. Uh, are we going to discuss flood mints more or I was going to do a motion to approve that and we can discuss it. [snorts] Motion to I need a motion to approve the Brley change order for flood vents 2026 26.33 [snorts] because that's off the consent agenda. [clears throat]

While while we're figuring that out, can can the chief come up and and give us his input? Um, fortunately the chief with the town manager's knowledge uh gave me a tour of the of the station uh last month. Um, I'm not a construction so I don't necessarily know but I also know that uh there's going to be a need for stocking the station. You're built you're giving us a a blank building with some of the accutraants but essentially there there going to be other expenses. So, if the chief could just speak to um how we're looking as far as budgetary and what other hiccups that you may see in in in the works.

So, we pre-budgeted for furniture and all that stuff. Um we've been sitting on three different companies quotes now since this project started and they keep updating us every 3 months on new quotes. you know, um, gym equipment was budgeted for in the budget for the station. Um, the Cascade system has been budgeted for and rolled over into the new budget. A bunch of stuff we still have stockpiled at station one. Um, and then we have some stuff budgeted this year with hopes of it coming online, you know, for, you know, office supplies, stuff like that. So, I'd probably say 90 85 90% of the stuff that we've thought about was budgeted for when we went through the process.

Yeah, we identified everything on the front [clears throat] end and then budgeted for that and kept rolling it over. And again, [snorts] with uh import cost going up with equipment and stuff like that, I understand there's going to be an increase at some point. And I just want people to be prepared for we're going to go a little bit more, I'm sure, but uh it looks like we're at least let's hold feet to the fire here that uh our June date if we can go earlier obviously that would be great. But you know holding people's feet to the fire to make sure we get that June date hit for sure. Yeah. Um by the way he's using fire metaphorically just so we're clear

like engine. [laughter] So, what we need to look at possibly is if you think we're not out of the funds of the 2025 budget, do when we go into budget season again, if we've missed or you need more, you know, just if you can be thinking about that so we can approve it in our next budget round for our next fiscal year. I was going to ask, what is the ballpark you've got right now? What are we talking about? Off the top of my head, I don't even know. I mean, because I know the Cascade system was somewhere of $100,000 by itself, you know. Um, and that has gone up every year. Well, every

I think one's point is we take [clears throat] when we get farther along, take a snapshot and then if you need to come back, we we don't want to build a beautiful new firehouse and then, you know, go cheap on the right on the stuff that you guys need. So, at least that's my view. Another another quick question I've got is uh um is this a requirement to meet certifi certification occupancy or is this just an added uh nice to have the vents? The vents. Oh no, [clears throat] the vents are absolutely required. Required.

Yeah. FEMA has a quite a few publications on how you wet or dry flood proof. Um, and you're because FEMA's continued to add to the the flood elevations year-over-year. Uh, now we're up to basically 14 feet. Yeah. I mean, I see these glass windows and I hear 157 miles an hour, but uh 157 miles an hour against the roof coming at the door is going to bust that down and you're not going to have any flood issues. I mean, I I just find it's uh a little bit uh excessive to be that high. We've gone that high and now we're dealing with flood. We're going to have boats out here and everything else. We'll discuss it. I just answered my question. I'd love to talk to you more offline about the whole

policy on on the on the beach. But I mean that Yeah, it's it's there because it has to be there. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you could do a briefing because the other thing we talked about is the chief knows. The original thought was we had to take the firehouse. So So what would have been the the ramp would have taken to the ocean if we took if you put the equipment up that high. And so I remember [clears throat] that discussion. Remember that discussion. It was like I don't think he wants to unload the the fire trucks to the ocean. I have a question. I have a question for Chief. Once the this firehouse is finally finished, how long do you anticipate getting um it ready for you to occupy?

Moving in all the equipment, getting all the personnel right down to now. It's the functioning. The personnel are ready to go now. [laughter] I bet I bet they are [laughter] um speaking with the uh different companies that do the furniture and everything else. Um they said they can be ready between ready to mobilize and set up between 30 and 60 days. Um you know, and then it's ancillary stuff like kitchen stuff and stuff like that we have to think of. But I mean we can if I can get the furniture in there, I can get the guys in there. Very good. Thank you so much. Absolutely. [snorts]

Okay. So, if we're going along with FEMA and the flood vents, am I assuming or are we looking at having a FEMA flood policy on this building or what kind of insurance are we looking at on the building if we're going to comply with FEMA? Have we looked at insurance on the building yet?

My insurance is separate from the towns because I get it cheaper than the league can provide it on the fire side. Um, so we go through a company called VFIS. Um, they had sent Wayne was not here. He may have an email somewhere a preliminary cost breakdown of insurance on that building. We know there's going to be an increase because it's a brand new building. Um, but it was nothing astronomical. Um, and I can reach out to Matt to get us some more numbers and get him in touch with Wayne to do all that. Um, but yeah, I mean it's it's fully covered. All the equipment, you know, everything's covered,

okay? Because as our costs go up, we want to make sure our policy limits are going up and tracking with what we're spending on this build. And they actually when we started the project reached out to us to make sure the contractor had specific insurance on the project that Ernie and they all confirmed prior to signing off. So, great. Thank you. Any other questions? [clears throat] Okay. Um, now motion to approve the um change order. Motion to approve $10,54740 for the second. Any other discussion? All in favor? I.

All opposed. Thank you. Is that you on the [clears throat] coastal engineering stuff? All right, Wayne. Wayne, you're up.

This is under continuing business. E [clears throat] This is the um for TI Coastal and ATM engineering um for the contracts for them to continue work on the PTC8 work um that they've resumed the surveying. Um these are the um the budget amendment uh 2026 2628 and contract authorization ordinance 2026 26.29 with ATM and then ordinance number 20 262630 which is with TI coastal um as presented. Those are just the agreements to continue the engineering for the PTC8 project.

Yes. specific actions are listed on the agenda for we have three specific actions we're looking for. We're looking for a motion to approve the budget amendment 2026-26.28. Uh approve the contract authorization ordinance 2026-26.29 29 with ATM and also uh to approve the contract authorization ordinance 2026-26.30 with TI Coastal.

Okay. What I'd like to do, we'll take them individually. I'd like a motion to approve the budget amendment 2026-26.28 as presented. I'll make that motion. Do a second. I will second. Any discussion? All in favor? I [clears throat] I All opposed. All right. Um I'm going to ask for a motion to approve contract authorization ordinance 2026- 2629 with ATM as presented. Motion to approve. Move. Second. Second. Any discussion? All in favor?

All opposed. I'm going to ask for a request to approve the contract authorization ordinance 2026-26.30 with TI Coastal is presented. Motion to approve. I make the motion to approve. Second. [clears throat] Second. Any discussion? Do we have TI Coastal here? Yeah, he's going to be talking a little bit. Okay. Okay. Do you need something or just No, she's got other questions for you. [laughter] Um, all in favor? I all opposed. All right. New business. Yeah. Alice.

Yes. So, uh, we struck the ebikes agenda item. So, we're on MGT [clears throat] Impact Solutions. Um before you included in your packet is a um was the master service agreement with MGT uh LLC um which was approved approximately about a year ago which who aided in the recent replacements with um the finance officer's position um as well as uh the public works position. Um so we already have a master service agreement in place. So, this is essentially um an agreement that's been presented to um to award them the a contract to do the search for the uh police chief.

What I'd like to do is ask for a motion to approve. We'll go through the process and have a discussion and the budget amendment and a contract award or ordinance was included in your packet. Motion. Do I hear a motion? Yep. I make a motion to approve the budget amendment 2026-26.34 and contract award ordinance 2026-26.35 as presented. Do I have a second? Second.

All right. Um discussion. I've got a couple of comments. Um one is um I believe this is a key job for the town. I believe that we ought to consider internal people. Um, but I also think we ought to find out what's out there. Um, and when we talked about cost, that's a little bit misleading because, and again, you guys know I'm the numbers guy, because we're not filling this job right now, the $22,000 is going to be less than we would be paying in salary. So, the net net cost to us over that [snorts] period of time is a savings. Believe it or not, the um the acting police chief gets a per per policy gets a raise. Correct.

But you've got an open position. Um and like I said, I think that we should consider people internally, but I also think we should go out and find out what's out there. And that may or may the best person may be who we have inside, but I think this is a critical position just like we did with finance um to consider what's available. So that's my opinion on this and open to discussion. How much have we spent in years past uh when hiring Chief Younger? Do we outsource uh an agency to help us with I think that preceded everybody here. I have no idea.

That preceded me, but I I have not seen any agreements that the town used uh resources. I know they have for a town manager in the past. Um I do not know I can't say for sure if they did for a police chief or not. I believe from my time looking through all of our files um that's right that the town did not utilize um an external um contractor to assist us in the search

and and looking at the packet um MGT Impact Solutions has a strong national presence. There's no denying that but uh their North Carolina portfolio appears slim. Um, so you know, how are we going to ensure that our candidates are specifically qualified under uh NC training and standards? What steps will be taken to recruit from within our own department? Um, and you know, our own officers have familiarity uh with the retirement, familiarity with the town. I think obviously the concerns of including them and I and I'm sure there's no exclusion. Um, but you know, my concern is that we did we solicit bids or look at getting the North Carolina League of Municipalities or the North Carolina uh, Association of Chiefs of Police to provide us input or uh, provide personnel that could help us do the same thing at either no cost or at min or even lower cost. I think if we reaching out to people that are experts in this thing, like I said, the North North Carolina Association of Chiefs of Police, uh having worked with a very similar organization in Virginia closely, um they are more than willing to come in and help us uh conduct the interviews, do all the stuff. Granted, it's the uh announcement and putting it out there and trying to get a wide swath of of candidates is is I think the challenge that we may have as a town. Um, but again, they have a website that posts all the the chief listings, other openings, deputy chief. I I was looking at it uh yesterday. So, I think there are a lot of resources out there that we could go to that would save us um $26,000. I agree that we are talking about salary, but I I think that there are

save money because what you're talking and just to weigh in on this, I hear everything you're saying. And I absolutely agree with the idea of trying to watch cost on this, but the issue you've got is you're asking a third party to come in and dedicate resources to us very quickly. I think this is a position that we need to either fill internally quickly or fill outside quickly. [snorts] Um, and when I look at this contract, similar to what we did with the other one, no offense, this is short money to get them in. And I'm assuming they're going to go do everything that you're talking about. I don't know.

Right. [clears throat] But then we direct them to go to the Association of Police Chiefs and engage them in their process. I think if we're going to hire them and we know there's an organization that deals with hiring police chiefs, why wouldn't we direct the third party recruiter to solicit them into the process? the the one executive,

they have a panel already internally of u professionals depending on what like with with this [clears throat] position in particular um with retired chiefs, people that are associated with those associations that you mentioned um part of their fee is that they do the um they scrub all the applicants coming in. They review everything. They short list. They um they not only do the advertising like we said with the brochure and put all that front-end stuff together, but they vet everything and do um initial screenings, then they follow through with the background checks and everything, reference checks and everything on the back end as well. [clears throat]

And and I recognize that I I I read the packet pretty thoroughly. Um but the the one executive that they did list, his experience was all California and West Coast. Um, and I didn't see him being based in North Carolina or in their list of clients that they had, none of them were in North Carolina either. So, that's I just want to make sure that we're including North Carolina experts in with the North Carolina Association Chiefs of Police and the and the League of Cities as well. So, I just I throw it out there. I have some concerns about it. I understand that we need to do this sooner than later, but again, I'm emphasizing, you know, if you bring an outside agency in, I think you also u make officers uncomfortable with what happens if we get somebody who uh is not familiar who wants to because as has been said earlier, uh Mr. Wilkerson said earlier too, this we have a an agency that has taken a a big turn for, you know, with professionalism, with training, with uh dedication to this town and to go and solicit outside specifically, I agree, we want the best candidate, but to go, it makes it seem like we are trying to go outside and get somebody um rather than looking internally. and I have concerns that it may cause morale to lower. It may cause people to look for employment elsewhere. One of the things I've seen being here um for for two years, living here longer, but involved in the police department for the past two years is uh we have a lot of people and it hasn't happened since I've been here. We've very stable but the the retirement system is such that people can bounce around from agency to agency with very little uh impact to their retirement and I don't want us to without getting a lot of input from the officers as far as what they want um what characteristics. So obviously I

would hope that MGT would uh interview officers interview our community again um like Mr. Wilkerson uh and myself as citizens and um so I those are my my concerns just making them known to you and to our community. [clears throat] So I have a question then if we wanted to enter into a contract with them I mean I know we can put in whatever stipulations maybe

we want. I mean, and I don't know from our legal team whether we can have a subcommittee from the board work with them or something because I know it's a key position. We have people experienced on the board. I mean, can one of our own board members be helpful in the hiring process or people on our own staff so that the staff doesn't feel alienated?

I I I'll wait for counsel. I I think we're making a lot more complicated than it really is. We're talking about hiring a head hunter to take a look at something to vet our own people. If that's the right person, then the decision could be very quickly made. All right? Because if if we hire from inside, then you've got are we promoting the next level? Are we replacing the other thing? All right. [snorts] Right now, we've got I believe somebody that can step in and and get this thing done. Um, I I just am very concerned that from a cultural standpoint, I believe while I respect all the police officers we've got, I think this we could do more community outreach. I think we could do more things that were that we have not been doing as a town. [clears throat] Um, as my friend over here has told me all the stuff that he would like to have done on the community outreach stuff. And all I'm saying is look, you know, I don't I don't think we have anybody, including our captain, that is disqualified from anything involving this, but you know, you could also find out what other candidates are out there, whether processes and stuff are out there. And again, I'm just looking at the money and and everybody keeps talking it's $22,000, but if you're paying the chief $10,000 a month, which is basically we're paying, all right, it's paid for itself in two months. And does anybody really think we're going to be able to to go out and vet this thing? How long did it take us to find Wayne?

Right. And and it they it may come back. And I think that the key on this thing is absolutely and I'm going to use the the wrong term here. If it's a tie, you stay inside. If it's even close, you stay inside, right? I mean, that to me is clear, but we've also got to get, you know, it's a culture issue, too. Larry, I hear what everybody's saying and and I totally understand. This is a critical position for a town, any town, but it's surely a critical position for our town. Absolutely.

Uh, nobody's questioning the captain's position and being able to to be whether he do the job or not. That's not the issue. The issue is who internally is going to have the time to reach out to do all the things that need to be done and know all the questions that needed to be asked for the type of job that we're doing and have the you know we we can't you you've got to in in nobody nobody at this table is going to have the time, experience or knowledge of things that we even ought to ask about making that happen. And then we're taking then we're we're actually showing preferential treatment more than if we were going outside and doing it because then then what happens is somebody's going to be saying well you know so and so got elected because so and so liked him. You know we're we're this is a major important job that the the money is consequential to the product that we're trying to to to receive. Huh. inconsequ inconsequential.

Nobody said I was intelligent. [laughter] But any but but I think that there's nothing there's nothing to I mean any head hunter is going to go the easiest route the easiest route to find a suitable person because they're going to make their money regardless of how long it takes them to do it that we hire. Faster the better.

That's right. So, so they're they're going to look why wouldn't they look internally inside the state or inside various places or or any outlying areas because it it's it's the easiest thing for them to do. They don't want to have to go bring people from California to send them over here for us to to to say, "Well, we don't want anybody, you know." So, I I think that although I totally understand uh Kip's position on this, I I think that we're we're better off to spend the money on somebody that's all they're going to do is look to find a suitable person for us. And as long as we've laid out the proper credentials, credentials are things that we want to have, then it's just like everything else that we've talked about where people aren't providing the right information. Uh, you know, we we we don't have to accept it. And we But the more the more that we tell them about what we want, the easier it's going to be for them to find somebody. And and if I was a person, if if I was doing that job, I would certainly look local before I would go to California.

Then why don't why don't we do that? Why don't why don't we look local first before we decide go ahead who's going to I mean and just to to me to me what we're going to do I've been on both sides of the coin. I've been where people were promoted above me that shouldn't have been and I've been promoted into the state job where the state workers felt they should have been promoted. You bring somebody in here new, it's going to take them six months to even figure out where all the street names are. It's going to take them a year and a half. During that year and a half, you're going to have your top performing officers hit the door.

We've talked about retention. We've talked about loyalty to our our servicemen and women. Let's let's give us 60 days to see if we've got somebody here to do it. If if they can't if we can't find somebody in 60 days, then let's spend $26,000.

Let's do that. But I'm just saying the town the the town, you know, surely our our police department uh needs all the opportunities that they can have. But we're we're not we're not serving this is not a private business to where we're sitting here deciding what's the best way for us to go. We're we're we're representing a town who who deserves that we're going to do everything we can to get the very best person that we can for the money that we can afford to do the job and and wherever that comes from. It may be internally.

Well, unfortunately to me it tells me that Chief Younger wasn't doing his job. It it's a black spot on his career if he hasn't trained somebody to take his place when he moves on. Mark, I'm not saying that's not true. I fundamentally disagree with that. I mean, we all have our own things. In my business experience, you're not talking about hiring a mid-level or an entry- level person. You are talking about the leader of the police department in this town anytime. If don't do this, if Alice left tomorrow, we don't just say, "Well, let's just look in internally for six months and find out if somebody can do the job."

I agree. I said, "Let's let's look for two, you know, 30 days." But but then Mark, then you're then you're put Okay, let's be honest. Right now, the person that has the advantage in getting this job is sitting in this room because if we hire a head hunter and we go forward and he kicks ass and takes names for the next two months, what do you think that does in terms of he's proven himself out? Right. Right. If if it doesn't meet our criteria and stuff, and look, I don't get to vote on this. I fundamentally disagree with trying to kick this thing down the down the road. Every time we've done this, it's backfired on us.

It backfired us on the clerk. It backfired us on the on the finance person, okay? [snorts] on something like this, getting somebody out there to vet this stuff for us if you know they come back, you know, and I just don't want to see us I don't want to see us lose three or four officers because they know they're not going to be promoted if they bust their butts and then nobody's going to want to come back in and be a police [clears throat] because nobody's going to want to come in and be a police officer from the surrounding areas because we're not promoting from within. How do you know that? Two points, two questions. I've lived it. Two points, two questions. First off, MGT was used to hire finance. Is that correct? For the for the town. Same company. Correct. It took a long time for them to do it effectively.

I think I have no problem kicking the can down the road for 30 days to get questions answered. My questions are, uh, Mr. Felman, who was included in this, as a senior consultant, but has no experience in North Carolina. How can they guarantee us that that we're going to get somebody who's concentrated on North Carolina, concentrated on on a coastal beach town of our of our nature. Um I I I get it. I understand we could we could hire them tomorrow and it would according to their schedule 13 to 14 weeks they can come back. That's their timeline. I don't know how realistic that is, but my concern is that I have no problem kicking the road down kicking the can down the road for a little bit so that we can get some more input from uh people more knowledgeable in North Carolina.

But you understand that that's h that's going to happen under this contract, right? But we're under sign contract today. We're in good hands now. And 30 days, 30 days is not going to, in my opinion, drastically negatively impact our police department and the hiring process. What are you getting in that 30 days? We're getting input from the National Associate, the North Carolina Association of Police.

So, they're going to step up and they're going to come and do all the work that these people are going to do. They're going to vet everybody. They're going to do background checks. They're going to do all that stuff. No, what they were going to do is [snorts and clears throat] they're going to provide us with some guidelines and some information so that we can educate ourselves on how we can get us the the proper candidate to get us the our next chief of police. They're going to provide us with information so that we can go to MGT and say, "You don't have North Carolina information. Here is some guidelines. Here's some information that we have from the North Carolina Association of Chiefs of Police." Well, why not just direct MG to do that right now? Well, because that's what I said is getting that point covered in our contract. Yeah. Just just included in the contract.

So then we're approving a contract that we haven't quite ironed out. That's what I'm saying. We can push this. We give you the authority to do the to put the conditions in the contract you want. I I've made my concerns vot there's a fundamental dis which is good. This is the way it ought to be aired. What I my position on this and I don't get the vote is you get the best candidate. If it's inside, it's not the idea that the idea of trying to to to handle this stuff and to say we're just gonna wait. We're gonna see what happens and everything else has backfired for this town. Well, if it's an inside candidate that is selected after paying $26,000, we paid $26,000 and just thrown it away. So, how? Because if the internal candidate math doesn't your math does, Mark, your math doesn't work.

Okay? Because you didn't pay that. You didn't pay two people during that time. You paid one. But you're going to pay a ton of money in retraining because your top performers are going to have to take him by the hand and show him the routes, the people, the everything else. They're going to get tired of doing his job and they're going to go find somewhere else to work. But what you guys are saying is that we are going to go through a head hunter and hire somebody that's incompetent. No, what I'm saying is what I'm saying is the staff is going to basically revolt, have a mutiny, and it's going to collapse from its own weight, and then and then uh we're going to have to be square one, and we're not even going to have a police force. We just agree to disagree. Agree to disagree. Well, if if they did that, then then they probably not weren't the best people to have anyway.

I mean I mean that's that's all I'm I'm not speaking about anybody. But but on but the bottom line is is that that you know we we the town deserves to have the the proper process done and and and and if you if you and if our organizations are old and doing what they're supposed to do, they should have a chain of command ready to step up and somebody moves on. Well, I I got something else to say. Me, too. I think we're all in agreement. We want the best candidate, whether that's an internal candidate or an external candidate. We are looking for the company to take administrative workload [clears throat] off of the staff

to start doing some of the initial vetting and the background checks and to get us a list, a shorter list of candidates. My points were that that company MGT works for us. If to your point, [clears throat] Kip, we want them to reach out to the Association of Police Chiefs here in North Carolina, we put that in the contract that we want them to reach out and find out how that group can engage with the local availability and with their website and however else. But we can direct MGT to make some reach out in the direction we want. They work for us.

They work for us. These recruiters work for us. So we can tell them we want you to go this route and look here and see how these guys can help in this process. So

and that's exactly what I was uh I agree with that. I think we should modify the contract to reflect exactly what Laura said. Um, and not have to come back and approve that. Let Al we we can direct Alice to add that to the contract because I agree I I wholeheartedly at any time if you've got um if you've got applicants and you've got the internal you've got an external and all things being equal or fairly equal I always stay say stay inside. Mhm.

So, I I would like to request specific conditions that you're looking for at this point. And and again, unless we're ready to hash that out right now, if we can Oh, we hash it out right now. Okay. So, specifically, we didn't make a decision today. I need I need I would like

We'll vote on that, Mark. So I can I make an amendment that we reach back out to MGT prior to entering into this contract to seek clarification. The clarification is what expertise or what experience can they guarantee us that they are going to understand North Carolina? What experience do they have in coastal police departments, small coastal police departments? Um,

I think those are the first to interrupt you. That's not what she's proposing. That is completely different than what she's proposing. What she's proposing is you put in the contract. You will reach out to this thing. You will look for for candidates with North Carolina experience. Okay. What you just described is we're kicking it down the the thing. They're going to have to go back to MGC. They're going to have to come back here in a month. And I didn't think that's what you were proposing.

Nor what they're saying is you can you can propose that. I'm just telling you, you got three votes going the other way. So why don't we handle the one we think that I think Larry's agreeing with that too. I think three people here are saying you go back. One, we haven't voted. So you can't put words in people's mouths. Two, I have made an amendment to to get this information prior to because what if MGT comes back and says, "No, we're not going to do it." What if they come back and they say, "No, we don't know North Carolina." Where are we then? Are we stuck with a company that can't provide us with what we need to get the ideal candidate? Right. We're right where you just said we're going to be a monster if we do your suggestion. I have made a motion to for those those two items. All right. I asked for a second.

Is there a second? Wait, there's already a motion on the floor. I thought there's a motion. I made a motion to amend. Okay. Is that correct? So, we let the clerk just say what the original motion was. Right now, we do have a motion on the floor um approve the contract

to to we have a motion on the floor for item B's specified or specific action requested which is which was made by uh Mayor Prom um to approve the budget amendment 2026-26.34 and contract award ordinance 2026-26.35. At this time with that motion on the floor, I cannot accept another motion on the floor until that motion either fi fails to receive a second, which it did receive a second, or it fails when it is. Yeah, you could amend it, but it would have to be amended by the person that made the original motion to begin with. Um, so

okay, I would like to pull my original one. Okay. You can also withdraw for sure. And then I'd like to amend it. Laura, will you help me out with this? Would like to amend that motion to include MGT reaching out to the Association of Police Chiefs and engaging any help they can offer in North Carolina police chiefs. North Carolina specifically, right? Okay. In in our hiring process, including seeing if they would allow us to advertise on their website, etc. Okay. Yeah. Are you seconding that? She's the original one amended. Okay. So that's Conniey's amended.

Okay. So are you seconding that amendment? We need a second. We need a second. No, that could be you then. Okay. All right. Okay. Now more discussion. Is that a group that you would agree with? Yes. I mean, that's what I'm saying is I just want to include make sure that we're including safeguards so that we can ultimately if they come back and say, "No, we can't do that. We we're not willing to do that." Don't sign the contract, then we don't. That's that's that was my point is making sure that we get those asurances from them. With those assurances in place through the amended motion, I'm I'm in agreement. Okay, that's fine. And this is a

can I can I just ask for clarification in reaching out to the chiefs uh the North Carolina specifically chiefs of police association. Are you specifically requesting that someone from there be on that interview panel with MGT or are you saying that we use that as a resource to advertise on their site? I I thought I thought what they said is how how much do you

what they're what they said is we're going to include in the contract language that they have to have to reach out to them to find candidates, stuff like that to have that part of their process that they're going to look at that as a resource and get back to us and consider that as a resource in the hiring. I thought that's what you wanted to go. Right. [snorts] I I don't want if MGT feels that a representative from the North Carolina Association Chiefs of Police is prudent or they come to us, right? Depending on their their recommendations, I would have no problem with bringing somebody up. But no, that's not the general. I want them to make sure that they're the North Carolina is a resource

is a resource that provides them beforehand what standards that they would be looking for beforehand so that they can say yes that is something we are willing and able to do if they can't at that point that's when I want to know so we can reconsider the contract that just be a criteria they put and if they offer us to be able to put our job opening on their website we would take advantage of that correct MGT would take advantage of that. I would hope. And and they are they are to entertain they they are to entertain. Well, no, let me ask this question. What what are what are we proposing if we have internal

that's so but if we have internal applications they don't distinguish if a patrolman wants to apply for that they can. That's right. So so if anybody that's presently here wants to apply they they they go through them and I think everybody that is is aware of this position being vacant is already aware and and and starting to put their ducks in a row to apply. I have no doubt that that they will be given a fair shake,

but again my understanding is from past the the hiring of Chief Younger that um uh Alderman Leonard helped or in some way worked with that. I would hope that I would be afforded that same opportunity should we get to that. That's a that's separate from this contract acceptance. I'm just putting it out there. Now, we have a motion. The attorney needs to uh weigh in on that. I [clears throat] don't know how it was handled in the past. Um but the the general laws, the town's ordinance, and the personnel policy is very clear that the town manager appoints. So, the board is giving input, I think, which she will find helpful, but ultimately it's her decision. Okay.

Oh, yeah. And I'm definitely not taking that from you. I just want to say I hope you consider that I have expertise, my background, what I campaigned on, my my 30 years of law enforcement. I can provide you with a lot of good feedback as I hope I have done today as well. Okay. All right. So, we have a motion. We've got an amended amendment. We we really have to vote on this. We've been talking about this for 45 minutes. So, [clears throat] go ahead, please. All right. So Alice, just one other discussion point with MGT and I know they publish it on their website. Correct. Correct. And we can publish it on our website. Correct.

Okay. And then we can also see if they will check out that we can publish on the association of police chiefs. They will actually send to me a recommended list of websites of websites to advertise on. Can we just add um just like with the finance officer's position or the clerk's position, it's geared towards um whatever associations are affiliated. Terrific. Okay. All right. Let's let's do a vote. All in favor? All opposed?

You want to pop up my So [clears throat] everybody knows the drama. I will try to keep this relative short. So this is also the basis for Alice and I have reached out to that we start with what is okay. So go ahead to the next slide please. All right. when you're looking at um understanding where we are, we have to go beyond in the past what we've done is a single year budget and Joanne and I used to talk about this and and my view on this is we are looking at the largest single project we've ever done. We really have I think Alice has got a general handle on what we think is going to happen over the next four or five years. [snorts]

[clears throat] But what we have not done is put together a financial analysis similar to what the Carters do for a lot of other cities and they'll talk about a little bit is going out and figuring out how much money we've got coming in, how much we're going to need for projects, all those type of things because I think everybody understands that five years from now um our payroll probably is going to be up, our expenses are going to be up. We had the uh architect talk about the cost of things going up. [snorts]

We need to [clears throat] forecast what that looks like and then decide what we can pay for and what our priorities are. [snorts] Right? So, [clears throat] we talked about this um the obligations we have beyond a single budget year, the firehouse, the fire truck. Um beach projects. Um we've got one right now, the one we're working on right now may go hopefully will not go beyond this fiscal year, [snorts] but we've got other things we're doing. We have to consider our obligations. We have to consider and this will be in part of the modeling. I want a the Carters will put together a living model for us. So if a citizen comes in and says what you really need to do is this, we can model the impact of that. We can figure out the timing of that. It'll give us an economic analysis of what that's going to cost. All right? Forecasting [snorts] all those type of things. Um and the other thing that we talked about that Chris talked about in the last one which kind of got my attention was hurricanes. Um, how much money are we going to need to make sure? Um, and I, this preceded me on this board when Florence hit, how many years was it before we actually did the beach work? Three, four. The reason [snorts] is town didn't have any money. And these are reimbursement projects. You've got to have the cash up front if something comes in. We cannot wait three years to rebuild the beaches because we didn't have money. And what he's talked about, we have cash right now. Um, what does that mean? What is the weather? And the other thing is the economy. Um, right now we've been very fortunate. Accommodation taxes are holding steady. Um, the other benefit that we've talked about a little bit is people don't understand why we only get half the accommodation tax from the county. Um, all you have to do is look at our budget and figure out how much we get in sales tax. Uh, we do not generate $4 million in sales tax, but there is an agreement between the county and the other municipalities about how occup occupation taxes and sales taxes are allocated. So, we give up about a million and a half dollars in occupation

tax and pick up $4 million in sales tax. We will make that as long as I'm around, we will make that trade every day. [snorts] So, go ahead. [clears throat] The next slide. Resources, cash. We got cash and accounts receivable. If you look at the financial part that Wayne put together and Alice has talked about, we've got a lot of receivable money from FEMA. Um 11 million Wayne, if my numbers are correct, we've got other receivables. uh the beach project we're doing now will be out there, but that's money we do not have in our pocket. So, how do you assess the timing of that? Those type of things. Loan availability. Um for those that remember what the Carters did for us before is we refinanced the USDA loan, which was the phase 5 loan. And I can't find the slide, but Connie and I were talking about it. We know that we saved millions of dollars in interest by going with those special obligation bonds and refinancing things. We need to look [clears throat] at that. forecasting the revenues. Um obligations we have public safety is an obligation. Um that is a very high priority. Beach maintenance is one. Debt repayments. Knock on wood. Once we get past this next payment on the beach, we'll have the firehouse uh which we are borrowing at what did I hear? 3%.

3.79.

Yeah. 3%. Good rate particularly in this environment. And everybody knows what the uh interest rate is on the fire truck, don't we, Chief? Zero. It's an interest free loan. You don't want to pay those off. [snorts] Um [clears throat] public safety, beast, debt payments, and employees. How do we make sure that our employees are taken care of? How do we make sure the funds are there? [snorts] And the stakeholders, that's the people in this room, that's the people that own here, the people that vote here, everybody else. How do we look out for them? You know, we've got property tax issues. The reval has just started. um projects, beach capital projects and other. We've talked about the maintenance building and what we're going to be able to do. The whole idea behind this is to take a look at what our obligations are today, what we think they're going to be in the future, how much money we think we're going to have, and how do we use those resources. And that means getting input from town people, from this these people, and everybody else. Uh next slide, please. [snorts] Cash balance. Everybody's always surprised when they see that number. We have $35 million in cash right now. According to the report that you've got, if you go back and look at that audit uh not schedule graph that he showed us before, we've been very good at putting the cash away, paying off our debts, and putting oursel in a position going forward. Um we've got 11 11 to 12 11 to 13 million FEMA money up there, and you can tell me Wayne if I'm wrong. We've also got unsubmitted approximately two million. Could be a little bit more than that on the new project. [snorts] Debt access, we don't know. The Carters will come back and let us know. Taxes, property taxes, sales out Edum. The county fire tax, as everybody knows, is a big win for us. The county gives us three cents back of property taxes every year. The number this year, Wayne, was a little over $500,000, which is actually more than the payment that we're making on the firehouse, Wayne. Correct. So, [snorts] it's covering that. And grants, including the

shallow draft, which Chris will talk about a little bit more. Next, obligations, public safety, employees, stakeholders, um, beach reourishment, final payment, firehouse loan, firet truck, capital projects, infrastructure, and beach. Go ahead. I know I'm going through this quickly, but we're all right. Third party funding. We're going to talk about the shallow draft in a little bit. Uh, FEMA, what's going to be available or not? bank debt, what's available, uh third party acts, our weather, economy, operational costs, what do our expenses look like in the future, and revenue versus expenses. One of the things that Alice and I talked to the Carters about a little bit and they are the experts that put together our financial modeling before we refinanced all this stuff is um right now in the investment funds uh like other companies and other municipalities we invest with a state fund because we're limited on the investments the town can do. Um I at every county meeting I ask their finance guy what what we're looking at. He's looking at about three and a half percent is what we're getting on that money right now. Not bad for for a very protected fund. So, [clears throat] one of the questions he brought up is for us to consider going forward is do we hold on to our cash? If we can get three and a half% there and borrow at three and a half, we're better off keeping the cash and borrowing because it's basically the same number. Or even if we have to pay four and a half, then we're only paying 1%. So, the question is, how much cash do we want to hold on to? What are the contingencies we need going forward? And those are the things that need to be modeled out for us. Okay. And so, um, operational costs, what are they going to look like? And it's going to be revenue versus expenses. Go ahead. What's a strategic plan? Um, and yes, I I did take this. I think it was Wikipedia or somebody talking about what

it is. The whole idea behind this is we don't have to have, you know, a $50,000 take a look at and feeling the kumbaya thing about what's our mission, all those type of things. What we need to do is figure out as a town what we want to do, what our resources are and plan for it. And that's what a strategic plan does. The county's got one. Holly Ridge has got one. Sur City's got one. The other thing a strategic plan does is it ends up being a scorecard for this board to you. All right? meaning that if we plan this thing out and we're going to tell you these projects are going to happen, they don't happen, then you know that we didn't we didn't produce the results that we thought we were going to produce. And I think it's a very good scorecard to have. Um, and just by and go to the next one if you will. Um, [clears throat] what I'd like to do is schedule a strategic planning session. Um, and the the irony of this is once again Ellis is ahead of me on these type of things. Um, at the county meeting, I talked to the Holly Ridge uh, mayor and they used UNCW, the people that we've actually looked at for courses that do strategic p planning stuff and [clears throat]

the league. The league municipalities, right?

Okay. But it's the same person that does the training and stuff. They did an on-site uh two-day strategic planning session for Holly Ridge for he said $2,000 which is a lot less than I thought we would be paying for because I think we need a facilitator on this uh to get our hands around what this looks like. Um and so um what I'd like to do is as we finish this up and we'll have the Carters come in. Uh two things I'd like to get accomplished today if possible from this board. One is engage the Carters, which we'll talk about a little bit. The second thing is give her give Alice um the approval to go out reach out to this resource which she's already talked to about availability. Find out and let's say we give her the authority up to $10,000. Okay? She's going to get the best deal that she can for us. Schedule something like that, but also we're going to need this board's commitment. This is two days. Okay? And you, in my opinion, you got to have a facilitator because you got to have somebody that's keeping us um on schedule and the commitment that we're going to spend two days doing this.

So Rick, the North Carolina League of Municipalities is offering their strategic planning training in Newburn February 17th and 18th. That might be a good baseline course for some of the board members to take prior to bringing in a facilitator to go on a deep dive just for our town,

you know. So that way they get the overview course and then we do, you know, really a working session then with that with the league person regarding our particular interests. Let let me I I've actually thought about this and why no offense I don't agree with that for two reasons. One is again [clears throat] kicking it down the kicking it down the road. But more importantly is there could be 600 people at that class. There's not going to be

you don't know how many people are going to be there. But it's not going to be but here here's the point is it's not a session for us. It's a general session. And I'm assuming part of the plan they're going to put together Alice is going to be the primary on what a strategic plan is. It's going to be more basic than Anwasa just spent $35,000 on planning on their strategic planning. We're not going to do that. Found that a couple years ago. Go ahead, Rick. Will you explain to the new members and to the audience um who Carters are?

No. The Carters are uh and and they're on here. The Carters [clears throat] are a group that we brought in a number of years ago to take a look at the financial situation we had here. Um, we had a debt, USDA, USDA loan that was phase five. Under that terms of that debt, um, we actually had to hold $5 million and basically get no interest on it. Um, we were precluded from doing any other beach projects until that was paid off. All right. And it was going to be another what, 10 years of paying it off. Yeah. We went back and refinance these things at like 2%.

Which was lower than the rate. We paid instead of having $5 million sitting there getting no interest, we paid off the debt. We came up with a payment schedule to get us debtree with all that stuff over that period of time. The other thing that they did on beach projects, and you've heard me use the word SABS, they're special obligation bonds. What we did is we went out because these FEMA projects are reimbursement projects. They created this structure, which the Carters have done and all these other municipalities is you go out and you borrow money. I think it was PNC we borrowed money from. The collateral is not the town. The collateral was FEMA reimbursement. So, we were not collateralizing town assets. And so we got a very good interest rate. All right. And it allowed us to borrow money and have a structure in place so that we could pay off the debt, but also do the beach projects. And so they were the expertise. They do this and and Doug can talk about how many other towns they do this. They literally saved us millions and millions of dollars in interest and allowed us to restructure our debt and to put us in the position we are now. We've got cash and other things in hand. saved money, did it quickly so that we could move on and um

yeah, it was just it was amazing. Well, and the other thing is to have that facility, the special obligation bonds, so that you had a structure in place that in the future if we ever had an event that we could borrow money that we already had it in place, we knew and it was approved by the LGC, which has to approve any of our debt financing or any of our other things. So, Doug can talk about it a little bit more. [clears throat] Um, so back to my slides, if you will, real quick, and like I said, I have no problem with people wanting to go do that again. And how much is the new burn thing? You remember, not off the top of my head. I don't, but I can look it up for you.

But my whole point is I like the idea if we're going to do something like that, it would help me. I've been through strategic planning sessions and and everybody else has. I would like to have it frankly as a team building exercise for this group. Okay? And also remember if we have it here, it's open to the public. Okay? It's not a class that you have to pay for or whatever. Anybody that wants to show up for these these sessions can show up. It's open to the public and then we'll be able to get public input in those type of things. Um, and you're you're instead of paying one fee or we don't even know people's calendars to be able to, you know, my calendar is not such that I can tell you today that I'm going to be able to make every one of those sessions. I looked at the Newurn thing. Okay. And [clears throat] I think it's going to be Alex more basic than that. They're not they're not talking about doing the deep what you're talking about is the the really deep dive floor that does [clears throat] all that kind of stuff.

It's $500. $500 for the town and it's [clears throat] up to five participants. Anything after five is an additional 125. Well, we're talking about actually after that uh trying to schedule this like the week after that. But if we don't lock these people down, [snorts] I mean, I [clears throat] have no problem with people want to attend that as a primary. That's right.

As as a thing, but go ahead and go ahead and lock this down um and know that we're going to have them. Alice, what's your thoughts? Well, this this framework that the league offers, it's more of a um it was established. They created it for smaller towns to be able to do a strategic plan. Their intention with these type of workshops in like what Holly Ridge did. Um it's not um a full strategic plan process that you would go through like if you hired a consultant that would be upwards in the realm of um 35,000. And I think the counties went up was around a $70,000 range with the [clears throat] consultant where they do a mission, they do a vision, they do a a SWAT analysis, they do um u interviews with stakeholders, whether it be citizens or staff, department heads. That is not what this is. This is something that is a simplified framework built specifically for small municipalities to be able to put together a strategic plan quickly and um realistically they feel like you could walk away from one of their sessions with a strategic plan

this two-day session. And just real quick, the other thing that it does, [snorts] [clears throat and cough] excuse the other reason for the timing on this is we're starting our budget process. All right. And right now, without Carter's doing a forecast for us or having an idea of what we want to do, we got a big project coming next year. And while I think we can pay for it, I'm not 100% sure we can. And so the idea would be to get something what you described is it's not going to be a deep dive strategic plan that you know that takes two years to do. This is going to be putting us in a room with stakeholders and deciding what our priorities are, taking a look and hopefully Carters can get us some kind of financial analysis by then and talk about what our priorities are, what we got, and what we can pay for.

And I believe [clears throat] I'm trying not to put words in your mouth, but you kind of said that it doesn't involve stakeholders. Correct. It it does not. Whereas I feel it should. Our residents, our our homeowners need to have a voice in what our strategic plan is. So, I think that I like Laura was talking about this newborn class seems like a good first step. I agree we don't necessarily probably need consultants for a first draft. I recognize budget season is coming up. But I [clears throat] think if we are doing it based off of our opinions, based off town staff, which is great, I get it.

But our our citizens need to be able to provide that input. And that's why facilitating these type of meetings. Again, my background is for the police department. I have done strategic planning um been the main coordinator coordinated um uh stakeholder meetings and um help prepare documents so I'm at least familiar with and and and maybe this class won't give me a whole lot but it will give me something

and I think it's important that we uh ensure that the stakeholders are getting especially in the initial input of a plan that we don't even have now we don't have a fiveyear a three or five strategic plan. So I think it's important that we take baby steps, but it has to include the biggest first step is including our stakeholders. Okay. But let me just and just being devil's advocate with you. What you just described is going to take a year. Okay. That's fine. It's got to be a baby. So So you're okay with putting off the beach project for a year because we're not going to we're not going to know that that's what our stakeholders want.

Those projects those projects [clears throat] are moving forward. They will continue to move forward. We have done nothing to throw up roadblocks to stop that. What I'm talking about strategic plan wise. And here, let me let me just reference what I'm what my vision of a strategic plan is.

A strategic plan is fire chief. Do we need a new uh south or north fire station? Um how long is it going to be before we need to replace that? Uh how long is it before we need to put up a park in one of these vacant lots that we have? And how are we going to do it? Where are we putting that on the calendar strategically planning for the success of our town? That's what I'm thinking of. these projects for the beach. Yeah, we there's no denying that the beach is as we said during the campaign and as we've said here today, the beach is the town, North Top Sale Beach, but

I think we have [snorts] a a duty to our constituents and I think that's why they have to be included in helping us draw the road map for the town

and and I don't disagree with that. What I don't like I started this process four months ago was told let's put it off until January. Okay, [snorts] let's not worry about it. We've got a budget coming up. Okay, I know I don't get to vote, but if we don't have a strategic plan, I'm not going to vote for a beach project because I don't know if we can pay for it. And we're going to have to make that decision very soon. Okay, and so by having this in an open session, you're going to get feedback from people. Number one, [snorts] it's a living document. this what I'm talking about getting out of here is a very high level type of thing that discusses that we then would put that on our website for people to respond back to it and then start doing outreach. But unless we have some basic thing to start going forward with this kind of stuff, including what are what are our priorities? I know what mine are. Okay, I'm the only one that does HOA stuff here. I'm pretty sure I know at least what four or five different HOAs are, what [snorts] their priorities are. All right, and I would encourage anybody here to do it. Anybody that's been to St. He just knows I do those things. All right. I want that feedback. All right. That's why I like the fact that when we have this if we have this planning session, whether you call it strategic planning or whatever, if we have that session here, everybody can participate. There's going to be people there to get their feedback and all those kind of things. If you look at how long the county took to put this to put theirs in. I don't think that we've got a year to wait, okay, to put something out there with what our priorities are. And if we get feedback from the people here that say, "I don't want a groin. I don't want this. I don't want a firehouse." That's good feedback for us to have before we start committing money. But but to me, the foundation of the thing is one, get Carters to do a financial analysis for us. But understand, they can't do that unless we have the meeting that we're talking about at the end of February to tell them what we want to do. Their financial model means nothing if we don't tell them that. [snorts] What are we going to use for payroll? What are we going to use for investment? What are we going to use for staffing? What are we

going to use for projects? Your point is a well well taken and I think the chief has already done that. What needs to be done? We've did a five-year forecast on capital projects. Correct. Yeah, we did [snorts] a fiveyear we did I did a five-year forecast when I came on board because there wasn't any plan in place. So, and the board was faced at that point in time with looking at tax revals and setting the tax rates. So, we quickly had to me along with staff had to quickly do an assessment and we plotted five years out of everything that we can think of as far as capital needs. Um, which was was a document that [snorts] we put together. And also keep in mind with the reval coming,

we better have a pretty good idea financially where we are because we're going to be making a decision on property taxes within the next six months. [clears throat] What? I was up here. Go ahead. I was waiting. Go ahead. Uh, I think what everybody's talking about the same thing but different. I think what the mayor's talking about is let's have let's have a a a shortterm five-year strategic plan for important things that are right immediately happening. That's what we're looking at. And then what you're talking about is a long-term strategic plan for putting things together that that affect the long-term deal

and getting their input. So, so and but I think that I mean so y'all talking about the same thing but different. I mean because you're you're talking about long term, he's talking about short term. My what I are are are you making a motion or you I can't I can't make a motion. He can't he's not making Okay. Well, I'm gonna make a motion. I make a motion that we that we adopt the Carter's uh plan that they've talked about here. And that that's a separate agenda item [clears throat] that that's on the agenda. Separate agenda. So it's not a plan. It's not part of the plan. It's we need to finish.

Understand when I when I put this together, I didn't [clears throat] know that this resource was going to be available to us that she'd already. Okay. [snorts]

This is only this is only what people don't understand is I'm not looking to do what you're talking about in a month. What I'm looking at is we need to nail down some priorities quickly and understand how much money we've got, what we can spend because we're going to have the revamp this year and we also at least have to take a pretty good shot at what this beach project's going to cost us because we've talked about shallow draft. What if they come back and they offer us half the money? What if we can't get other money in there? How much money are we as a town willing to take to do those projects? And I don't know because I don't know what that forecast looks like. So I think the finan

Okay. So I really think that what we need to do in my opinion is that we do need to have a a planning meeting here that our town people can can um attend and also not just sit there and have to listen to us but also can give feedback, be part of the interaction. These meetings are long. This is not reinventing the wheel. The town used to have planning meetings years and years ago. Usually they're two days. Usually they're eight hours a day having a facilitator from the League of Municipalities. We can hammer out a lot of stuff and also do it with the with the town's people, which is really really important because you can sit up here, you can hear from your neighbors, but not hear from the people from the St. Regis or or wherever else. And and but I also think that it's not a bad idea that anyone who wants to go to the Newburn,

that's just an add-on. Yes, that's an add-on. I think that the more we can do to educate ourselves to help the town's people, not just the people who live here, but the people who have vacation rentals, who come here on vacation. The more we can do to help everybody else, the more we can educate ourselves, the better. I think we're all kind of on the same page, but like Larry said, same thing only different. So, we're talking about three different events, three different actions. Approving the Carter's contract to really do a financial forecast planning model. Yes. Living model.

A living model. That's one [clears throat] thing. The second one is to get baseline training for anybody who wants to go in Newburn at the league course for two days because it's only in Newburn and it's 500 bucks for how five people. So that's cheap. And then also bringing the league in with a facilitator for the two-day workshop. So I think we're talking three different events in the February time frame. And are we all in agreement? We're interested in those three events. Yes. Okay.

I would add also I forgot who who asked um we use the fire chief as an example if we do want to know things that he has you know when do we need a new fire truck and stuff. Got it. That's often part of the um budget process too when the department heads come in and tell us their need their wants, their needs, their projections. Okay. Mine. And so this doesn't usurp the budget process. It's going to be an addition to that. Correct. My my understanding though is from Alice, you've got a lot of that information already. So that would be something that this facilitator would have be because they're going to have something for us to fill out before they come in.

Well, this type of items [clears throat] is something that's actually would go to once you approve the agreement on the agenda today with the Carters. is going to go to the Carters so they can build into the modeling. So, I'm confused. I [clears throat] know that's unusual, but there's we've we've covered a gambit of things that I don't know that any resolution has been obtained. And and I think that we need to deal with one item at a time because because what what Laura is talking about is is everybody going to these if the the government whatever if they're available right

if they're available and and and I have put my name in the hat for one of them on January the 26 but it's not available but and so I'm on a list to wait but what and what the mayor is talking about is a more immediate process of things that needs to get done uh because of the immediate financial needs that are going to take place wi with over the next year. And and so I think that we're we're just cover, you know, everybody's got an agenda item here that's that's not the same. Okay.

So I think that what what my opinion is is that we need to there's no question to call because we've not had a motion. But I think that what we need to do is just determine which one thing do we want to deal with. If okay, if anybody [snorts] if [clears throat] anybody on the board wants to go to one of these things, I mean, they can go. Well, that's my point. Look, we don't need anything related to the newborn thing, you're allowed to sign up and go. All right. So, if you want to go, you go, right? [clears throat] You can't make that mandatory. It's more expensive if we sign up individually. No, she'll sign up for the No, it's No. So, I can just sign up as a town. Okay. So you sign that up and any because if it's

anybody past the five people I would have to sign up as an additional person but I can sign up as just the town. So that's already included in our budget stuff. We don't have to worry about that. Okay. [snorts] We're going to talk about the Carters in a minute. What I would like to do and I don't know if we need a motion or just consensus. Okay. Because it is within her authority within $40,000 for her to go back to the league, right? and see if we can schedule something with them for two days. All right. And we talked about when in February [snorts] to [clears throat] get them you were talking originally about the week of February 16th. So that would be after Newurn. No. No. You'd be in conflict with Newurn.

Newburns is on the 17th, right? So you need to do it. So So the 23rd that week? Yes. [clears throat] Would you reach out to them, Alice? I will say emotion's not necessary if it's within her powers of authority. She's going to come back to us and say I can schedule them for that week and then if anybody has a conflict I'm looking at my schedule now. I am though going to ask that um [clears throat] I know that u we heard feedback that Holly Ridge was in the $2,000 realm. You got to get it,000 which is um so I need assurance that the [clears throat] board is comfortable right now since everyone is so all over the place to be honest. Um

a vote a vote um and what you're comfortable with going up to. If you want to say $10,000 is the max to give me approval for then that's okay. So a motion to approve her. I'll make a motion that Alice has a board approval to go up to $10,000 to bring the North Carolina League of Municipalities in for a two-day workshop for the town of North Topsel Beach. Here's a second. Second. All in favor? I don't think I'll make a motion that Lexi goes ahead and signs up the town

and but she can do that. So, do we know five people? Do we know who wants to go? one. Well, it doesn't have to be five. It's up to five. So, three people could go. It's the same price. But we know Mark's going. If I'm available, I want to go. All right. Going and I'm going. So, that's [clears throat] four. Larry, do you want to go? No pressure. I don't know when it is. It's going to be on the 17th of February. Check with Dick Ray. Okay. So now we know that [clears throat]

um really quick. I'm sorry. Um, so Carter we have listed as um I are we skipping over H G I'm not sure what F is. Yeah, H. Alice reminded me we already did some stuff on the sound. That was more to ask the planning board to take a look. We put the restrictions on the ocean side and Joanne two years ago mentioned doing something and you reminded me we did take action on the south side back in [clears throat] so I we don't need to discuss it anymore. It's about what's that? D and F D and F are punch list. Yeah, just real quick on the punch list.

Um these are issues that people brought up to me during the election. [snorts] Um, and [clears throat] what I would ask, the idea on this is that we talked about somebody making a list of stuff for us to consider. The stuff, the speed of the mount warning signs is the 35 that I thought we should put by the park. I'll try to follow back up with the people at Osprey because they said they wanted that, but I haven't had anybody tell me that that's okay. I did talk to the captain. Something like that's kind of a no-brainer. He just put up that little yellow sign there. pickle ball [clears throat] court was suggested to me that you could take one of the tennis courts and turn it into two pickle ball courts. I went out there and looked at it and this and we're going to have to do stuff anyway. I'm just telling you it's something that parks and wreck should take a look at.

Um [clears throat] and I can tell you from having the experience people that live near pickle ball courts hate them because they make too much noise. So I think before we commit to any pickle ball courts, I just want to throw that out there. That's a parks and w and it's a new member of the parks and wreck [clears throat] committee. And then Alice has already taken care of this. I don't know if people know this. Villa Capriani. Um and I forget the lady's name. Michelle, the lady that's doing that. Um Thompson used to have this artist type of thing up there and then they sold the property. So Villa Capriani, it's not them hosting it. is the individual that's hosting this that they're going to have this artist festival

there at at the villa and everything else and you've already coordinated and they've got everything. Yes, they already have everything. Um they let us know the event or they filed for actually a special event application which wasn't required. So, it's on all of our radars. Um but nothing further is required from the town at this time. They're if you lately and you looked at their tennis courts, you know they're not building tennis courts back there again. It's completely open. Um, and then if we can, let's I have to to [clears throat] add real quick because I've had citizens tell me on any of our vacant lots, you don't need a a huge space, but they would really enjoy a dog park.

That might get rid of some of the people off leash on the beach. And also, um, people are off leash. [laughter] Also, I've seen them. if there's any way any extra town hall parking even putting in some gravel out back or something. Um Mayor, we're going to keep the punch list going. Just Yeah, just to keep keep track we've got. Got it. Um real quick, Chris, can you come up? Let's talk about shallow draft for a minute. Um originally

um and I'll I'll back up a little bit. We've talked about filing for the money. You can come on up, Chris. Um, we've talked about filing for the money in the shallow draft fund. We do not have all the permits in place. Um, and the question is, how much do you wait to get it done? Um, originally I [clears throat] was going to ask that we approve going ahead and make the filing. I don't think we're ready to do that yet. [snorts] So, we're going to step back from that. Chris will talk about in a middle um, in a minute. Chris and Alice and I met with Senator Lazara because one of the things we've talked about is getting legislation that is North Topsil Beach Bundy from the state. Shallow draft is a fund that's got about $75 million in it right now. We're going to be asking for 35 plus of that.

So, we don't know what we're going to get. So, the backup plan or the other plan was to go ahead and see if we could get Lazar to help us. Okay. And to do some legislation. He seems open to it. The bad news is he told us in that meeting, you're not going to get anything done because of how dysfunctional the legislature is until at least July. We can't wait till July to figure out if we're going to get money from the state. So, the idea is um is to take a look at what we need to do to file for the shallow draft to start finding what that money is. And Kip, that falls right back into our financial forecasting. We don't know what they're going to give us, if anything. Um, and so I think Chris, the idea today is just say, um, you you can work with Alice and council and whatever to go through all the steps to make sure that we can do the filing and then be prepared, Alice and Chris at the next meeting to come to us with a package with with resolutions, with everything in it, with what you think we're going to ask for. And then hopefully, and you can uh answer this question, hopefully we can have another meeting with their with staff that Lazarus said he would help us set up to discuss that roadblock that's there. He setar did tell us he would work with us to help push through the administrative issues that we've got with the state. So Chris, it's your your podium.

So, uh I think you summed it up pretty good there, uh with one other ad, uh or two other ads. Um we're looking at three different avenues for getting the money and all three of those have different potential values and some of them could be combined in certain ways. Um shallow draft is a 3 to one match. Uh there is a provision under the shallow draft for rehabilitating not the word is not rehabilitating it is citing a disposal site which mean and which means that you can purchase land and do the improvements to create a disposal site. the so that's the avenue we're going under with shallow draft to use this as a borrow area. Um currently the core of engineers is out of capacity at the new river inlet crossroads. They ran out of capacity last year for anything that comes out of channel to jacks because that material is over 10% silt and is not able to be put on the beach. So if we were to empty this site um that provides between 2 and 2.6 6 million cubic yards of capacity for the core for channel to Jacksonville, which is 75 to 100 years of capacity that they would need out of channel to Jackson. It would solve their their problems all the way into the next century. Um so this to me is a very good beneficial project both ways. There's been some holdup with um wildlife resources. Uh while they

state state wildlife resources while they have um they do not own the site, they have been put in the position of managing it and their position is some of the old growth on the island is a valuable bird habitat and so they've just said flat no without having uh any real consultation from us. Um actually with us

they they have they they ghosted us for seven months. Um, and then I had a a friend who was very connected reach out to somebody at at Wildlife Resources and 48 hours later we got a letter saying, "No, we're not going to talk about this. We don't even think you're um qualified to even design the levies." It wasn't exactly those words, but basically what they what they told me um in the in the email um and kind of put off all of the work that we have done on that as if we' just been kind of tinking around with it. It was it was a rather um It was a rather I will say it was a rather offensive email that I got. So I'll leave it at that. Um what we did um immediately after this kind of notice uh actually leading up to it because we kind of thought we were going to get something like this, we started talking to the core of engineers because the core of engineers has right of easement on that island. Um they can do whatever they need to do to put sand on that land as part of their operations and maintenance. The core was at the time was very supportive of it as long as we weren't trying to take anything directly out of their budget and we said, "Well, no, we're going to hand you a plan already. The plans and specs are already done. We're going to hand them over to you and you can, you know, bid this project out as work for others." Um, and they they were very supportive of that. Um, following down that line, um, TISPC, one of the things that they do is work with, uh, Rouser's office whenever there's a water resource development act bill coming up to look at things that we can do, uh, regulatory wise or financial wise. um speaking with Jack Best last week um who is his legislative uh liaison um the idea was brought up brought up why don't we see if we can get a what would be now called a community block grant uh but basically um funding directed toward the

woman District Corps to rehabilitate DA 143 and get rid of all the sand on Topsel Beach on North Topsel Beach. Um he said, "Please put in a proposal for that to us." Um and to um you know, scope out the project, tell them. So they've got they've got ways to go to committee with this. Um sounds like that

that's federal money. So this is totally different from the state monies that we're talking about. Um so we've got shallow draft is one avenue. We've got federal funding is another avenue. And the third funding uh that Mayor Grant mentioned was uh dedicated legislated funding through the state which would come through the general fund or the um the beach fund which is a separate thing which isn't currently funded for 2026. Um that that s that style funding would be at a 1:1 match. So we've got anywhere from 3:1 1:1 you 75% state funds 50% state funds in another way and then potentially up to 100% federal funds. The federal funds [clears throat] can be mixed and matched with the others. So we're looking at opportunities to get uh as much of this paid for by other people that will benefit from it. Um having a value at both ends of the pipeline makes that a lot easier. you know, if this were just getting rid of sand and dumping it offshore out of the disposal site, well, nobody wants to do that because that's not works and you know, the town wouldn't be supportive of that and financing anyway. Um, and likewise, you know, the shallow draft would have nothing to do with it if it were just a beach project. So, we try to use things at both ends of the pipe to make it beneficial to everybody and make it more uh reasonable for other folks to participate in this with you guys financially. So my question for you though is when you if you can work with Alice council and everything get resolutions everything else when you come back to us in February I'm assuming you're also going to give us an update on those other things as well.

Sure. So [snorts] what I think what you're telling us is all the above.

All of the above. So what we would like to do uh with y'all's at least a direction to say yes we want you to do this. Uh we are currently contracted for to have a contract to to do this kind of stuff as part of the the permitting for the um the DA43 project. Um is just to kind of direct us, hey look, we want you to write the letters you need to write for all of these different financing reasons and also to to we have not as yet because we were talking to Lazar and see where that went about setting up a meeting at some point. we need to fire back a letter to wildlife resources saying we disagree with your position. Um, but I don't want to do that without the town's direction. I don't want to just pick that one up and and throw it at them. Uh, I I would prefer the town tell me that's what they want and preferably put it on town letterhead.

Okay. So, I think for our purposes, we're just looking for direction to tell him to continue to pursue these things and come back to us. The other thing I forgot what you just mentioned is he already has within his contract. There's no more money we're spending than we've already allocated to this project. This is a continuation of this project. Larry, uh [clears throat] I'd like to make a motion.

Okay. Uh, I'd make a motion that that we as a board approve uh and authorize uh Chris Gibson of TI Coastal to put together all the the facts and figures that he has to do to deal with the entities that we're looking towards to get the money to be able to use the DA 143 uh disposal site and in the fastest way that we can get the Do we need a motion or is that a consensus? Council, it depends. If if you're just looking for a sense of of the board, then consensus is fine. If you'd like something a little more formal for the board to throw a vote, they can do that.

This was already included encompassed in our our current. It is. I just don't want to go there's there's diff different things here where there are different tracks and I don't want the town to go I don't want them to take the shotgun approach if that's not the approach they want to take. they want to be more focused and and do this as a Right. But you also want to make sure that we're okay with you getting more aggressive and getting this stuff done.

Yeah, I'm I'm going to withdraw my motion. Uh I believe that that town manager is correct. I I think that that we're we as a Beach Inlet Sound Advisory Committee uh was given direction and all we did with the board was determine, you know, where the money and what it was going to cost us. And this is not going to cost us more either way. So, I think that you're fine to just go forward to to be able to to get the the monies the quickest we can because the problem is and everybody needs to understand it if if if the state if the wildlife continues to hold out on us, which was not they were not even part of the the the weren't in play early on, uh we but if they continue to pace their going, then we're going we're going to be put off at least a year being able to make this thing happen. And I'm saying a year, but I mean because because of the time frames with the turtle seasons and everything else of what we can do. So I think it's imperative that we try to get the money as quick as we can and as long as it's not going to cost us more money to be able to get the money that I I think that he needs to just move forward to get that and let's see what we do.

I just didn't want to punch a I'm sorry. Before you go on, I think what you're also asking though for is the board support in these letters that you're going to write. Yeah. And so if you want that, I think it's perfectly fine for you as an agent for the board to say you're gonna sign them. You're going to get the mayor to sign them, too. So that if you're sending them to outside agencies or whatever, they know right then you have the board's support and the mayor's point. That's that's exactly where I want to I don't want to punch a political tar baby for you. Exactly. And and so if you want our support and you want it in writing, then I think you ask for the mayor to sign off on those letters that you're sending, you know, or the town manager, whoever you want,

or both. Or both. And so that when you send these, it's the town sending these. Yes. And you're our agent, you know, who has the facts and figures, but the town is supporting. Yes. Yes, ma'am. I didn't want to take this on as a a personal mission. There you go. All right. Thanks. Yes, they're with us. Thanks, Chris. Yeah, we're not going to see Doug. He was there. I think he's left. So, just for clarification for the the agenda, like you had said, uh items E, the planning retreat, and the assignments we have already done. So, just for official Doug, are you there?

Your mic. He's muted. He can't hear you. Oh, Doug, are you there? There he is. I am. [snorts] See, this is what happens when you mess with the government. Look at him. Hey, Doug. How you doing? Good. My wife hit me with a frying pan because I complained. So you you you heard our discussion a little bit about your history and Connie had me talk about that again about what you've done before [snorts] and you do a lot of these modeling and stuff and so you know if you could give us kind of a brief outline of what we're talking about um in your services appreciate it.

Sure. Um Mr. Mayor, members of the um board and um manager Darien, thank you for letting us be on the call with you today. I think it may be helpful if I give you just a short background on what we've done in working with the town over time. Um, we were hired in 2012 for the first time and we have worked from that time period to this with at least three mayors, at least three managers and of course a board composition that has changed over time. And our basic focus when we began the process with the town was to work with respect to beach nourishment and capital and major project needs of the town. And in that time period, as has as has been mentioned by the mayor earlier, we've done mo more than one beach nourishment, the large project that was done with the USDA, the refunding of the USDA project, multiple uh loans that allowed us to have cash flow pending receipt from FEMA. And now I know we currently have a and of course the project to build the new fire station which we've discussed earlier in the meeting. So but bottom line is we've been intimately involved primarily on the capital project planning how you raise funds to pay for those major major projects and capital items and how they would fit overall into a strategic planning process. And so in our conversations with the the the town manager and with one conversation with the mayor, our submitt to you was to continue to work with you on planning with respect to capital and project uh

budgets. Uh h how we obtain funds from the general fund to assist this. Uh is there adequate funds inside the beach and other funds to afford doing these things? And so I think we stand ready to work with you in looking at this. What we haven't proposed to you is to be your strateg strategic planning consultant.

I mean and and Doug what you did for us before I can't find that that uh slide that you sent us that shows how much we saved. Remember the slide you put together? how much we saved in interest and and all that kind of stuff by doing the refinancing, by doing that and then finding out the secret agreement that we couldn't do beach projects until we paid it off. That was an interesting find. So, well, that was the $16 million project that the USDA loaned money on for a long time period and um that is correct. The LGC by approving of that did not allow the town to do another project until that one was paid off. [clears throat]

So thankfully all of that got managed through the process of refinancing the USDA loan and putting in y'all in a much more favorable position financially inside the beach operation a and of course the dollars that were necessarily come out of the general fund to help in that effort as well. Now I also understand Mr. mayor and manager that we're looking at another significant size beach project which has been discussed in this meeting today as well and how we put together a potential more than one source of funds to get that done and how we get that done within the various time schedules that are available environmentally and and for other reasons. And so, um, I I think I think there's going to be some short-term needs that need to be accomplished rather quickly, like the beach project. And I'll give you an example with that. If we determine or find out how we're how much and from what sources we're going to obtain grant or other sources or appropriations so that that lowers the amount that the town is going to have to borrow or raise out of its own money to pay for. If we borrow all or a portion of it, it will take a minimum of 90 days after we know how much the town needs to borrow before we can get the LGC's approval. So all of that needs to be factored into the timing of a strategic plan as well. And of course, we sit here with the capacity. Dylan Gangapadier is on the phone with me today and one of my new associates who would help us with the modeling not only on the capital side and the beach side and the maintenance side but also modeling with what what do we see in growth in revenues on the

operating side growth in expenses and how much would be available to us to help with these major projects that we're talking about.

And and Doug Laura mentioned that too. This is a what you would create for us is a living document. So if we come back to you and say, "Well, we need I know we don't need one, chief. We need another firehouse in three years." Okay. How are we going to pay for that? Um we need a new uh public safety or public building. We need whatever. All that kind of stuff will go in there. And then you can also model in, you know, if we get I'm making this up. If we if we only get half of what we think we're going to get in funding for something, how much cash does that pull from us? What does that do going down? How do we pay for it? Because anything we do financing wise is going to have to go through the LGC anyway. Correct.

Right. Right. And we do debt affordability model modeling with a number of our other town and county clients on an ongoing basis. That's correct. And so as as property taxes or other thing goes up and our reimbursements to the town change, this document could reflect those rates and we could see in our increased revenues and a projection as well. Well, there'll be inputs to make that model tell you that. Okay.

Right. A a model is a doc is a framework in which you produce outcomes by giving it inputs. And so we'll need to work through on the debt side and the major project side of how you raise capital to pay for these things. We have fully done that for you in the past and multiple contracts we've had with you for the more operational side of the town and the annual operating budgets. that model can be developed, but the inputs to that model and what it will look like will largely come from town staff, right? And

I think we have that model, the operating budget model now based on um something that was developed last year by our third party accounting firm. Yeah, perfect. I I have not seen that. I'm glad to hear that. any other any other

so we so we would assist in merging the more capital oriented side the use of excess funds out of the operations the the taxes and other revenues we dedicate to the beach uh purposes which are such a significant part of the town's well let's face it it's your economy so we've got to maintain those so we we would interface our more capital and major projectoriented models together with your presently existing um budget model developed by your prior consultant.

Any other discussion? Can I get a motion to approve the contract with them? Uh, I make a motion to approve the budget amendment 26-2 correction 2026-2631 and contract award ordinance 26-2632 as presented. Do I hear a second? Second. All in favor? I. All opposed. All right. Open for Alexis. Oh, Doug. Doug. Thank you. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you. And Alice will be talking about timing and that sort of thing soon. So, thank you.

Yes, I'll be in touch if not this afternoon, tomorrow morning. Okay. Very good. Thank you. There were no signups for the second public forum.

Attorney's report. Um, in the interest of brevity, a couple hundred people out there. Our fire department was out there to provide support should uh anybody suffer a medical emergency in that cold water. Um the water was chilly, but the event was really good. Uh and continues to grow year by year. Uh I'm hoping that we can maybe incorporate it into the town for future promotion, parks and recreation to to help again build uh community as much as as we can. Uh again, I hope everybody had a happy and safe uh restful holiday season and look forward to continuing this work moving forward into the new year. Okay. Did Fred Flintstone show up? Yes. Okay. I just want to make sure.

Um thank you everyone for watching. Oh, you don't get to go next. You're prom. You have to wait, Larry. Dang it. [laughter] You're a big fish. They warned me out. Wear you out.

I wasn't on tape on that. The uh the only thing I want to just make you aware I am uh I am I am looking into and and working on the Cobra issue uh that Tom was always dealing with and I have uh I have made it made inroads with the Ferguson group and we have talked about some plans and some things that we're going to be doing to uh to potentially move forward with that and maybe bringing it back into a more local state arena rather than the federal, but don't know that that's going to be the case. But, uh, in case anybody wanted to know, yes, we are continuing to work on that and I will be handling that. And thank you, [clears throat]

just want to say we're in flu season. Do that hand sanitizer. Um, it's been bad and I'm sure everybody's known someone who's been sick, so take some precautions. 11th Avenue also has its own dolphin dip 1 pm on the first every year and we've been doing that for about eight years. Um [snorts] doing the sound though. Yeah. And we go into the ocean and we're also Kip and I are going to be attending the camp lune um New Year's event tomorrow night and I'll give you a report back on that and I look forward to serving this year under Rick and working with the board to move things forward. Happy new year, Mayor Prom.

Well, thank [laughter] you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you everyone for coming out and for those watching at home. Um, I hope everybody did have a safe and happy new year. I look forward to a much better 2026. I also just wanted to remind everybody that next month we are not meeting on the first Wednesday of the month. Um, it will be on February 11th instead. Just make sure you mark that in your calendars. Alice, did you want to add any I'm changing the protocol. Let me ask anything else we need to clean up. No, we're good.

You sure? Um, thanks everybody for coming. U, I did I think I mentioned everybody at at the county meeting. I brought up them helping us with the sidewalks and also make sure we get our funding for this year, which they're going to move forward with. Um, and then, um, I think that's about it. Happy New Year and thanks to everybody for coming. I think we are I need a motion to go into close session for item number six personnel. [clears throat] What's that for personnel? When they go into close session for personnel pursuant to North Carolina General Statute 143-318.11 subsection 6. I second.

I make a motion to come out of close session. Do I hear a second? Second. All All in favor? I No action was taken in Oh, he I couldn't see him over there. Yes. No action was taken in close session. Um, do I have a motion to adjurnn? Move. A second. Second. All in favor? I