Board of Aldermen - Regular Meeting

We have our monthly board of alderman meeting this morning. I want to thank everybody for coming and I would like at this point to ask everybody

I would like everybody to uh put their phones on silent if you don't mind please for the duration of the meeting and we're going to go ahead and get started and Alderman Pettle is going to do our invocation today. Bless this town and ma remain a beautiful and friendly place to live. We pray 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 and that everyone associated with the town remains safe and secure. Amen. Aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, with that I am going to ask for an approval of the agenda. make a motion to approve the agenda. Okay. So, I have a first second. Okay. Any changes to the agenda? Um I have one request on the um the finance report. Um could we pull that off the consent agenda and put it on the regular agenda? Um I have some things I want to talk about to got to get a consensus from the board on something going forward. It won't be something that the finance person has to answer today, but just some questions about the report.

So, do we want to request to pull it over under continuing business after the fire chief? Yep. Okay. Anything else? Mayor, I'd like to also pull destruction of records off the consent agenda agenda and move that to continuing business as well. Um, this is something, you know, we haven't had a town clerk in a while and this would just be a review of what that policy is and how we've started that process. Okay. After the crosswalks. Sure.

Okay. Okay. So, we have um a motion, a second. We have some requested changes. Do we have a motion to approve an updated agenda? I'll make a motion to approve an updated agenda. Second. All in favor? Any opposed? Thank you. Oops. Sorry. Okay. So, that see Okay. Then we'll be at the end of the three, but

no. So, I have policees a under continuing business. Police is A, fire is B, finance is C, crosswalk is D, and uh the public record destruction is E. Okay, that's fine because I think we'll probably take more discussion items on the crosswalk. I don't think there'll be a whole lot of discussion. Thank you. Thank you. All right, so we are going to move on to the manager report. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. First and foremost, I would like to say welcome to uh Mr. Brady Golden who's with us this morning. If you can stand up, say hello. He is our new uh planner one. Y

we're happy to have him on board. Uh he's officially started in his role and he is a certified zoning officer as well as a certified flood flood plane manager. Awesome. um most recently has worked for the town of Oak Island and has also worked as an intern intern for Bowfort County, North Carolina. So very wellversed in coastal management issues and operations. We're um very happy to have him on board. So welcome.

Also the accountant one job description and uh budget amendment have been prepared and provided under the consent agenda. Beach projects and operations Is there a question? No. Uh, also, oh, sorry. Also, our finance officer is scheduled to come on board as well later this month.

So, um, that person should be attending um, a scheduled November board meeting. Beach projects and operations. I reported at the last meeting about the beach access matting that was placed down at the Jeffre Beach Access. Um, I've received a lot of feedback on that initiative. I'm moving forward at this time with securing permitting for the Jenkins Way access and that's at 1294 New River Inlet Road. PT I I do have a question. Is that something that we also want to talk to the county about with their access there? I believe they're already talking about that. I talked to their public works director yesterday who contacted me. Perfect. Thank you.

Yeah, there's some guy here from the county bush. So, yeah. Right. Did you write that down, Tim? It's already on your radar. Did Did you want to uh recognize the elected officials that are here today? Well, I thought that was I thought you were doing that under Oh, he is.

But of course, welcome Chairman Foster who's here from Enslo County. It's always good to have you here. Who also uh sits on our bice committee as well. Welcome. beach projects and operations PTC number eight. Uh work continues um on that project. We're still not officially funded from FEMA yet. We're still working through that process. Um we're still on pause uh from the last season on work that took effect May 2nd. Um, engineer Fran Wei and I and I have both been in communication concerning the upcoming work plan uh that will resume operations on this project which is a DUNE project. Once this is finalized, the project page of course will be updated and an announcement will be made when we're officially moving forward with that project to resume.

So on just on that, Alice, real quick, I I've gotten questions about it. You know, will I specifically be getting sand? And I think the point you're making is we don't quite know yet. We don't have Fran's updated work plan yet. So questions that we receive as a board I I typically send in to you. Is that what you want us to do? That is the the Thank you. Yes, that's the correct procedure. Yeah.

Okay. Hurricane and tropical storm Alda. Uh morning is September 25th. As I'm sure everybody is aware, uh we started posting information about the pending storms that um became those two named storms. Updates have been provided uh daily. Uh we are advising everyone at this time of the high rip current risks that we expect to be in place throughout this weekend. I mentioned at the last meeting that we uh were also working once again to schedule another hurricane community forum. Uh the this has been scheduled for October 9th at 6:30 p.m. Um that announcement uh was made um pretty much probably within a day or so after last meeting because that was already in progress. um that will be held here at town hall. Um I will be there along with the National Weather Service, Enso County Emergency Management and our utility partners will be present as well to participate in that event. Alice, um do we know if after um the next few days whether Chris or any of the engineers are going to take a look either with the drone or whatever at the whole beach again? We've what we do is we the it's common practice to do a um a survey that is uh prehurricane season at the onset and we've had one um actually Enzo County assisted us with a survey um where we did the conditions um post the last storm. Um we're not doing one for for this event at this time because we just had one last within the last month. So, it's not needed at this time.

So, will we have another survey before spring or No. Um, it depends on, you know, how we proceed through the end of hurricane season. That's certainly going to, you know, decide on what we do going forward. But usually um you know and Chris always uh TI Coastal I usually engage him as well to do a dashboard survey after any event to determine if we need to um the town needs to make that investment into a full-blown survey which is quite expensive. Okay. Thank you. Can I can I just follow up on that? I believe and maybe Chris can do this when he does is I think you're only looking for reimbursement from FEMA if there is a storm, not just normal erosion, right? We So

yeah, you have to reach thresholds. That's your view that these type of storms do not anywhere near touch thresholds for a FEMA project. Okay. I just want to make sure and I think you know Chris can address that if when he gets up. So my concern was not for FEMA storm but was for significant erosion that's happened. Yeah. Yeah. Why don't you do it when you No, now's not really the time. What's with the manager report

communications um staff has been working on a communications publication that will be going out um soon on various initiatives and key dates uh to plan for regarding operations. October through the end of year is a very active time. I know a lot of people think that once um summer is done that we kind of slow down. We really don't. Um October 19th public works will be facilitating the vegetative debris pickup. All vegetation must be placed roadside on uh or one week before this date. They'll do a one sweep pickup and pickup will occur throughout that week. So, we ask that you have it placed at the curb on or before October 19th that morning. October 29th, um I'm sorry, October 28th, GFL will be conducting the semianual fall bulk pickup. Um as if you recall, this was worked into the new contract with GFL. also will now be providing a bulk pickup which will take place two times a year in the spring and the fall. Um I've have that scheduled for October 28th. Um I have a flyer that will be distributed that lists acceptable items.

So I get a bulk pickup on my birthday. Cool. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Alice, do individuals have to call or it's just everybody can put things out. Okay. And there are a list of acceptable items and a list of items that are not accepted like construction debris. So anyone any contractors doing projects or you're that is not acceptable.

October 22nd um happy to report that I was able to secure the sponsorship for a third annual Halloween event. Um that's the pet parade and costume contest held at Richard Peters Park. Um so thank you to them for uh sponsoring this event. Once again it's a free event open to everyone in the public Richard Peters Park. So please um mark your calendars and plan to join us. It's a really fun time. Uh entry fee is just we just ask you if you can to bring a non-p perishable item. Um and that's for share the table who will be with us. Um that helps them. They're one of our community partners that we work with a lot and it helps them out especially this time of year when they're um they have a greater need. So, we appreciate you supporting them. Uh we also have a 50/50 cash raffle where all proceeds go to Pause for Purpose, another one of our community partners that we work with each year. So, another good cause. November 19th will be our fourth annual Christmas tree lighting that's scheduled to be here at 6:00 p.m. here at Town Hall. Um, public works has expanded. If you notice our deck out front to the side where the tree goes, that's been expanded this year. Um, which will allow uh more room for families to gather around a tree for pictures. I've coordinated with two Girl Scout troops this year. So, we had one the past few years. We've got two this year. Uh, troops number 4298 and troop number 203. They will be um here serving uh hot cocoa. They'll also be selling some things set up um to help with earning badges. So, um that'll be something new for this year as well. Um Sneeeds Fairy Presbyterian Church Choir will be joining us again and we'll have pictures of course with Santa cookies and face painting as well.

Excellent. In 2024, if you recall, we entered an agreement with the IWorks uh software platform and part of this platform is the citizen engagement pra um uh practice. We're at the place right now where I'm comfortable with rolling that out. So, you'll be seeing um this coming out on live um soon this month. Um that'll be finished by the end of the month. Um, this will be a public portal and mobile application to allow citizens and internal customers and internal customers, I mean staff, um, that allows them to submit issues, problems or any requests from public works. Um, and include photos and locations for those in the public if they see a pothole or um, just as an example or um, vegetative o overgrowth, anything of that nature, litter,

flooding, um, flooding. Um we are finalizing a tutorial right now um public works is working on and um that'll be rolled out with the application announcement as well. That concludes my report. Thank you very much. Are there any additional questions for Miss Darian? All right. Um the next item is an open forum. Do we have anybody signed up? Yes, madame clerk. We have Kip Malcolm signed up.

Okay. Good morning again. Good morning, mayor, uh, board members, and, uh, neighbors. Kip Malcolm, 3102 Green Street. Uh, I want to share a quick few reminders about some important dates coming up for the election. Uh, tomorrow right here at 6:00 p.m., uh, we're going to have a candidate debate. And, uh, next week, October 7th, at 6:30 p.m., the chamber's hosting the candidate night here as well. Uh absentee voting starts October 3rd uh with voter registration deadline is October 10th. Early voting runs uh starting October 16th through November 1st at the Enzo Board of Elections in Jacksonville, and they have one Saturday uh October 25th. Uh absentee ballot deadlines vary, but uh most are due uh November 4th with the military and overseas ballots being due on November 13th. And obviously full details are available on the county's website. So as we prepare for the upcoming election, uh I've continued to serve as uh the chairman on the board of adjustments, zoning board of adjustments, and as a reserve police officer. I've also been talking with residents, folks around town about their concerns and stuff that I'm starting to hear are the difficulty with hiring and retaining staff. Uh questions about the financial management and the need for stronger support for our town employees so that they feel supported every day. These are issues that we must address with focus and accountability. Some folks may not know me yet or everything I stand for, but I hope that uh you see that I'm engaged uh and I'll remain engaged in every aspect of our community to ensure its success. When you hear someone say don't vote for this candidate or don't vote for that

candidate without any justification, ask them why. Without an explanation, I think it's purely political speak and this is a nonpartisan election. Our town needs honest engagement between our leaders and residents. Hope that everyone gets out and uh votes. Uh but I want to earn your vote. I also want to earn your trust. I work every day to support our residents. Kip, I greatly appreciate I greatly appreciate all the date information, but I just had a conversation with Mr. STS before the meeting about not campaigning during the board meetings. Then all I'm encouraging people is to get out and vote.

Thank you. Thank you. I know. And the other thing I don't know who's doing the timer, Ricky, if you does Rick, do you do the timer? That's okay. Anybody else? There are no more signups. Okay. Anybody in the audience that would like to speak? Okay. I know. Next time, Ricky. Thank you. Okay. We're going to move on. We don't have any public presentations and hearings. Um, we've pulled two items out of the consent agenda. So, do I have a motion to approve the remaining consent? Motion to approve. Second.

All in favor? I any opposed? No. Okay, we're going to move on to continuing business and we're going to start with our police report. Usually I would have this current month up, but we just started today, so I don't have that one. So you'll have seen

this last one. Um, like I had said last time we had pretty good summer, several accidents. We've had a few speeding complaints and I would encourage everybody if you want to complain about speeding in a certain area, we'll concentrate on that area. One of them was seagull lately and uh you notice there have been some vehicles up there doing radar. We also have some equipment we can put out and and monitor that. So we'll do it in various locations now also. Um I'll be glad to answer any questions and well let's go around. Does anybody Connie let's start with you? Do you have any questions?

Did we need to do any major water rescues this this summer? That's fire. Fire will probably cover that, but we also help them cover those. But Dr. Cohen would we've had a great summer. Thank you, Alderman Benson. Uh, no question. Mayor Proa, I had written down what you've just what you just mentioned. Uh, I got three complaints on speeding on Seagull. Two were verbal uh yesterday and one was an email that we probably all got, right? But yeah, people don't slow down to 20 there. I don't think they know. I'll come in and I'll shut. What you got to do is read the sign.

So from the surf city line up to town hall in the straightaways, we're already seeing it hit 50 55. So I know we have signs. Can we start putting the sign out and moving the sign up or doing something with signs to tell people to maintain the 45 because they're already doing it. You're talking You're talking about our our flash our sign that comes up. I'll put it back up. Can we just start like moving that around? Because the straightaway is where they're picking up real speed. Once you get up here and you got turns and everything, they're forced to slow down, but in the straightaway, they are just flying again.

I can place that out and then I can give you a report on what it the data that comes out. All right. I appreciate that. I had Tom's issue which I got the same email uh from people in Seagull. The interesting thing and I think we'll be talking to our public works guy because there's a potential sidewalk going in down there as well. So, okay. Thank you. That's it. Thank you. One more thing. Do we have any openings right now? Any staff vacancies?

Actually, I have one person that's leaving. He's been offered a a position with uh a um insurance company doing accident investigations. So, he'll be leaving, but I just finished an interview on that one, so I should not have an opening coming up. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, sir.

Good evening. Um, morning. Did you work last night? Some of us have been up. Um, as you can see, per the report, our numbers are starting to decline, which is a good sign. Um, he doesn't have a Rick, does he have a report? It's in the No, I for those that are here to look at the screen, thank you.

Um, 50 we ran 47 calls over the last month. Uh, 50 57% were fire rescue related. Uh, 43% were EMS related. Um, and that's a 29 day snapshot of last month. So, from the last meeting to this meeting. So, um, which is good. The numbers are starting to trend down. So, um, if y'all have any questions about that, I've got one thing. Go ahead. October 5th through 12th is fire prevention week. Uh this year's uh slogan is charge into fire uh fire safety with li lithium ion batteries

um because of all the ebikes, electric skateboards and everything and that are creating problems for us in the fire service. Um I encourage everyone to go to the NFPA website to learn more um about lithium ion safety especially during that week. And then on October 11th, we will be set up from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at Richard Peters Park doing a touch the truck lithium ion battery safety uh little impromptu just kind of get some information out. The 11th from 10 to 1. 10 to one. Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

Yes. Yeah. Let's go around again. Connie, anything. Did you have any major rescues you had to do this year? Water rescues? Still early, but nothing major. Thank you. Uh, Alderman Benson. Yeah. I just want to um praise the first responders uh in your department. They have done a great job. And I actually had to take advantage of their service 2 am one night a couple weeks ago. So, thank you. You're welcome. Mayor Pro, no questions, just a comment. Thanks for the good work all summer long, all year long. Appreciate everything you guys do. Thank you,

Alderman. So, on the banner on the web page, I didn't see the touch the truck event. So, maybe you want to add it there. Um, so it's going out in a communications that we're releasing. Okay. This week. All right. And can we add it there as well? On the on the Yeah, it'll be on the front page. Okay. All right. Thank you. And then um during fire prevention week and any time during the year if people have concerns about their smoke alarms and things, are you guys available to come in and take a look and do a survey or help any homeowner in that way?

Oh, absolutely. We go out, we do uh smoke detector surveys and stuff for people now. We go out and change batteries and stuff. We will if they have new smoke detectors, we'll install them. Okay. If they can't afford them, we will provide them. Okay. Um, so we do stuff like that. We come out and help people with their escape plans when they call. So, yes, ma'am. We're currently doing all that. And is it still the rule of thumb like smoke detectors, you know, the battery ones over 10 years old, they're not any good anymore. So, your new smoke detectors are sealed and the batteries are good for 10 years. So, at 10 years, they will start to expire. Okay. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. Just a couple couple of quick ones. Um I've seen a lot of non vehicles on with light slashing. Are we getting a lot of um are those counting like the EMS stuff? Is that I mean are you seeing any I mean are they helping us on island? And then the followup is how many off island stuff did you help? It's Turkey Creek that you would help, right? Yes. Yes. So well we go to Turkey Creek, Holly Ridge, Surf City, Topsel. Um it's a coordinating We have a mutual aid agreement. So they I mean I can't give you exact numbers how much we go to them versus them come to us. Um but yeah I mean Turkey Creek comes to us. They were here the other night for the alarms we had during the storm. Question.

Yes sir. So yeah they come. Surf city comes. Okay. That's what I saw. That's what my question was. As well as EMS. Right. So thanks John. I have one other question. I I've gotten complaints from citizens with electric bikes now on the beach going fast. Do we know if we have any restrictions on electric bikes on the beach? H that's a that would be police chief. Okay. So 10 miles an hour, 15 miles an hour on the beach with an electric bike. We might have to look into that. Okay. Thank you. Okay. We can just make that as a note that Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. I think we're going to have some EMS if that comes up.

What? Oh, wait. I'm coming here. Yes. So, finance is you.

So, um and this is nothing has to be answered today. Just some stuff that I noted in the in the finance report that frankly didn't make sense to me. Um one is um when I look at the uh where was it at? Let me just pull it up. If you look at item number four, okay, on the um investment income, we're showing $1,324,32.76 over budget. Unless we've got $200 million in cash, that's not possible because the the budget's only a month old. I'm assuming that is the cumulative amount. Um which brings me to my point on this. It would be nice if you look at that. It talks about the phase 4 that we underspent by 2.8. Um, and then we've also have interest. So, we have a lot of money and I pulled up the um, and it's actually going to be a question I think for our council on it. Hang on a second. Let me just pull up the statute. Um, we ought to have um, maybe council chief take a look. Um, under the section that talks about grantees can this is the statute. It's GS43 C6-23J. I'm sure everybody's familiar with that. I wasn't. Um, grantees can keep interest earned, but must use those funds for the same purpose as the grant. We have funds we haven't spent and we have interest that we have. I think it would be helpful to know and maybe you can work with our beach engineer to find out what the same purposes mean because if we're doing beach planning going forward, we need to know, do we have to put that into four? Do we have to put that into the beach or whatever? But I think in terms of planning going forward, when you're talking about that that many millions of dollars for us being available, we need to find out what we can use that for as part of our plan. So, it's just something to for us to figure out. Um,

and I I think that that's probably most appropriately directed back to our town manager to No, no, I agree. Yeah. I don't I don't want a study done now. We've got a new finance person coming in. That's going to be something for for you if you would take a look at that because I'm going to put it on the agenda for next. I didn't I didn't want that to be because that's going to take some time to put that information together. And can can you just repeat that 143C that I can forward it to you. I can just forward it to you. Okay.

I just made a copy of it. And but like I said, it's um I mean the verbiage behind it was placing grant funds in a high interest Davies account would be permissible, which is what we're doing. Okay. But a brokerage account or investing funds not allowed. investing grant funds would not be appropriate as these funds were intended to be spent in a prop manner. All I'm saying is I think it would be very helpful for us as a board to understand what we can use that money for everything else. I don't believe my reading of it we have to give it back. But you're talking about almost $4 million um of funds that we have. That would be a nice amount to have uh for going forward. Um so and then again I'm not asking for a decision today because that's that would take some information I'm studying going forward. Um the second thing is um and she put in here which I thought was good on uh item six which is the uh fire station. I keep getting questions about where we are and she even talks in here about how um it's past the completion date. I think it would be helpful for us to have a look at what we originally agreed to pay, what the bid was. We've done a lot of change orders on that. Um, if we could have just something showing us because when I looked online, I looked that we did November, uh, the bid was for6,2,689,

but when I look at at her report, we're well over $7 million right now. And so the question becomes, can we just I like to see what I think as a board if the consensus that it would be nice for us I think to see what that looks like because that's a question I get all the time from people is how late is it? What's the cost? Everything else. All right. And so looking at those numbers I think would be helpful for us as a board. Did you want to say something? Go ahead. Yeah. So to that point, we have a projects tab on the web page where we could just put a small spreadsheet or some kind of numbers there that show where we are financially with the project as well as progress.

No, I'm fine with that. But I guess what I would like if it's a consent I'm going to put on the agenda. I hope the consensus would be there. I would like to have it explained to us before we post it. Yes.

Okay. Because there, you know, the questions I had about, you know, our interest cost and those types of things. And if you want when I send him um the statute, if you want, you know, Alexis, I'm sure you're making the we have the questions and stuff. It's just there's some issues out there. I think Kip alluded to them, but the firehouse is a big issue. Everybody on this board has been asked about. Um beach projects we're looking at and Chris is going to talk about. We got a lot of money that's going to be spent on the beach in the next year. It'd be nice to know how much of that money we can use and where we can use it. Would be very helpful. Um and I think I had one other small item. Oh, this will actually relate um to Mr. Foster. Um we just got $51,86910 from you for the fire tax. Thank you. That's in the financial report. So maybe you timed it. You could be here for that. So that's all I had.

All right. Then we're going to do um the next is the crosswalk. I get you were E. You're after that one. So, if Mr. Huckabe could come up from public works. Good morning. Good morning. Does that shirt have a volume control? No. Hey, he's flagging. Just to make sure everybody sees me. So you're um pending any questions on the on the report itself specifically. I'd just like to address the uh the overall uh findings. Mhm.

Make sure I have all my things in order. Um so recommended crosswalk locations of those submitted. Uh there were one two three four five six total sites. uh county accesses, beach access one and two, uh the intersection right out here in front of Town Hall Island Drive and New River Inlet Road, 11th Avenue, uh Seagull Lane, and the Surf City Campground area were the proposed sites based off of my initial inspections and surveys. On the uh screen, I don't know if you guys have it on yours or not. Yep. It's

got a Google Google Earth map where I plotted out the recommended sites and locations to answer any questions or at least give you a visual on uh the where behind the the sites that are being suggested. The first one listed here is Surf City Campgrounds. Uh distance to the nearest existing intersection is over 2.8 miles. Mhm. Um so so this would fill a gap between a current crosswalk at Nolles Park and our southernmost boundary to the surf city limit. There's no crosswalk in between those two locations at this time. Um maybe get that reang.

Yes sir. Um so so pedestrian traffic demands high demand especially during the the heavier seasons uh when tourism peaks um reduces a large service gap. That's my justification and as a major access point for for families and and people visiting. Mhm. Um the next one would be 11th Avenue. All right. 11th Avenue. Uh next closest existing recommended crosswalk is uh just over 3/4 of a mile and that's again the Nolles Park is the closest one for the existing crosswalks. Uh moderate to high residential corridor was a very large complex across the street. I don't know if

Yeah, that's not 11th. That's not 11th. That is That's um down at the county. Oh, that's beach the beach access. I'm sorry. No, you're fine. Um I believe that's listed as beach access too. My apologies. Um closest access to that for a crosswalk is greater than a half mile. Yeah.

Uh very high pedestrian demand, major public access point. Um, one of the highlights to beach access is one and two is the uh potential I'm glad we have uh county representation here is um there there are several programs and grants in existence that I think um might might be worth looking into for for a town in terms of the uh specifically for NC do the spot safety projects and the highway safety improvement program are are two of them that between both programs there's There's about 180 active projects on on state stateowned roads. Um, and a large portion of those specifically in Enslo County are uh crosswalk related. So, I think there's there's always room to ask. Um, because the answer is always no if we don't.

So, that that would be beach access too. Moving on, this would be the 11th Avenue access. again large amount of foot traffic from that complex across the street on the south side. Mhm. Um reduces that lengthy gap. Uh one thing of note before we get into the the central and northern port of the town um is again that that southern area there just no crosswalks currently exist, right?

Several markers for pedestrian traffic, but no actual striped or signed crosswalks. Um so just a a key key point to make for that. So um the new river inlet road island drive right out here uh behind me actually in front of town hall. Uh that's proposed pri primarily due to the large amount of bike traffic that I've observed.

Um took me several days to complete a north to south assessment of the city streets and crosswalks. Um and it was unfortunately I would say during the tail end of the busy season um so my estimates in terms of May, June, July is the the volume that I observe would probably be much higher. Um and I always see uh bike enthusiasts out there y trying to get their workout in. Um and that's a major intersection that they they have to navigate as a hazard because there's no safe space to cross. Um so just something to propose from there. Um it is it is about a half mile from the current beach access crosswalk at at uh 34 of the Jeffre lots.

Um so there is one within a near vicinity. Uh but I think due to pedestrian traffic and usage and that's basically the main entry and exit points for the north end of town, it would be well suited to install a crosswalk there. This would be beach access one. Yeah, I believe that screen's hard to read from here. I didn't bring my glasses. I apologize. That's right.

Uh, again, county owned, very high demand. Uh, I believe at one point I I did a ad hoc calculation based off of the vehicles that were parked there, you know, and I don't know the averages statistically for how many ride together when they visit the town. Um, but based off the amount of vehicles that were there, I was estimating about 4 to 500 crossings a day. So, that's just something to kind of keep in the backs of our our minds based off of how many are jumping in cars and and coming to visit the town. That lot is always full. It's always full. It's always full. Free. Yeah. But it's always full.

So, to your point about crosswalks and pedestrians, um these are two different locations on Seagull Lane. Um, I don't really have an opinion as to as to which one uh would be best for the town. Uh, based off of my analysis where Nova River Inlet Road uh executes a 90 degree right and Seagull Lane continues um having observed again traffic patterns and residents. Um I I would say that would be very well suited for if not a four-way crosswalk. Um, and I don't want to step outside of the crosswalk discussion. The potential for a four-way stop

might might inhibit some of those high-speed travelers. Um, but that one currently, again, on the northernmost end, it's about 8/10 of a mile from the nearest uh existing sidewalk. And again, dense housing on both sides, high demand, and reduces a gap in in options to to cross the street. Um I think of the beach side accesses there are several along uh New River Inlet Road, but on more of the Gulf uh Seagull Lane side, uh Dolphin Shores, I believe, would be the next closest one. And there's a lot of residents that'll park north of Seagull Lane and walk down to Dolphin Shores because there's not a lot of public uh parking in that area. Um and th those are my uh recommended crosswalk site locations if if you have any questions or So I do the only question I have so for Seagull Lane though you're proposing one not two.

Yes. I just I just felt weren't sure which where I just felt there's an option if if the town wants to both wouldn't be terrible. The the northern end there is a a public park and gi given the communities on the on the beach side they would have to cross that and there's not a whole lot of good um lighting late at night. So, so there's a potential there for doing both, but I figured ask for two, hopefully get one. Well, I guess my thought is on the the northern side of it. I don't I know Dolphin Shores does have a public beach access, but that parking lot in there is Dolphin Shores parking lot. Yes, ma'am.

So, I don't I don't think people are going to walk that far. I There's nowhere for them to park down there. So, they they do um I I observe it. I'm on the north end probably at least once per day. Where are they parking on the side? Um there's there's I haven't personally witnessed them parking. Um they could potentially be doing like a a rental and walking down from a home. Okay. But there is a pretty decent amount of foot traffic moving south towards that Dolphin Shores. That makes sense. That makes sense. So comments. Yeah, you can go that way. Start that way. All right. Um one is nice job. Thank you, sir. I especially like the video. Um couple of things in here. I noticed in your study which I liked. You talked about lighting. Yes, sir.

I think we talked about that. You're talking about the lighting that we did at Villa, not putting up a light. Correct. Uh I should have been a little bit more clear. It I do have concerns with both. Um I' I've received a few phone calls at public works since I've gotten here requesting street lighting insulation. There's concerns. Um my my initial assessment analysis uh I use Villa Capriani as the the measuring right device in terms of what what the high-end would look like for an illuminated crosswalk.

These other locations if we have good enough street lighting I I think signage and striping would be sufficient. Um, but again, if if we're asking for grant money based off one of these programs, an overwhelming majority of the notes in the in the county website or for the state show u illuminated crosswalks in those projects. So, but that could also be a uh a solar panel that puts a light on the sign too, right? Yes, sir. Not necessarily because the one at Villa doesn't light up the crosswalk. It is just a flashing light. Yes, sir. Um the other thing too is as I understand it and I did after I got that I looked at the website about those grants and almost every one of them is kind of a reimbursement again right

um it sounds to me that we have a real need for crosswalks. Yes sir. My hope would be recommendation whatever you want to call it is that I don't we can always ask for money and I believe um and I'm not going to put Tim on the spot here. I believe with the county all those things are type are reimbursement. Nobody pays up front. Okay. So my point is we have the money in the budget if you know you know and if you would be willing you know through Alice to come back and say here's the priority ones that we have because if we're putting in the sidewalk itself I mean the lighting and stuff was a pain in Villa getting it approved right was also about $32,000.

So what would be nice for us to say is we have the money in the budget. We can always ask to get help from reimbursement or something like that, but my view is I don't want to hold up putting pro crosswalks in because we're waiting. How long do we wait with? 18 months to get approval. Right. Well, you're you're still going to have that long of a wait because you have to that's permitting with the DOT. No, I understand. And that was the other point I'm going to make is I think you indicated you've reached out to them, but you haven't heard back too, right? Not not on the crosswalk. Sorry. Right. My point though is it'd be nice for us to be able to do this as quickly as we can. Yes, sir.

Especially based upon your priorities. The second thing I would ask you to do is I understand that Osprey, the people in Osprey have already reached out to DOT about putting a crosswalk there and that it is being worked on. It's probably not a bad idea for us to reach out to the people at Osprey. Okay. Um DOT could probably give you the same information, but I think it wouldn't hurt us to find out what's going on and what the status is with that. Okay. Okay. But again, you know, my my personal priorities are we have the money in the budget. I don't like spend if we don't have it. Yes, sir. But to wait for reimbursement just seems like a not a good idea. Yes. Go ahead. And I do I just want to say to um

go with your No, I was thinking about how I wanted to say to go with what you had just said. You clearly have identified the priorities. They're in here as critical and you know, they're the six that you just spoke about as well. So I think what you're looking for today would be some direction from the board to go ahead and proceed with going down the path of moving forward with these six and aligning it to our budgetary funds. Just ma'am I believe I just want everybody to say that's what I think. Go ahead. So, we had money in the budget for like six or seven. And so,

if we move forward with those, um, are you ask I mean, are we asking the board to take direction to approve moving forward and then we'll ask for reimbursement later? I'm just putting that out there. If I could just clarify what I was asking for real quick. Give me a light. Um, what I was asking for in something like that is you would come back to us with a cost, right? And if it's just striping and it's $10,000, Right. We have $200,000 in the budget. But I think also you're $280,000 in the budget. Well, I think what I don't know this, but from what your presentation was, I'm assuming you're going to come back to us and say, "Look, I can do eight of these for 280 or I can do four of them for 280." Okay. Yes, sir.

Give me some direction. You'll come back to us with this one cost this, this one cost this, this one costs this, and again, tie it back to the budget and then we'll know. Is that a fair statement? Yes, sir. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. But uh can we go back to the seagull because I had a comment about the what we were talking about at seagull. Yes sir. Put the map up. That's what I'm asking. Ricky, can you put the map up? Yeah. Well, I can do it in 15 seconds.

So, yeah. Uh, from what I've had conversations with the neighbors, I think it would be a good idea to have maybe a four-way stop there at where New River Inlet, the north one, I guess,

uh, goes into Seagull. All right. And the reason is most people that are visitors don't realize that New River doesn't go straight. And next thing they see is the 20 mph speed limit. Yes, sir. You know, it'd be good for the DOT to put a sign up there in that grassy area preceding that intersection, New River Road, and a right turn signal, but having a four-way stop would really uh probably do the job. And the crosswalk should probably go in that area because there is a uh kind of a neighborhood u access along the tree line. I

if you Ricky, if you run the arrow down to where those trees are, across the other way to the left.

Okay. Behind those properties there on New Road, there's a fence line and there's been a a neighborhood crossover there. The storms took out the stairs, but I think the people are still using that crossover. So, that's how those neighbors in the Seagull area are getting access to the beach. and the other uh proposed uh crossing there at Seagull where it comes back into New River Road. I kind of think the people at at the tops of Reef would be actually opposed to that one because they've had problems with people crossing the street and going through their buildings to access the beach at low tide. So I think the if we had to choose the primary spot would be where New River first enters Seagull. I I would agree with that as somebody who I at least all this summer I tried to walk every day weather permitting and that would be part of my walk was around that square and the um and the one up by Gunny Boatman Drive. The problem is with that one that's uh like Laura was talking about the straightaway once they once they get to Shipwatch and it's basically a straightaway past the St. Regious and stuff. They're going pretty quick and there are a lot of people more than you wouldn't think that are walking that way. Um, from both directions that I would think that a crosswalk would at least maybe slow them down

as a start. I think that that would be the the one to do it. Okay. Next, I just I'm sorry. Go ahead, Tom. Yeah, let's Okay. To Conniey's point, one one other thing that that will help with up there at Seagull and Boatman and New River inlet is all the traffic to and from the driving beach at during the summer,

particularly when they're done. when they're done and they're in a hurry to get home and maybe they've been over served up there in the hot sun and they like they like to just fly up the road there. And if you I thought I'd be the last guy in the world to ever support the idea of a four-way stop sign, but it's sounding kind of good right now because it will stop traffic and slow it down going around uh through Seagull. And again, I had a conversation yesterday with two Seagull residents about speeding up there. Um, I want to thank you for the report. Um, very well done, very detailed, you know, very very impressive, especially coming from a from a Marine. Um, I can say that.

Thank you, sir. Um, no, good job on it. I think it really did well. Rick, to your point, I think I think we're on on the right path. If we we decide we need to do these crosswalks, we just go ahead and pay for them because we've got the money in the budget. And if we get reimbursed, we get reimbursed. And that's that's gravy. But we need we need to do this. I would think also though um as far as lighting them up and like the one at the uh at the villa, nobody's pushing that button. Okay. Nobody pushes that. You wait for them to push the button and they don't. It's like, oh crap, there's somebody coming out. I've seen I've seen it.

Um but but by and large, I'd say it's probably 60/40 at best. And I think the reason, you know, put putting a putting a lighted one is is a great idea in an area that's a blind curve like that one is, but on a straightaway, I I I think we're we're less apt to need to spend that much money to get the desired effect. Yes, sir. I'm also to what Rick said, I'm also really eager to see what happens with Osprey because when I saw that on the on the not as recommended crosswalk location, um I understood why, but that's still 45 miles an hour up there and um up there because I live north down there

down there. Um, I would like to see one there, but if they're working on it, I I propose that we uh we support them in any way that we can. Just just real quick, sorry. So, when we talk about the crosswalks that are just painted crosswalks with warning kind of signs like I don't know 50 yards, 100 yards. Can he's going to talk. So, um, so what is this? You know, if you have the painted crosswalk, the signs are how far from those typically? I I would say roughly 50 feet. I don't have the specs memorized. Um but but it's generally 50 to 100 ft leading into that. Okay.

Crossing point and that paint wears off. Mhm. And that becomes a maintenance issue for us. Yes.

Correct. So when if if when you come back to us from a budgetary standpoint, if we don't have a line item for maintenance of the crosswalks, that could be something you propose or take a look at. In addition, if we look at each one of these, when you bring them back as a priority, if you can say the recommendation for lighting, not lighting, also, you know, striping almost sometimes warning striping, I've seen in other beach towns, so that before you get right to the crosswalk, there's other striping that lets you know you're going to hit a crosswalk, you're getting there. So, if we could look at design and then give us an estimate per crosswalk based on what your recommendation is and then take a look at maintenance for next year from a budget standpoint because I'm concerned that, you know, we're going to take on the maintenance of these and we may not have that in our current budget.

Yeah, you will. The town will take on the maintenance of these crosswalks going forward because that's going to be part of the agreement with NC DOT just like we did with Villa Capriani crosswalk. Uh we're accepting the maintenance and responsibility of those going forward. So you're taking Yes. So you're taking on and you're committing to maintenance and maintaining them going forward. That becomes essentially your crosswalk.

Well, no more reason to keep it simple. And then just real quick, and I would have to agree with Tom in terms of the number of people that hit that button, but because I know how much that cost, I hit that button every time. But it's definitely hit or miss in terms of that. The second thing is, and maybe this is a dumb question, you were talking about stops and stuff. Is is Seagull still a county road? I don't know that that's a county road. It's not a town road. We can do stuff on that ourselves, right? If it's not a county because I our state road because I think when you turn, you know, the state road goes is the S. Yes, sir.

The seagull is ours. So to the extent that we want to put stop signs on our road, I don't know that we have to do we have to go to D. I don't know. We can take that as we can take that as a followup, but I'd really like to try and stay on track. And I believe what we need to do is provide staff direction to move forward with putting together the thoughts for these high these six high priority crosswalks to start working through our budget process and working with Alice on that to bring it back to the board. Are you looking for a motion? A consensus? I just consensus. Do we have is everybody on board with that consensus? Yes. with with one addition that Connie talked about to try to reach out because Osprey's already started

not just focus on them because there's already something underway with Osprey. I think it'd be a good idea to reach out to them. Is that okay as a consensus? Yep. Any questions from you guys? No. Thank you very much. That was a nice Thank you very much. Rob, well done. Okay, we are going to move on to new business and we're gonna destruction. Oh, I forgot Laura. I'm sorry. Destruction of public records. I'm sorry. So, Alexi, I just appreciate that you've started this work now that we have a town clerk and everything. Um, couple of clarifications and a couple asks for you on this one

as I was reading. Oh, sorry. Now I got it. Um I wanted to start looking at maybe adding Did this include electronic records destruction? Um no. So I'm currently working on a um electronic records retention policy based off the state archives. Okay. um it is not ready yet to come to the board uh because you can make modifications but if you do those have to go to the state archives first

uh for them to approve before I would bring it to you. Um, so the records that were destroyed were records that were already um past their expiration date, did not have any historical value um for the town and were expired based off the record retention policy that the board had adopted a couple years ago. So in this type of memo going forward, if you could refer to the state statute or the town ordinance or whatever. Absolutely. in in the document so that it's just a little more detailed. Yeah, absolutely.

And then in regards to the town retention policy for documents, um in general, is that seven years, nine years? Do we do we know what that is? Um so your record retention policy, when you're asking how many years it is, are you asking how long the record retention record retention policy is good for or how long? So the records themselves

so it depends on what kind kind of record it is. Um so say like a contract for instance will have a different retention rate than say like an easement would. Um so if I'm remembering correctly for things like easements um you have to keep those for um 10 years past their expiration. So, we currently have easements that are 30 years um in length. So, 30 years from now, I will have to keep them for an additional 10 years um before I can um get rid of them uh based on the record retention policy that the board adopted created by the state. However, um if it holds some kind of historical value,

um then that is something I I tend to keep. Um, so things like court cases that we've been we've been through over the last um, you know, 35 years we've been here. Um, court cases that were historically um, relevant or important or um, I guess what Chip would call be like case law for us. um those those were kept. Smaller things like um disputes over taxes or something those are not necessarily um historically relevant or um necessary to keep. So things like that were destroyed. Otherwise um most of our court records were kept but um other things like employment for instance you are required to keep employment records for 30 years. Um however if you are a police officer it is required that we keep their certifications. So I can toss everything after 30 years but their certifications. Um so any records for employment from prior to whatever date the uh records destruction of records um certification letter I wrote um from that date from 1990 to 95 uh employment records from that time were destroyed except for the ones I noted like police officers where we have to keep their certifications things like that. Um but otherwise you know each record has it its own thing and uh it really depends on where it falls within the record retention policy because that policy itself is very very very very big. So, as we go forward in this, if the state makes changes to the state statute, if the board needs to know so that we can update our ordinance around

it, or if they make changes to the electronic records statute, if you could let us know that so that when we look at our own electronic records um policies, we can stay in line with what the state's doing. It is my understanding as of right now, we do not have an electronic records retention policy. Um the state does update their records retention policy itself, the state archives. Um and that is what I am working on as one of my pieces now that I would like to bring forward to the board. Um but I have to first get state approval before I can do anything like that. So that takes a little bit of time because they'll have to look through

all of those pages as well for things that I have maybe added or um because we can add our own. It just has to be approved. Okay. Well, we look forward to getting that from you and we appreciate the work you've done so far on this. Absolutely. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. Just one comment after after I looked up and basically what you have is a template for the state. Um yes with with minimum and stuff and so basically what you use is the template and then we can modify that if they allow us to do it. Right.

Right. So the state sets a template for the entire state. Um a lot of places end up just adopting that template. I believe that's what the board did a few years ago was just adopting the template itself. Um but there are again um as Alderman Grant said you can add your own and then you have to submit that to the state and then they'll either approve or deny. So for the electronic records retention um in regards to data security and all if we can address both data in the cloud and data that we hold and just let us know how that works.

Yeah, I think we're getting ahead of it. I think we need to get the draft and then we can go from there. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. We're going to move on to new business. And now Larry can stand up and get ready to introduce Mr. Gibson. I'm glad I didn't wear my yellow shirt today.

The uh I'm Larry Strawther and I'm the chairman of the Beach Inlet Sound Advisory Committee for North Trops Beach. And I first want to thank the board for allowing us to make this presentation today. Uh we've not had a a BISAC meeting for the last couple of months because things were kind of staying status quo and it wasn't any sense to me hauling people in here just to jabber and move on. in a conversation with Chris a couple of weeks ago uh or a week or so ago, uh I do believe that we are to a point that we're not going to see things happen really quickly as far as final permitting, but we're getting a lot of inquiry from the public and and everybody asking where are we? So, what what I have asked Chris to do and he he's going to and he's got a slide presentation which is good because people can then pull that up and it and it's got the time frames and all in there that we expect to do these things. So, they're being left with something that they can look at even though we're not going to see a lot of action over the next couple of months. Make sense? So, in in any event, I I I do I do appreciate everything that that that y'all have allowed us to do, and we do feel like that we're on tap, on schedule, and that things are going to still work out the way that it was planned to timewise. We've just got a little delays here and there, which were built in, and Chris will talk some about that. But, thank y'all so much. And and listen, I know I know Lexi, y'all probably told Lexi that I do so much work that I can't just be one person. So, but either that or y'all think I talk too much. But anyway, there's not an S on the end of my name.

They they think I must be plural. I must be more than one person. So, I'm going to now introduce Chris. I apologize. And no, I'm just And he's going to make a presentation to you. Thank you. No, I mean do this so I can see it. Um, I'm Chris Gibson. Uh, I am a coastal engineer out of Wilmington with TI Coastal. We've been working for several years now with the town on various various projects, but this specific one I'm here to talk about today um is regarding the beach nourishment that would be in phases 1, 2, and three uh and where that material is coming from and what we can expect over the next uh 12 to 24 months as far as that project goes. Um ne next slide, please. So again, the purpose of this project, we we've got two main purposes for this project and that has to do with the funding mechanisms uh that go into it. So this is not only a beach reourishment project, but it is a rehabilitation of roughly a 60 acre disposal site for the core of engineers. Historically along along Cedar Bush cut the inter coastal waterway up the channel to jacks uh material was dredged and placed in this island and this was all beach quality material. So it got taken out of the literal zone put in the island and about 40 years ago this island reached an elevation that it could no longer be used uh for beach reour because it was too far up to pump and the pipelines would get clogged. So, what we're looking at doing is cutting that island back down, taking that sand that's been

taken out of the litteral process and putting it back onto the beach. Now, the nice thing is the way uh different funds are set up in North Carolina, um the shallow draft inlet fund also has stipulations for providing dredge disposal areas or rehabilitating dredge disposal areas or constructing them. So in this case, what we're looking at doing is using a 3:1 cost share from the state to rehabilitate that disposal area for future core of engineers and local um marina uh local user needs in in use and taking that sand and putting it on the beach. And so we we get we kill two birds with one stone. Uh and also make ourselves eligible for a higher um commitment from the state. Typically beach funds, straight up beach funds if you're going to go offshore and get sand and bring it in is a onetoone match. Whereas if we've got a navigation piece to it, it can be a three to one match. So we certainly want to go that direction where we can, especially when we're talking about the type of money we're talking about. Um, next slide, please. So the beachfill, let's talk about this. Um, this area we're we're looking at is I'm going to get my numbers. It is roughly um 5 and a half miles long. Uh goes from where we finished up four just out south of the bridge. Comes all the way up to the north end. Um, we would be creating uh not only a beach feature like we've done in four and five over the last couple of years, but we'll actually be adding a new dune feature, either reconstructing the existing dune if there is some left or in some cases building new dune. Um, we are uh because of the division of coastal management rules up around area 1, we can

reconstruct the dune that was built in 2013, but we can't do anything larger than that. There's policies against new dunes in order to the buildings are already up there, but they try to um not promote growth in high high erosion areas like the north end which is nearly 20 20 feet per year if it was unprotected uh by the sandbags. Um again, uh the things that we're looking at doing up there, uh we would be looking at the 60 to 75 foot wide beach berm in front of that as well on a natural slope. So that'll give enough beach to protect that dune. Uh, one of the things that we often see in projects uh, that are done based on the general federal uh, design parameters is that you have a nice dune, but you have a narrow beach and there's not enough beach there to protect the dune. So, as soon as you get a storm, it's up. There's still energy in that water when it comes over the beach and hits the dunes and it starts scarping. And once you start scarping, gravity works with the erosion rather than against it. If the water has to roll over sand, it has to lift it in order to pull it out. If it's hitting into a a wall of sand, gravity falls it, you know, causes it to fall off and it gets into a slurry already. So, it's less energy to hit a scarp and a road of scarp than it is to erode a a slope. So, we try to put gentle sloping um uh features both on the dune frontage uh and on the beach frontage as well. uh typically a one on 125 slope which is uh lower slope than what you see with um other projects. Um next slide please. Uh real quick these were um looking at some of the the stuff that was up there at the at the north end in 2013. Uh what the kind of shape of it was. Uh it was uh that's on the

right. What you see now is what we plan to do throughout most of the project. Um, it was a little bit higher beach, which is easier to scarp. On to Topsel Island. If you put sand in above elevation five on the beachfront, it will scarp immediately within days. If it's at 5 and a half, you will see a 6 in scarp. If it's at four and a half, you won't see a scarp. If it's six foot, you'll see a foot foot high scarp. It is automatic on this island. I've been doing this here for uh north of 20 years, and that is something we have dialed in very very very well for this island. Uh so what we want to do is match that natural uh situation. Uh again, so next slide here, please. Uh and I'm sorry if I'm doing a review of the project and you all know this, then I'm sorry for double dipping, but I just want to kind of bring this up to the forefront. So our source of sand, uh and this was originally looked at briefly in the EIS that was done for the whole beach. So we're not reinventing the wheel. Uh but what we did was we went in and we did uh I believe it was 15 cores uh on that island. It's a total area is about 70 acres, but we're looking at using a little less than 60. We took a 3-in diameter tube and shoved that 3-in diameter tube all the way down 55 ft into the ground. We pulled it up. It was completely full of sand. Um as you can see, these are uh in the middle picture, that's where we split those. And you can see what the sand looks like in that split. So, we know how far down we can go till we get to marshmuck or uh if we went down and we had refusal, we're hitting bedrock, all of those things. So, we know visually in 15 different places exactly what that looks like in that material and can extrapolate it. Um took us about two weeks. This was done uh last not this past spring but the spring before. Um and what we found out uh next slide please. um was that this material was very similar to that we had two and a

half we had two to two and a half million yards of material very similar to what was on the beach. Um this is enough to put basically a 100 yards per linear foot from the bridge all the way north to the very north end of the island. That's nearly double in size of what's been done in the recent projects in phase four and fa phase five. Uh and we because of the this the where the island is the uh location as well as being where we weren't going to have a lot of boat traffic etc. Uh this is a relatively easy um it's a relatively easy source to get to. There are some complications in in as far as trying to make sure that we don't dig too deep because there is muck down below. Nice technical term there. Um, and we don't want we don't want a mucky beach. Um, so we we will have some things that we have to work with the contractor on to make sure that it is harvested in a proper way. Uh, we think we've got like three different options already laid out that any one of the dredgers, depending on the class of their dredge, could use one of those options and realistically do the project at a realistic price. You know, you can do anything if you've got $500 a cubic yard, but that's not what we want to do here. Um uh going on to the next slide. Um and I just lost my Come on back. Which one am I on?

Yeah, let me go there. There we go. Um so again, we had anywhere between 10 and 45 feet stacked uh of material on this site. Um there's some intermittent layers of Shelly material and and that's just because the site was built in layers. First they they come in and pump one project, then next year they'd come and pump 100,000 yards into it and then the next year they'd pump another 50,000 yards or whatever. So sometimes you get little layers of of stuff. So we do have a technique um where we run this stuff through a basket on the beach side and it goes into a conveyor and gets spit into a back of a truck and we can haul it all off. anything that's bad. Y'all have had clean up here before. There's been a new technique developed uh since the rocks were pumped on the beach in 2013. New techniques have been developed that make that really easy to take care of. Uh and it's not horribly expensive. It's about a dollar and a half to $2 a cubic yard uh to run that through there and ensure that you have the highest quality stuff. Uh you also have access to uh disposal areas uh right near the bridge uh that are accessible by land which is a great place to put it so you don't have to truck it 30 miles to get it off the beach and out of the way. Um so all of those things are kind of falling into play. Um next slide please. Oh pipeline route. I skipped one. Uh so one of the neat things about this project is how do how do you get the sand from the island over to the island? Um you know in that case it's uh I swear I'm sorry my hands um neuropathy is a I'll just leave it. Neuropathy is neuropathy. Yes. Can you do that for me Larry? I can't do it.

Um uh I was just I was skipping one page. I was going one page. I couldn't get this two split apart right there. I'm sorry for this, folks. That's why everybody needs to assist. Yeah,

there we go. There we go. Okay. So, um, one of the things, um, that we we looked at is how do we how do we get this, uh, material pipe from one end of the beach to the other? What's the most economical way to do it? Um, so what we looked at, um, if you come into the island on the cedar bush cut end, it's night, it's nice, it's squared off, it's clean sand, there's no marsh, there's not a whole lot of, there's no very little environmental impact to going to dredging directly into that site. What we would do is dredge into that site and dredge down to about minus14 - 16. Got good clean sand on that end down that far. Then we close up the dyke behind the dredge. This is the tricky part. close the dyke up behind the dredge, raise the water level so that the dredge could actually dredge as shallow as one or two feet.

So, we'd float the dredge up. They would be able to actively work the whole site and get above the muck layers and we can control that water level up and down so that they can because they need about 12 to 14 feet to dredge. So, we can control that that we have that water level uh inside the site. We've done this before. This isn't a new thing. We did this before at Topsel Beach for DA 189, so we're not doing anything new. We'd run the pipeline down the waterway uh just past Marina Way uh and come across the island there. There's a bridge there. I know there's some homes that are going in, but I think there's not completely.

Yeah. But our but our plan right now would be to go under that bridge so we wouldn't have to do any kind of uh directional bore or any kind of um uh cut work on the road. That seems like a good area to go where we can just slip the pipe underneath the road. And then so you're also coming across the golf course there. So I'm assuming from a town perspective we would need easements or something from those. Yeah. So we would need we would need easements from them. Of course, this is drawn out so you can see it, but obviously the pipeline would run on the fringe area of it. We wouldn't want to run it right at the fairway. Um, it's easy to see in the fairway, but it would be pushed along the edge of it. Yes, we would need

to go ahead and go through uh getting easements for that or if we have to extend again, we could run it through the areas that is forested back there, but again, trying to do as minimal footprint as possible. Um, this is all above ground, too. It's all above ground. Uh so this pipe would be laid. It would typically be uh 24 inch. Well, no, at this point it would probably be 24 inch steel. Um this would have enough pressure on it they'd want to do steel instead of plastic.

Um and then it would come over come under. We would pump to the south first and go down and tie into phase four, then flip the pipeline and go to the north and go all the way up to the north end of the island. So sir, though, is there a plan B if those owners won't give easements? Yes, ma'am. I mean, there's obviously other places we've looked to cross. This is the easiest, simplest. Okay. There's uh there's there's been talk uh of ways of possibly coming through uh down at Marina. Uh we originally looked at going through where the uh power line comes up. Yeah.

And going down there. Uh at the time we started looking at that, there were no houses on that road. There's been some houses added. that became a little more complicated. Um, we could always go straight down the beach, but what that means if we did that would be a booster on the beach and for noise for for noise reasons, we'd prefer not to put that m main booster on the beach. We'd like to have it on a barge in the waterway. Um, just as a convenience both to the dredgers and to the community during the project. But there's we've got three ways to skin this cat.

Okay. Um, we always started everything with a plan A, B, C, and D. And hopefully we can get through with plan A. That's usually our most economical and then, you know, go from there to see what's what's what's palatable. But yes, there are there are options.

Um, flipping to the next one. Again, talking about project magnitude, um, the project again consists of two two to 2.6 million cubic yards. We identified uh 2.6 million cubic yards in the site. Uh just depending on what method is of harvesting is used will determine how much we can get to, how much of it is surgically removed, and how much of it um is below the baseball bat. Um again, 5 1/2 miles of beach reour dune restoration. Um, as we get up to the north end, we had talked about trying to put in a retention structure up there to hold this sand in place while the terminal groin was being permitted. Uh, when you bring stuff before the state, you get the no, the heck no, the are you blanking, kidding me, and the don't come back. Those are your four options. We got the don't come back. Um, so, uh, we've taken and tabled that. Uh, we did have a plan B on that. and and the plan B um is to beef up uh some of the the placement uh up at the north end, not at the very north end. One of the things that happens uh with all these core of engineers disposals is they start and they pump and they started they start north of the houses and they come and they try to work around that corner and usually they've spent half the material before they get to the first house because it washes back behind them. And so you lose all that material up onto the spit which eventually falls back into the inter coastal waterway yada yada yada. Um the 20 11 the first project in phase one uh was it 2011? Is that that number right? Have to forgive me. Um the material was dredged out of the inlet and placed on that very north shoulder and you dug a hole on the beach. We've all dug holes on the beach. tides come in and the pile of sand you put beside the hole fell fell back in the hole. Well, in that particular

project, the hole was big. The amount of sand that was beside it was small because it was stretched down two and a half miles down the beach. So, we had over erosion for that trying to equiliberate itself. So, the idea is we know that this is going to draw sand from somewhere just south of the reefs north. So, what we're going to do is we're going to we're going to do a dune and some protective and a protective feature at the very north end, but we're going to beef up the beach at the reefs, seeing that as a feeder as it's being pulled north to buy more time to make it have to travel through the um through the the developed area rather than immediately, you know, first grain left is leaving the whole area of concern. We want to we want to kind of feed that with the situation we have and hopefully by the time that we get further into this um you know we'll be seeing some movement on the terminal groin. I'm not directly involved with that. I hear information from you guys. So I'm thirdand I I can't make a statement on where y'all are with that. So I'm I'm sorry I can't provide more information. Um flipping to the next one. Um cost. That's one of the things everybody, how much is this thing gonna do? So, uh, we're currently under roughly 650k contract to get this thing permitted and designed and to the point of putting it out to contract. Um, we are we have been working we we have a basically a 90% design right now. Um, we are working through the permitting process and as we all know permitting processes can be a slow go. Um, when we look to construction, how much is this going to take to build? Um, it's going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of about 8 to10 million mo and somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 a yard to pump the sand to the beach. That's kind of the going market rate right now. Um,

this one's a little better than some things because there's certain weathers, boat traffic, certain environmental constraints because it's inside a disposal island rather than open water offshore that make this a little easier. Um, but that's roughly what we're going to be looking at. Um, you know, we're doing looking at probably doing a D five and a half miles of dune planning. Uh, that could easily, as we saw from, uh, what we did uh, post Florence, could be somewhere in the $2 million range. Um, and then construction management on this, uh, probably 10 months of work, so somewhere around a million dollars doing all the surveys to make sure everything's happening correctly and in compliance on both ends of the pipeline. Um, with that with the shallow draft inlet fund, uh, going at 3:1, that would be 33 to $35 million from the state and a town cost of 11 to 12 million. Uh, which I understand right now is within what the town has within the coffers that we're in a good financial place to make this move forward. All right. So, where are we? all those things. We're sitting on go. Uh, and I hate I always hate it when I'm sitting on go, but there's somebody else slowing us down. Not and it's and it's not us. Um, during this process, one of the first things that we did was go through and pull title on all the pieces of property that we wanted to to look at. Now, who we got to get easements from? Uh, state of North Carolina. Uh, the title to the island is under the state of North Carolina. Uh, the the land section. Uh we've done this many many times with them. And typically their point of view is if you got a camera permit and the core is okay with it, it's in the easement, have at it. Um turns out that North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission is making a claim that they potentially need to write the easement rather than the land section. Um we began communication with them

immediately after the one-stop meeting we had in May and that has been held up. We have not had uh we have not had good uh response and I mean not that we've had negative response, it's just been a lack of response from the North North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. Um we have had folks with DEEQ that have said to please start copying them on the correspondence with wildlife resources commission because they believe this is a good project and will help us try to push things through. We have also started communicating with the core of engineers uh have a meeting set up with them um because they don't they have an existing easement on this land and possibly working through them may be a way to get around it. So again your plans ABC we are currently working on all AB and C plans and shotguning that uh trying to move this process along. We still have several months that we can sit on go with these folks before it becomes before we reach critical mass. We had a lot of extra time built in. So, um we're working to gain that that easement. Um and we've also gone through directly to the division of lands who was on the title uh asked for uh um uh for the easement from them. Um and we have not heard anything heard anything back from them yet. Again, on Monday, we got information about setting up a meeting with the core of engineers to to work that route. Uh, flip to the next one. Uh, next steps that we need to go through. I think we're at a time period and a place in this project that we have an idea of what it will cost that we should go ahead and put in for the shallow shallow draft grant um shallow draft grant fund. Um, I also think that given the magnitude of this that the uh the town should work with our lobbyist that's with the TISPC, David, what's his name?

Frell.

David Ferrell, and look to see if we can get some legislated funds much like Oak Island did a couple of years ago. Um, there is plenty of money in the shallow draft inlet fund, but this would be a big chunk of it. So there may be a push back, but if we could get legislated funds, that would obviously be the best thing to do. Of course, we know where the the state is with the budget. We're still waiting for a budget for uh 26 through 28. Um so that may be hard to get in right now. It may have to go on the next budget cycle. Uh we're currently moving to get the easements for DA 13, DA 143 and obtain pipeline crossing easements. Um at the time we have the easements then we can submit a complete permit application and would take uh anywhere from 75 to 180 days for that to work through the process and then if there's any tweaks to the design that we have to do because it through that process we do it at that time. Um we're looking to to do the bid documents uh and put the thing out to bid in March of 26 which gives us a lot of leeway on time. um that would lead toward getting a contract in place and looking at clearing the vegetation out of the way on the island in August through October. Uh hope that the contractor would go ahead and start laying pipeline in October because most of the work except for on the beach can be completed outside the environmental window and then plenty of time for dredge and fill in November 26 through April of 27. All of that is still on schedule even that with the delays we had, we when we came to you, we built enough cushion in that we've used some of our cushion, but we have not gotten to a point that we're in trouble. Um, I believe that was my last slide.

So, thank you first of all for presenting all of that information, Chris. It was very helpful. Um, I'm I'm just going to speak for myself. I still we've talked about this a lot over the years when it comes to the very north end and the erosion that we had after the project that had failed and those homes up there. So I will say I personally am still very concerned about not having a structure in place before we start to nourish up there. And I understand this is a different project. So you potentially could make me feel much better about it, but I really don't want to cause any additional erosion issues for what seems to have stabilized over the years. I mean, it's still not where we want it to be, but

very very good, very good point, mayor, and and it's something that everyone should be concerned about. Uh anytime you get this close to a dynamic situation like these inlets, um you've got a lot that you're dealing with. Um, one of the things that happened in the last project, and this happened specifically at Ocean Isle as well, uh, when the core brought in the 1996 beach reourishment project, they did shallow inlets kind of similarly. They dug a hole right there by the tip of the island and then they pumped the material predominantly down past the initial houses, right? Same thing happened here. You had a little bit of sand that was put at the very tip, but then a lot of it went

south of the reefs. And that material that went south to the reefs did a pretty good job staying there, right? But that hole was so big, it took everything that was from the reefs north and additional sands that went with it. One of the big differences in this versus that is there's no manipulation of the inlet channel itself. As you said, it's kind of stabilized. It is it is in a stabilized bad word, not static. it is in a in a a moving dynamic that is understandable right now. Um so in this case, instead of digging a hole there and putting sand there, um you're just putting sand there. Okay?

So there's not a hole for it to fall into. So that's a big difference in where we were 15 years ago. There's a Um,

so Chris, I really appreciate the work that you did with the the BICAT committee in developing this plan. I think it's a a great plan. It kind of completes our whole shoreline uh nourishment uh for next few years and what we need to do. Uh, and I like the idea. I'll emphasize what Joanne was asking, but the point that you were going to put extra sand down by the St. Reges and the drown down drift current will take that sand gradually back to the north. So, it will gradually replace replace that sand on the north end behind that the houses where the sandbag is. and you could continue in future years to put sand in that one area and then let it go back to to the north end. One of the things that we've we've talked about in the past and I think we really need to do in the future um especially if the core of engineers continues to put sand onto the beach uh the north end when they when they dredge the the crossroads that um that material when it's placed and when they because the contractor the lease cost part of it as an as an operations and maintenance all they care about is getting the sand out of the channel. They have no

care where the sand goes on the beach. if we could put it in place where it costs them no more money to start the sand placement down by the reefs whether it's and and my suggestion has always been that we need to put in like we have at Topsel a pipeline under the road so they can hook up in the back without having to string it around the beach where they have no beach and start pumping there that as they pump that sand that's bleeding off that fills in back behind in front of the beach club and you move south and you constantly get this pole back to the north and that sand has to migrate through useful areas rather than getting all the way down on the tip where it's no longer useful. Um that's again if we had our brothers the terminal groin would be in place before we did this and we would be back filling the terminal groin. That is that would be plan A. the realism of do we hold up the other five miles of beach because we don't have the terminal going for the half mile of beach doesn't it doesn't make sense in my mind it may a board thing but that does that just doesn't

it doesn't make sense and it doesn't make sense financially to hold off that little bit of sand from that north end to put it up there later because of the mobilization so I want to come back to uh that point you about applying for the shallow draft fund grant.

Uh I think it's we need to do that as soon as we can. And here's the reason. The shallow draft fund only has $66 million in only. You're proposing that we're going to ask for half of that 66 million. The legislature and its effort to recover from Hurricane Helen has taken the money that should go into the shallow draft fund from the marine tax that that's a dedicated source of funding for the they've taken that away from the shallow draft fund. They're putting it recovery in western North Carolina. So, we need to apply for that grant as soon as we can because we're going to be asking for half of the balance. And they're probably not going to get uh additional funds in the shallow drive fund next year. It's going to do a two-year budget. So, I mean, it could be situation that the state may not have enough money if other communities in along the coast are applying for these state monies. So, again, I think it's and one final thing I know the wildlife resources got involved. And my comment to them would be that you that DA 143 is a disturbed landscape and it has invasive species, pine trees, shrubs, upland birds in that area that used to be a salt marsh. So in reality you are restoring that in that uh artificial area back to its natural condition. I I would I would totally agree with your statement on DA 143 and add to that that by right now the core has been there three other islands there and they've been doing very limited dyke raisings and and and doing stuff from

channel to Jacksonville on those other islands. um they are not of a magnitude that makes a lot of sense. By switching everything over to DA 143 in one big chunk, they could take all three of those islands and make up the acreages twofold um for lost habitat by turning those into habitat um restoration areas. So Tom, do you have something to say? A couple comments.

Yeah, real just a couple. First of all, we talk about the sand that comes out of the inlet and up through the crossroads. And my only concern with that sand is the granularity because I've seen it from when we've when the court pumped sand out during a navigation project against a beach project when the sand came out of the middle of the inlet. And it's there's a real difference between the weight of the sand that comes out in a navigation project and the weight of the sand that comes out of the actual inlet. Correct.

I know we're not going to the inlet, but I'm more using that as a comparison relative to that sand. Is it beach is it beach compatible? So the material once you get so once you get up in the channel the jacks right there at the crossroads the current is still fast enough to to be decent quality material. Um but once you go past the crossroads and go channel the jacks which is start going up and they do dredge that

you're some of that material is absolutely not beach quality and that's why they've been putting it in these other three islands. Um, but even as you get up into the waterway, you're looking at grain sizes that are like 0.18 millimeters where your base on this beach is about 26.27. And that difference is it is incredible. Yeah.

Uh the different the difference in in the and what that weight and angularity and all that means. It's still all quartz, which is good. uh we're not dealing with a high shell content which that likes to flutter in the sand and flutter in the in the current and move even more. Um but yeah, if we can and that was one of the things that was nice about the disposal area is when they pump into it, the material kind of if you look at the picture of the island, you see the white the big white hump on one end and it's lower and darker material on the other. What ends up happening is those fine materials when they pump in there, the fine materials run down toward the pipe where the water discharges and the sand stays up on one end. So, it's already kind of been washed.

Okay?

So, this is a very high quality sand. Um, again, when we've done the truck haul, one of the things that I've been a proponent, well, nobody likes to have trucks on the road, including myself. The proponent of that is that that material over there is much heavier than your native. That's that's.35 to 04. And so that material lasts a lot longer on the beach. The extra the extra money you pay for the hall has been worthwhile compared to if you tried to get something finer grained over on this side of the county. Mhm. So to go back to the example, when the beach project was done and then the core came in and put sand in front of it that was due to the navigation project on a windy day, you would actually see the sand the core put down blowing away.

Mhm. And stuff that came out of this middle of the inlet, the heavy grain sand stayed put. Yeah. One more question. The spoil island. Yes, sir. How, and this goes back to the mayor's original point I was showing her just a minute ago on my tablet, the the Google map of the, you know, the actual area where it is. I mean, how far down I know how tall that thing is. I can see it out the windows of my house. I mean, what what amount of elevation if we do this thing would be, you know, how many feet? How many feet? Great.

You know, I mean, I know how tall it is now. How tall is it going to be when it's done? because I think the the question and the and the concern is is that the contour as it as it moves through the waterway and the crossroads up there um if we don't disturb the actual contour, it won't change the dynamic of the inlet at all. Right. No, it shouldn't. So, what what you're going to see when when this is all done, uh right now the island is about 40 40 feet tall. Um we're going to take that down to between minus5 and minus15. Okay. It's going to be a lake. Okay.

Okay. But there's going to be a levey on the perimeter of the whole thing that's about 12 feet high. So, it will be separated. This will this will be a duck empoundment for for lack of a better term. Um, it will still it will be separate from the cedar bush cut from the waterway. it will not be a connecting water. Um, and it will have the levy around it so it's ready for initial use immediately after construction. So, and again to summarize the issues that occurred with the 2011 2012 project were because of the disruption to the inlet. Yeah. The the the big

and this disrupt there will be no disruption similar to that in any way, shape or form. No. No. In no way, shape or form. And you even saw so post 2011 maybe it was 2016 there was a project that was done and Katro was the contractor they dug some sand about halfway back Cedar Bush cut I don't know if you remember that one uh CP was the engineer on it um it went through the shallow draft they dug the the authorized channel between where you come in the inlet and then you cut across over to the north side of Cedar Bush. They dug that channel, right?

Um they actually dug it twice because they dug they dug through it and when they got to the other end it should in so fast they couldn't float out. Um but that one had very little impact because it didn't change the dynamic of the inlet. All of that's happening you know um if I could brea all of that dynamic is happening from when you make the cut south and then start heading out. There's where the dynamic thing. If you're doing something on that point where that inlet foul, which is the nice big coastal engineering word for the deep channel,

um if you're doing something in that throat of that channel right there off the tip of the island, you've got to be expecting a major response to the land formations on either side. But being all the way back in the back and not changing any of the any of the channel dynamics back there at all. Uh we should not have anything if anything we should see the inlet be pushed slightly north as the sand does backflow into it. Okay. All right. So that's all I had.

So one is um we talked about up in phase one. Okay. My response to this I think that you will be prudent in terms of not just throwing money away. But two things to point out. One is is we're looking for 3 to1 financing on this thing. All right? And I don't know anything that I've seen that's going to get cheaper. All right? So if we delay this thing again and now instead of being 44 to 47 million, we leave part of it out there and that piece becomes 10 or 15 by itself, doesn't sound like a great solution. Second thing I believe you said is this does not preclude us from pursuing the groin and that we're going to continue to pursue the groin. All right. And and go after those. And then the third thing is I agree with going after the money in the shallow draft fund, but I will point to our friend over here who told me about a year and a half ago that I brought back here is we got to get legislation with our name on it.

Yes. All right. Because just going after the salon draft fund, uh to Mike's point, if we're g we're not going to get half of it, we better figure out how much we can get. And I think you gave me an example of somebody that did that for was it ocean that had put money out. it was in their name and even though they didn't spend it, it had been allocated to them. And I think that is something I see you nodding and I know you guys had no but Tim had committed that they would work with us in the legislature to do that. So I think that that's something that we ought to be pursuing just as hard as anything else.

I I I agree with that. Oak Island was the town. They got $20 million. It was allocated about four years ago, five years ago. They're finally going to spend it this winter. um they went through a couple of uh bid processes where it was just not enough um not enough contractors for the amount of work they wanted to do and the time they wanted to do it in.

And then just just one other comment that you're already aware of, people need to understand this is called a reimbursement project. Okay, the 30 whatever million dollars we're asking from the state through salary draft or whatever means we have to front the money and then get the money back. And if you look at the financial that we just looked at, we're still waiting for FEMA money coming back. So, it's important. We talked about starting a a five-year planning process, which you hopefully get done before you're at that point. We need to figure out where that money is. We did Saabs before. We did all that kind of stuff. So, it's not just having enough cash to do our piece of it. It's having enough cash and and financing available to get that other money. And hopefully that'll come back. But I think Alice, it's in the report. We're still waiting. We're still at what six or seven million dollars by FEMA today. If if we're looking at 15 or$20 million that we don't get back from them for a period of time, we have to have that in place, which means we've got to manage it.

It is. It is. Yes, it is. No, I I checked that before I made the comment. That's that's a reimbursement project. It is a reimbursement. uh shallow draft moves at a little bit faster pace than a significantly faster pace than FEMA does. My experience uh um you know I've worked with both Surf City uh and Topsel Beach using shallow draft funds and using large you know 15 $18 million of shallow draft funds. We haven't had any real issue, but recommendation if you're looking at because the speed these projects move at um you need to have about 35 to 40% of the project cost in hand to be able to cash flow it.

Uh a project this size, especially on mobilization and the final bill on demobilization where they fall in the month could easily be a 20 $20 20 million bill in one month. And then you're going to take 30 to 45 days. We're talking 20 to $30 million we have to have on hand. I I would highly recommend it. We TOPS that was my point.

Topsel usually usually spends six to eight uh and we recommend for them to keep 12 million on hand. And the nice part nice part about that is when you get done with it and you cash flow it, if you immediately get hit by a storm um right afterwards and there is FEMA money that comes right afterwards, you are in a in a position already to cash flow the next one. So that's a because FEMA is reimburseable, too. So now you're double hit with money. So it it just tells me as part of our plan, we really need to get an understanding of the cash we've got.

Yeah. Yes. Well, well, shucks because the coastal storm damage mitigation fund has different rules. They sent the town a check for $10.5 million. We made we got $1.7 million in interest sitting in our account.

So, I was really hoping that the shallow draft fund would work the same way and we'd get a check for $33 million to put on. Apparently, that's the way it works. Can we just clarify that? Sorry, folks. If if you remember, and it's actually a very good point because um if people will remember, that was a reimburseable project. They sent us the money and our town manager was so nervous about it that she documented the heck out of this thing that we were segregating those funds and segregating the interest and taking care of it because it was not a front end. It was a reimburseable, which is also why I just asked the question about us getting interest on it. Are we allowed to use that? So Mike, to your point, we're very lucky, but to his point, you cannot count on that money coming in on the front end because that was a mistake by the state. And like I said, I don't can't remember how much you can tell me. You were worried about that a lot in terms of documenting everything with the state, making sure we could keep the money, all those type. Is that fair?

Yeah. The money that came in was completely against the agreement. Um they sent it in advance instead of reimbursement, which is was unheard of. Okay.

And I have some comments. I don't need any explanations because we really need to move on uh so the meeting can keep on going. Um I am concerned about the environmental impacts since that island has been there since the 1980s and has established wildlife on it. I am concerned that North Carolina wildlife is going to say, "Hey, it's been there over 45 years." I'm worried about the per the permittings and approvals um being able to get everything in a timely manner. I agree with what the mayor said about have really working with the terminal groin even though that's not your your side of the of the of the aisle. Also, I think that some of the things when we bring up 2012, when that was done, when that was engineered and done, it was the failures were not because of that the that the inlet was dredged or the big hole was built there. They were precipitating factors, but they were not the the main causes. What happened was that was that inlet was to be dredged. it did not get the approval for the actual dredging that they wanted to do. Um, a modified dredge got it out there. Once it was done, the hope was that the Ebtide Delta would collapse upon itself and bring some sand to the shore. Um, and that hole was was not that sand scrape, which I'm always against the sand scraping, was way deeper than it should have ever been. I went in it to see how deep it was. Um, it was deep. It was probably over my waist if I recall correctly. And it was at least probably again guessing two to three acres and it was should never have been done.

Nevertheless, what happened to really screw everything up was then we had that big storm and I I don't think it was Sandy, but I can't for the heck of me recall what it was and that just tore everything all the hell and it just kind of ruined ruined it all. Also, um I'm we keep saying the northward drift and as I Googled while you were talking, I see we can have a northward drift, but quite often in North Carolina, I see that it's more of a southernly drift with the sand. So um while I while I think this is an excellent project if it can be permitted if it can be done in a timely manner and if um everything works out with the permitting that going under the bridge which is an excellent idea. There's so many good parts about this but I have some um concerns too but I know you're looking at them but I just wanted to bring them up and um that's what I've got. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Connie. Thank you, Chris. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate you coming today. Yes, ma'am. Glad Glad to be here for all of you. Uh, as y'all know, my phone's always on. If you have questions, please give me a buzz, email me. I'll be glad to answer. We'll do so. Thank you. Okay. Next is Mr. Tim Foster, who is Anzo County Commission's chairman, and he's going to give us an update on county issues. H.

So, since I invited him, um Tim, the amount you sent us is $51,869. Uh that puts us over a million dollars for the for the fire fund. Thank you very much. Um the money you sent to us for the beach every year. Uh the money that you all gave for Ocean City, and by the way, you should go down and look at that beach access. Um they were very, very grateful for everything that you've done. And I know that uh on a personal level, you have been an advocate of this town. I think because you used to fish here, hang out when you were younger. Fish swim.

So, you have a personal interest in this. Um, and just and just for uh discussion purposes real quick. Um, you all instituted your five-year plan at the beginning of the year. That wasn't the impetus. I was invited to the mayor of um Holly Ridg's thing when they were laying or putting out their five-year plan and Mayor Pete gave me a copy of that which I think I talked to you about in one of the meetings. Um and that kind of spurred would you mind coming in and talking about your planning and stuff. So that was the origination of this is really what I got. Mayor their plan was like like that. So anyway with that thanks again and appreciate that and also the Ocean City people wanted to pass on their thanks as well.

Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Uh mayor mayor pro Tim um alderman I appreciate the opportunity to come in and speak and share. What I'm going to do is probably be more along the long of a narrative um and to share that with you. No presentation. you don't have to keep up with the uh the monitors. But it's just kind of a little bit I'll start just a little bit with um simple is that I grew up not on the island but in the southwest community here in Oslo County and and every time I come across this bridge when I see the Atlantic Ocean or get out of the car and and I smell that salt air it's always like coming to my my second home even though I'm 25 minutes up the road. Um, you know, and I remember uh the mornings paddling out on my surfboard. There was a lot more uh beach back then. Um, that would been back in the early 80s um when I was coming out doing that and catching those those first waves in the morning or or getting here in the evening and and doing that. But I grew up coming here on family vacations with my with my parents and my siblings. We always love walking the shoreline. We always enjoy those days of laughter and and building those memories. Memories that come that generated where I take my family, my wife and my boys will come down. And people always ask, "You're only 20, 25 minutes from the island. Why do you come spend a week there?" Because there's nothing like waking up in the morning and walking out on the beach. There's nothing like walking out of a a home that you're on one of the canals and walking out and getting in your boat and going down the uh the inter coastal. But for me, Topsel or North Topsel is not just a a beautiful place to visit. It's a part of who I am. So that really builds the the reason that I I love North North Topppsel Beach and and this island. It's special because it is the best of what makes Enslo County unique.

The connection between the land, the water, and the people who care about them. You cannot deny that connection. You cannot deny that bond. serving as a county commissioner in the last couple of years as the chairman that has deepened that personal connection. It's given me the responsibility and our board the responsibility to foster a relationship between Enslo County and North Topsel Beach. It's got to be one that is strong and collaborative. I remember just a few years ago the boards met and we uh looked how can we support how can we help and we figured out that that tourism money could come in and support paying back that I think it was the USDA loan um that was there. So we've committed that request comes in every year and we commit to doing that. Um and we have to be forward thinking like you already are. I mean, well over my head listening to slopes and scraps and or scrapes and whatever else there. I'm glad somebody knows how to do that, how to make that come to fruition. If we can figure out a way to make it cheaper, that'd be even better. Um, but that that's that this relationship is vital between Enslo County and North Topsel Beach. It's not just for the residents. It's not just for the visitors who enjoy the beach, but it's for the economic well-being of the entire county. North Topsel Beach is is more than a destination. It's truly it's your home, but it's an economic engine that drives tourism. It supports hundreds of jobs. It attracts new businesses and families to Enslo County. And each year, thousands of visitors come here to enjoy the sand, the surf, the fishing, and something that is unique to North Topsel Beach that other beaches don't have, the quiet coastal charm. Those visitors fill the restaurants, shop in our stores, rent vacation homes,

book hotel rooms, and spend at our local attractions. That revenue that's generated through the tourism taxes and spending here helps support countywide services. Not just North Topsel, but it helps support countywide services from public safety to education. Tourism in this area brings millions of dollars annually. It brings it to our local economy, benefiting not just the beachfront, but the entire county. from Sneeed Ferry to Richlands, from Jacksonville to the rural communities that rely on the shared prosperity. So recognizing that Enslo County has worked hard to commit as a partner to North Thompson Beach over the past several years, we've taken significant steps and I think that all started with a joint meeting a few years ago to strengthen this partnership where the county has contributed, as we mentioned earlier, $150,000 a year through those tourism funds to help support paying off that the the USDA loan. Um, and that loan itself was part of protecting this shoreline. And it was great that I've been a part of the bisect. Uh missed several meetings there for a stretch, but it that that is important to Enslo County and the reason I sit on that committee and come and join it. And here recently I replaced Mark Price on the Topsel Island Shoreline Protection Committee um where where it's so so important to maintain what you have here because what it means to Enzo County as a whole. We're planning uh to invest, and was mentioned, I don't know if I need to bring up crosswalks or not. There might be a ask in there somewhere. Um we're planning to invest uh $1.5 million to improve the beach accesses so that residents, family, visitors, and families can enjoy the coastline more easily and safely. Uh it was mentioned earlier that we have returned uh some of the property tax rate back to the town.

that has helped uh with the fire services. Over $500,000 has come back and and I believe some of that's probably been used to help uh build the new uh new fire department, which is it's coming along. Probably not as fast as y'all would like it to come along, but it is it's going to be awesome that that is here. And that those are things that we have to keep in mind is that giving your your local government the resources to invest in services and infrastructure that keeps the community strong. and we want to maintain that relationship and continue that collaboration and being good partners with you having over provided over $500,000 those services because we know public safety is not negotiable and when the people that want to visit and vacation here and they know there's a commitment not only from North Topsel but from the county as well then people will continue to pick North Topppsel beach as a destination of choice. You mentioned earlier the contribution to Ocean City, the beach access is there, the jazz festival that takes place. See, we want to recognize that history. We want to understand that how important the culture of the community is there that enriches the entire county. It draws visitors who want to experience something truly truly special. The investments are not just numbers on a page. They're rep they represent a shared vision for progress. one where we recognize when Topppsel North Topppsel Beach thrives all of Enslo County benefits. We also know that growth continues to be strong. Sometimes that's a a detriment. Um but we have to find a way to balance that. But the greatest growth is taking place in this area, the Stump Sound area of Enslo County. That growth brings new opportunities. It brings new jobs, more housing. If no one has noticed along 210, how much has gone up along there or have sat in traffic

and been able to admire it for me minutes on end of what you would like just to be able to get back to your home or to to the beach to enjoy that as a visitor. It's building stronger businesses where we need more infrastructure services and then leadership that keeps pace. That's why we have uh been in talks uh with our board that we're exploring the establishment of satellite county offices in this area so citizens can access county services closer to home and that is part of the broader commitment to meeting the needs of growing communities in North Topppsel and Stump Sound are these growing communities both on the mainland and along the coast. We don't want everyone to have to drive back to to Jacksonville to have to take care of some of these services. We want to ensure that we have an EMS station that when someone on the on the island calls 911 that EMS is there to support North Topsel uh fire. We want to make sure that our volunteers have the ability to service this island. And that's one of the reasons that we're currently working on a strategic fire plan to make it more efficient, more more um more productive. and that is uh we've already picked a a um company that is helping draft that plan. We've got representatives from out throughout the county that was on that and all of our volunteer fire departments and fire departments will be involved in the development of that plan. So that does doesn't only ensure safety and and and quality service uh in one area. is going to take it from the county line on the other side of Holly Ridge to the county line on the other side of Swansburg to the county line on the other side of Richland Richlands and hopefully include some countyus to support as well. And it takes us right through the gates, main gates and the back gates to Lun with that service plan as well. and to guide these decisions. This is the the part that I for our board has spoke about

quite a bit in the uh last several years is we've built budgets yeartoear and uh we always talked about we really need to build budgets are not yeartoear but the budgets are built on what we want to accomplish over the next 10 15 20 years but do it in a fiveyear increments. So to guide those decisions, we developed a five-year strategic plan which will be the foundation for our budgeting and our policym. A strategic plan that is essential because it keeps us focused on our priorities. It helps us balance growth. It ensures we invest in projects that have a long-term positive impact. Pretty much along the lines of $1.5 million going into the beach accesses. That that is a long-term commitment. That is going to be a long-term commitment to folks that come and visit this island to maintain the the the the economic engine that we we want it to continue to be, but at a balance. We don't want it to destroy your homes either because you you stay here year round. It provides transparency so citizens can see how their tax dollars are being spent. And it gives us goals, measurable goals that we can work together or work toward together. When we plan strategically, we prior prioritize beach access, storm resiliency, infrastructure improvements, public safety, and economic development in a way that benefit both the beach and the county as a whole. North Topsel Beach has always been always been, as I told you earlier, growing up fishing and shrimping in the inter coastal surfing. You know, I don't know if uh how many how many of y'all have been here a long long time, but Paradise Pier, Scotch Bonnet Pier, and all those iconic things that have been on this island, those were a part of the jewels of North Topsel Beach. And those things are being replaced by new things that are so

important to Enslo County. Um the success impacts our hotels and restaurants, our small businesses, our schools and even our property values which we are in the process of 20 probably there's going to be an increase in property values which is going to cause us to have to adjust um property tax rate accordingly. It's important to our school or our maintaining a vibrant and resilient beach a powerful economic driver. It creates jobs, supports recreation, attracts visitors who in turn support the entire county economy. That's why it's critical we continue to nurture the relationship between Enzo County and North Topsel Beach. And looking ahead, we believe we have an opportunity to take this relationship to the next level by working together, town and county. We need to look at scheduling some more board meetings together and having those conversations. We believe taking it to the next level will allow us to continue to invest in sustainable tourism and shoreline protection. Expand public access to points to the beach that are open and welcoming. Continue to be open and welcoming to families. Improve our emergency services to keep residents and visitors safe and explore collaborative projects that boost business development and protect our natural environment. This is the future that we all would like to envision. A North Topsel Beach that stands strong as a premier destination for visitors and a beloved community for residents. An Oslo County that recognize that its coastline is one of the greatest in the area and one of our greatest assets. We've come a long way. We've come a long way in building trust and collaboration, but there's more we can do. The good news is we have momentum, we have a plan, and we have shared purpose. Together, we

can keep building this partnership that honors the past, meets our challenges today, and embraces tomorrow's opportunities. I appreciate you welcoming me here today. I'm honored to serve not only as the chairman of Enslo County Board, but as someone whose personal history and love for this beach keep me deeply invested in the future. I look forward to the progress we'll make together as we continue to protect our shoreline, protect your homes, protect your way of life, and protect the economic engine that North Topsel Beach is to Enslo County where we all benefit. When North Topsel Beach is successful, Enslo County is successful. When Enso County is successful, North Topsel Beach is successful. So, that ends that. I I enjoy doing it in a narrative because I hope I hit all the points. Um, growth is one of the toughest things that we're facing right now. A double-edged sword. Um, we got to figure out what the balance is. Um, people have discovered your wonderful little beach. People have un have discovered Enselow County. We're at 215,000 people in Enslo County and over the next 20 plus years we look to go around 260 270,000 people. Not sure where they're going to go but the projections are they're coming. Thank you very much and I appreciate this opportunity. [Applause]

Just one other thing real quick before you leave. Two things. One is I did talk to Mr. Chestnut and they are very pleased with what you guys have done. So this at their homeowners association

with one caveat. He's talking about the EMS thing. We have first dips. You guys brought up they want to use the uh the old plurus thing to put that in there and and Royce brought up that I said I brought enough six months first on that so it's clear I hope at least we'll work together that yes I appreciate sir thank you thank you any questions anyone or thank y'all very

we have one sign up that is Mark Barefoot All right, Mark Berett, 246 Sand Piper. First of all, I'd say thank you for coming and understanding the economic impact this beach provides to the county. Um, get a lot of feedback on where our monies are going. So, it was refreshing to hear you let us know how much we mean to the county. Um, again, give me 20 or 30 seconds. I'm not uh going to be running a huge political run right here. I just want to make sure that I inform all the citizens of North Topppsel Beach that I have contacted the Enslo County Board of Elections. I have signed a letter of intent to run for alderman. So this election, Mark Barefoot is a rightin candidate. So if if you choose to vote for me, please write me in and I look forward to serving you. Uh my life is a little different now than it has been for the last 10 years. So uh we'll see what happens. Um moving forward, I'd like to say thank you for doing this uh crosswalks. Uh it's been long long overdue. Uh I think I brought it up at St. Reges seven or eight years ago. Um, I brought up Seagull especially, and that was before it was two or three times the size it is now. Uh, really too fast going through there. I recommended speed bumps because it is our road. I was shot down, but long story short, thank you for pushing that. I'd also like for you to understand, we know there's going to be difficulties dealing with the DOT. So, it's going to be a dance that's going to take everybody's uh needs to be in step. Um because I think it is a uh you can pass in either direction at some of these crosswalks or some of these beach accesses. So,

they'll have to change that to no passing zones and everything else. Um both Seagull crosswalks I think are needed. the four-way around Seagull definitely uh need to take in water runoff, water puddling in effect because everybody knows when it we rain, you're not going to walk the way you want to walk. You're going to walk the long way to keep your feet from getting wet. Uh recommend rumble strips as well. Uh I don't know what they cost. That's an effective way to slow people down, get their attention. Um but I would like to say thank you for finally seeing some fruits of that uh happen. um as a fireman for several years here uh worked as a parking lot attendant. So I've dealt with day trippers, tourists, residents, everybody. And their biggest concern was this place is a nightmare. So hopefully getting some of these put in, we can maintain that 45 speed limit. We'll see what happens. So that is a concern. The other part is while we're talking traffic, we'd love to be able to make a lefthand turn coming out here. I don't know if it's traffic circle, what the solution is, but Saturday from 10:00 to 3:00, the worker bees, they cannot make money because they're sitting in traffic. All right. Thank you for your time. Thank you for what you do. Appreciate each one of you. Have a good day.

Thank you, Mark. And I know um Alderman Ple, is there anybody else that wants to speak? Yeah, go ahead. And then Connie, do if you need to go. Yeah, I'll scoot out here.

Sorry. I I wanted to thank uh Chairman Foster also from the Ocean City Beach Citizens Council um for the J for the support of the Jazz Festival. I'm the vice president of the Ocean City Beach Citizens Council. So, I echo what Alderman Grant said. Uh Chris Huckabe, also want to commend you for your thoughtful review and sound recommendation regarding the crosswalks and stop signs. Again, Ocean City Beach is is bordered on both sides of by two of your recommendations and uh we sincerely appreciate all efforts to reduce speed and enhance safety uh for pedestrians and bicyclist along uh Island Drive. Um as a reminder, back in May of 2024, we actually did have a pedestrian fatality there. And although wasn't related to crossing the street, it was a pedestrian right there in front of the Surf City Campground. So, uh, it underscores the urgent need for enhanced safety measures to better protect residents, property owners, and our visitors. Um, before my partial retirement in law enforcement, I served as a records officer for the police department, and I've have a strong working knowledge of records retentions. It's based on that experience and the town's resolution 202402, the adoption of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Division of Archives and Records Retention uh and disposition schedule for local government agencies. I had some questions. Um the board made a very important distinction that the appropriate schedules and applicable codes need to be denoted uh prior to these destructions so that everybody's more well informed. Will a copy or summary of those destruction logs or inventories be made available to the public? Okay. Um, we also have to be careful when we're evaluating uh public records as historical value. I hope that um the the state archives were uh at least

consulted prior to any sort of arbitrary determination of what uh is considered historically of historical value. But I just caution that gray area. There are ramifications outlined in North Carolina general statutes. So those are just a couple of my observations. Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman, as well. Thanks, Kip. Is there anybody else that would like to speak? Okay, then we are going to move on to the attorney's report. Uh, nothing to report, Madame Mayor. Thank you.

Okay. And um then for the mayor's report, I just want to thank everybody for coming out today and hopefully viewing online. Um, the debates did come up and I did just want to make a a statement about the the debates. Certainly, I hope there's there's two coming up. I hope that people are able to attend at least one of them. Um, I do understand that Alderman Alchevky is moderating tomorrow night's debate as is facilitating

facilitating. Okay. Facilitating as an individual citizen. She is not facilitating as a town representative. She is not endorsing any candidate and neither is the town of North Topsel Beach through this process. So I just wanted to go on record make sure that that was clear. Basically the town is offering the room and um the streaming services or the taping services whatever we're doing with that. So that is all I had. Conniey's already gone. Um start over. Yep. Go ask. Yep. I'll start with No, I'm going ask. We're not gonna argue about it. Everybody is gonna get a chance to speak. Okay. So, Alderman Benson,

you want to go first? No. Connie threw me off today.

Well, um I think we had a good meeting today. We had a lot of good information from Chris and from Chairman Foster. Um, I don't know how many people are watching online, but anyway, Chairman Foster, I'm sorry you're going to have to hear what I have to say because it's not very not very good, but um, we just mentioned the debate that's scheduled for tomorrow night. I received a a letter and email about the proposed second candidate debate and wrote the following reply. I think you your organizers might want to consider uh discussing the need for a second debate for the following reasons. Your debate would be a duplication of the chambers meet the candidates night five days later. Since the chamber event will be live stream, why repeat what the candidate said 5 days earlier? No doubt there would be duplication of questions between the two events. The candidates are not going to change a position in 5 days. There's 933 registered voters in North Topppsel Beach and they're just going to question why you're having two debates five days apart because the chamber is not really a debate. It's to meet the candidate. But you are proposing a debate. In my mind, a chamber sponsored event takes presidents as it was formally announced several weeks ago. And the chamber is a nonprofit non-government organization promoting business and tourism on tops island environments. they are hosting the same type of event in the other two island towns. So, in the event that you do decide to go forward, which you have, uh I had several suggestions for your debate. You divided debate into two one-hour segments, but there's only two mayor candidates and there were four now five uh candidates for aldermans. You mentioned during the questions say that the candidates will have two minutes for rebuttal like we're going to disagree on

on solutions, but I'm sure I'm going to agree with Rick on many of the issues. Uh so I really don't see why we're we're we're having, you know, a debate and you indicated how the presubmitted questions will be submitted uh before the debate. didn't indicate how they're going to be submitted only that a moderator that was the word that was used in the uh letter to me will select the questions uh as soon as possible I ask you to send me the name of the moderator and the email so that we could have my neighbors and my supporters submit questions to the moderator u but also keep in mind that the town attorney explicitly said at least one board meeting at the last board ing topic was discussed that the moderator should not be a town elected official due to potential conflict and interests and bias and the mayor just said that the elected official is going to be serving as a private citizen. Okay. So, since you didn't uh none of these debate procedures were addressed in your follow-up email to me, I declined to debate with you tomorrow night. If you in the audience want to hear a side byside answer of our of the questions that the community has, then please show up next Tuesday night, October 7th, here in the town hall. That concludes my report.

Thank you, sir. [Music]

As all of you know, we are in an election season. So, for the town of North Topsel Beach, there will be a vote for alderman. Citizens will be allowed to vote for three alderman off the ballot. Um, the mayor is up for election and you will be voting for one person. Again, people can um do early voting and you can do that at the Enslow County Board of Elections, which is um at 246 Georgetown Road in Jacksonville. They are also opening up the board of elections early um so from like 10:16, 10:17, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. for voting. I won't read the whole schedule, but it is out on their website. Tomorrow, we have the opportunity to have a debate with our candidates for mayor and board of alderman here at town hall from 6 to 8:00 p.m. I will be facilitating this debate as a private citizen with a background in mediation and an individual capacity with Ricky's help on the tech components to stream this to our YouTube channel live. the debate on Thursday, October 2nd at 6 PM and the Greater Topppsel Area Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Meet the Candidates event on October 7th at 6:30 p.m. are not townsponsored events, nor did they reflect any endorsement by the town of any candidate. The purpose of these events is to bring focus to the election and to encourage voters to meet the candidates and become familiar with the issues before our town. Both the debate and the meet the candidates event will be livereamed and

then made available on the town's YouTube channel. The format for tomorrow's event will be reviewing the rules of the debate, having candidates introduce themselves, and their background and qualifications. Then the candidates will each have time to discuss two issues the town faces, how they see an approach to resolve. After that, we'll go to citizen submitted questions, live questions from people in the audience, and then closing remarks from each candidate. We'll have about an hour for the mayor um debate and then we'll take a short break and have about another hour for the board of alderman. Folks, you may submit questions prior to the debate to ntbategmail.com or submit questions at the debate itself. The right to vote, the right for citizens to be heard, the election process itself is fundamental to our form of government. I look forward to facilitating and hope to see many of you here tomorrow night and on October 7th. Let us not take our freedoms for granted. Thank you to all of you who attend our meetings on a consistent basis. Please take your permanent res please tell your permanent resident neighbors also that our election is on November 4th. Thank you. That's my report. Mayor.

Okay. Alderman Grant. So I I get to go I thought we were going to reverse the order from last time. I think Tom's up. No. Tom had asked previously if he before I spoke to you if he could go. So before the meeting when you and I spoke you spoke to you before then? Yes he did.

Really? I was here first. That's fine. Um, actually, since we were talked about not I've been accused of not politicking in the past, I was going to report on what happened with On WASA. When Frankie came in and discussed it last week, they actually went back and they actually found another meter. So, good news is we don't have 60% loss. We only have 25% loss, but it's still a loss. Um, they've also gotten in the town. Let me look at the numbers here. Um I believe they've already found almost 100 leaks that they have been repairing during that time. So very pleased with that. Um attending the county meetings have been good. I think their planning process is very good. Um I guess since since Mike brought up the debates, I will be there tomorrow night. I will quote him from a great comment that he made in August. I'll debate anytime, anywhere. I will be there tomorrow night. Um, I've got HOAs scheduled um going forward if you need anything from me. Um, like I said, and keep in mind and again the the countings in the past have been more like a coffee clatch, okay? They're not they're not a debate. It's an introduction. That's what they call it. Um, I think we need a debate because we have so many issues before this town and Chris just went through a project that's almost $50 million. Those are things we need to get out in front of you and be transparent about. I will see you tomorrow night.

Thanks, Mayor. First of all, Tim, appreciate you being here. Thanks for everybody showing up. Uh, I got a couple of announcements real quick and then uh and and some other stuff. First of all, Saturday is the Real Housewives Topsel Island bike ride for breast cancer awareness. It's a good It's a good event. It's a lot of fun, even if you do do it on an ebike. Second thing is October the 23rd marks uh the anniversary of the Bayroot bombing and there's always a ceremony over at the memorial gardens in Jacksonville which I'll be attending at 10:30 that morning. Um we lost 241 service members that day. Most of them were Marines from Campune. I want to update everyone on Cobra. Uh had a meeting in Washington last Thursday, September 25th. Uh this thing flew up really quickly. been working with our federal lobbyists to try to get it put together. I got a call the previous Thursday, September the 18th, and said, "Hey, can you be up here the 25th, because we've got meetings scheduled for you?" Said, "Okay." Yep. I was actually still out on the road, and I was doing all the stuff I needed to do on my tablet to try to get ready. Uh, but I met with uh everybody we always meet with Ray Celeste out of Congressman Murphy's office, uh, reps from Senators uh, Bud and Tillis's offices uh, and the House Natural Resources Committee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries, and I'll go through that those real quick. Ray Celeste, it was uh, that the next step for is for the bill to be marked up by the subcommittee and basically said, you know, we're keeping an eye on it for you and if you need anything, let us know, but you really need to talk to subcommittee. So, we did uh met with uh the reps from Senators B and Tillis's office. They're looking now to try to they're working on trying to get a hearing scheduled similar to what we had on the House side for the Senate bill. Natural Resources Committee on Wildlife and Fisheries met with a new staff director, Rich O'Connell, who replaced Anique Miller, uh the staff director

that we've been working with so closely up until now. She was one that came down here a couple years ago on vacation. Alice and I took her out, showed her around. Discussion revolved around trying to get more bipartisan support from the subcommittee members for the bill. This is key. The last bill was approved and moved forward out of subcommittee and was scheduled to go to the House floor, but it was moved out of the subcommittee along party lines. That's the killer. You don't have you don't have bipartisan support. You can pretty well guess that it's not going to go any further. They're right now refining the bill's language, working with uh uh Murphy's office, his folks to try to get it palatable for everything, everybody. Okay. Another thing that they told uh the two folks from uh water natural resources, water, wildlife and fisheries mentioned was we really another key point was that we need support from the fish and wildlife service for any changes we want to make. Which brings us to our final meeting of the day. I had 30 minutes with Brian Nesvik. He is the newly appointed director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service and his chief of staff. There were just five of us in the room and it was like this. Y

okay. It was it was chief chief, the director, two of from the Ferguson group and me. He'd never heard about any of it. He's brand new. We went through the entire argument on the issue. How we were improperly placed due to poor analysis using aerial photos that didn't disclose the full complement of infrastructure that was in place prior to Cobra's enactment in ' 82. how the infrastructure doesn't have to be buildings as Congress has previously ruled that roads, power lines, water, and sewer lines constitute infrastructure. I explained that we needed the support of the Fish and Wildlife Service to get the bill passed. He asked a lot of good questions and one of which I thought was most interesting was if we took these areas out of Cobra tomorrow. What aside from NI NFIP and federal mortgage programs eligibility, what would change? And I looked at him, I said, "Pretty much nothing when you get down to it." Because it's not like we're going to take a bunch of land that's undeveloped and start building condos and houses because we're right now 90 to 95% built out.

I also stated that one of the reasons we're already built out is because there was the full complement of infrastructure in place prior to Cobra being enacted. It all goes back around to that. Okay. I explained how we have a 65- ft concrete bridge leading out to the island to the town from the mainland and goes right by practically our town hall that was built back in 1968 which supports again the premise that we were

developable. Okay. And then now we're build out. So in the end the director stated that he and his agency would conduct a full re review of our situation. He stated they would take on a fresh look at all of it and look at the facts. Interestingly enough, he's retired Army National Guard, Brigider General. His chief of staff's also a retired Army colonel. I believe he's a colonel. I was able to tell Chief of Staff how Army's really an acronym. Stands for aren't ready for Marines yet. And uh he countered with the fact that he was born at Camp Pendleton Naval Hospital in Camp Pendleton, California Marine Base and grew up in a Marine family. So we had a little bit of camaraderie there, a little bit of connection. Monday, I got an email from him from the chief following up on her visit which states, "Mr. Leonard, it was pleasure meeting you last week, sending you this note." So, you have a direct line to our director's office. Our internal team has been tasked to look in the topics, look into the topics we covered during the discussion. I hope you and yours had a great weekend and I think it was uh very respectfully David McDonald, chief of staff. So my overall impression is that director and the staff are sincere and given the vibes of the current administration, we'll conduct a thorough look to determine whether or not they can assist us and to what extent with our efforts to get out of our our heirs out of Cobra. So I was very encouraged by the visit. Um board would have known about it if I'd known about it with any more of a mayor knew, town staff knew because they helped me get uh get get spun up to get there. But it was a very good visit. Um I think I think we're really on the right path with fish and wildlife because they're the key. Congress is going to do what the fish and wildlife doesn't want them to do. Okay. So that ends that and talk about the debate. I think it's both highly unusual and irregular and irregular to have a forum orchestrated or sponsored

by candidates who are running for office. It's even more unorthod orthodox to me for a sitting alderman to serve as a facilitator for an event. Um, I've participated and I've got a lot to say here that I'm going to cut short. I've participated in local government in our town for many, many years, either as a voter, regular meeting attendee, committee member, or on the board as an alderman. I've never seen a debate, forum, or whatever you name you want to assign to it sponsored by candidates or facilitated by a sitting elected official from our town. Never. These events have always been sponsored and moderated by external organizations that are third parties. It's the only way they can truly remain fair, impartial, and unbiased. That is a precedence for how things have been done in the past and how I believe they should continue to remain. And while this debate may be legal, it certainly raises ethical, moral, and procedural questions. I'm not comfortable with it. Accordingly, I will not be participating or otherwise associated with the event tomorrow night, but I will see everybody on October the 7th in the candidate forum sponsored by the Topsel Chamber, which will be held at 6:30 p.m. That concludes my report, and I'm sorry you had to hear that.

Okay. All right. Are we ready to have a motion to go into close session to consult with our attorney regarding NC general statute 143-318.11a3 consult with an attorney and personnel um about the town maintenance and repair of the Grant Drive public pier and observatory style gazebo. I'll make a motion to do what you just said. Chip, did do you need to add anything to that or was that okay? All right. So, we have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor? I. Thanks everyone for coming.

regroup. And I'm going to ask for a motion to come out of close session. I'll make a motion to come out of close session. Got a second. All in favor? I Okay. Oh, shoot. So, I believe what we're going to talk about today is the request for repair and maintenance of the Grant Drive public pier and observatory gazebo. Miss Hill.

Okay. I'm going to spare you from reading from my notes and tell you give you the overview uh off the top of my head. And uh so back when the developer uh was planning submitting his plans to the town for Dolphin Shores, there was a requirement to provide uh access both to the oceanside and to the sound side uh which were dedicated included in those recorded plats. Um there was some confusion like there's no confusion on the ocean side but there was some confusion on the sound side where you have the pier the gazebo. There were originally plans to have a 10 boat slip 10 unit boat slip at the very end that they considered private and an amenity for the new property owners. So they had proposed that the HOA take over or do the maintenance and repairs since there was a private component to that. Uh when they submitted their camera permit, there was about a foot of water out there. I guess everything looks good on paper. And so, division of coastal management um received a lot of input from some other agencies and was unable to approve the boat slope. And so, it was just the uh pier in the gazebo that was approved by KMA in um I think it was CMA permit 59.99 and uh those were subsequently constructed. So that's kind of what has brought us where we're at today is the confusion over

ownership. The attachments that are included in the report contain um the recorded plats, the restrictive covenants um and board meeting dialogue leading up to their motion. Uh so hopefully it's clear that it is a dedicated uh public beach access dedicated public gazebo and so as such uh I would recommend and request that the board of uh I read it. I give you I give you all that. Yeah. Sorry. Um, so my recom my recommendation would be uh that the town accept responsibility for the repair and maintenance of the public pier and gazebo on Grant Drive at Dolphin Shores. I also uh want to go back and include in the response from the president of the HOA uh uh there was an email and I'll include that as attachment 12 uh in the staff report uh where they have um uh thank you for taking the time to explain Dolphin Shores public private access location at Grant Grant Street, including the history of ownership since it since its inception. Uh he presented the proposal to Delphin Shores HOA board and they they have voted to allow the town of North Topsel Beach to proceed with the repairs and maintenance of the walkway and gazebo at their expense as requested. So there's just to let you know that there's not a conflict between the Dolphin Shores HOA and my recommendation to you today.

Okay. So, we have a motion that I'm gonna see if Mayor Prom would read. Make a motion that the town of the town accept responsibility for the repair and maintenance of the public pier and gazebo on Grant Drive at Dolphin Shores. That's the motion. Second, discussion. Yes. Any discussion?

Question. So, we're taking over the just looking at the email um from Mr. Airhart and uh said thank you for taking the time blah blah blah. He says I presented your proposal with Dolphin Shores Hoa board. We vote to allow that Northtown and North Thompson Beach to proceed with repairs and maintenance and walkway and gazebo of the walkway and gazebo at their expenses requested. Is there an understanding that we're going to repair it, replace it for public use? Do we have somewhere someplace where it's public use? It's it's on all the attachments that I've sent that have been recorded and it was just wanted for the record.

When I initially spoke to him, when I initially spoke to him, he said that there had been he relayed that there had been some uh disgruntlement, disappointment, dissatisfaction with someone giving away the the beach access and the uh gazebo in the pier. And I explained to him that no one ever gave away anything that it was the developer in accordance with the ordinance for a public dedication. Very good. And that's and and I believe that that's whenever he says that he spoke to the board and relayed that information and they came back and said, "Good, Deb. Thank you. That answered my question.

And I would defer to council, but I believe the easement does that for us anyway. Correct, Chip? That we have we've got the legal right. This is this is a public easement for us to use regardless. Correct. Okay. So the issue is I think the issue you raised is is resolved through the language of the easement. Correct. Yes. Okay. Perfect. And Deb and speaking on this this is for the existing easement structure whatever this you know once the town takes it over. Nothing new. Yeah. There's nothing new. We're going to maintain what's there is my understanding. And you're Yes, alderman because that they can't go on to our easement and start adding.

You're saying from Dolphin Shores, not the town. Correct. I just want to make sure they understand this is now our responsibility to maintain and go forward, but they are not going to be able to go and add on to that and then add on to our maintenance costs. Correct. But just real quick before we do that though, as I understand it though, if if we want to make improvements to this,

we can make we can make improvements, it's them that can't make it. So that's right. If the if the town manager comes back and says, "Hey, you know, it it's kind of remind me of of this building. We came back and the insurance paid to rebuild the same thing." If in the view of the manager and her team that there's a different different layout that we might want, we're free to do that on our own. Correct. Yes. Within the within the easement. Correct. And and as as permitted and as permitted by Division of Coastal Management. So

my whole point was nothing keeps us from enhancing it or doing something. I think her comment was a good one, which is we don't want them enhancing it and that we're responsible for it, but that doesn't stick with us. It always sticks with them. And the only comment that the only the only comment that I would like to say is that it was always public that the easement, the pier, the gazebo and dedicated and uh it's in the shape that it's in because nobody was maintaining it. And so, so you know, if we if we don't take it over and adopt it, then the community loses. And there's a lot of people in the neighborhood that that do use that. They do.

So So we're formalizing what we already knew. Okay. All right. So we have a motion. We have a second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion to adjurnn. Second. All in favor? I