Town Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I call this meeting of the Oak Ridge Town Council to order. To my understanding, we do not have anyone for the invocation, so if you can, stand, and we will just give a moment of silence. If you will, please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. We have the agenda in front of us. Do we have a motion to approve the agenda? So moved.

Second.

Second. All in favor? Aye. We have several sets of minutes to approve tonight. The July 9th regular meeting, the July 21st special called meeting, the June 30th closed session, and the July 9th closed session. I think we can... make a motion to approve all of these at once. Would anybody so move?

I'll make a motion that we approve items A, B, C, and D. Second.

Okay. A motion's been made to approve all the minutes that I read out. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Okay. resolutions and proclamations and announcements. Mr. Bruce, do we have any of those tonight? Okay.

I would just like to welcome a scout from Troop 600 here in Oak Ridge who's here for his Citizenship in the Community badge. Thanks for being here.

Thank you. All right. Our next agenda item is the report from Guilford County Sheriff's Office. Do we? Okay. We have someone to join us. Come forward and state your name. And we thank you for being here, sir.

First off, good evening. My name is Matt Stahls. I'm the new assistant division commander up here in District 1. Thank you for letting me come in and speak to you for a few minutes and the citizens at home that are watching. So for the month of July, the Guilford County Sheriff's Office responded to 180 calls for service within the Oak Ridge town limits. Thirteen of those calls for service responded or reports for crime. The numbers for July, there was one burglary report, one trespassing report, one robbery report, an arson report, four other offense reports, two fraud reports, a larceny report, and then two narcotic violations. The incident to note this month was we had a robbery on Ashton Park Drive. So this took place with a prearranged sale of clothing. A conflict occurred between the two parties involved in the sale of the clothing, a gun was pulled, and the items that were for sale were stolen. Due to the investigation of our detectives, both individuals were identified, located, and charged with that crime. Let's see. want to end off with we are still having a increase in elderly victims for financial crimes and scams we're asking everyone to check on and speak to the elderly community friends and family members who are more impressionable and over trusting We'd like to express the dangers of unsolicited phone calls, text messages, anything where somebody's calling and asking for money. Let them know that there has been an increase in scams in this and if they are contacted, either contact the Sheriff's Office or other family members to see if it is a legitimate call or request for money. And that is all I have. Thank you.

Any questions from council? None? Thank you, sir. Thank you. All right. At this time, we will ask the fire department for their report. There we go. Come on up. And thank you for your service.

Good evening. I'm firefighter Mark Laliberte. We had a total of 89 calls last month, 45 were all other responses, including smoke scares, lockouts, animal rescues, etc. We had eight false fire alarms responses. We had two other hazardous responses, which includes arcing wires, bomb removals, power lines down, etc., We had 32 EMS responses and then two structure fires, 246 training hours, and there are no burn bans in place. I don't have an official tip of the month, but I would like to emphasize the importance of knowing CPR. We did have a call last week where an individual went into cardiac arrest in his front yard. When we got there, the neighbor was actually performing compressions on that patient and We were able to bring him back, and we probably would not have been able to do that if it wasn't for the intervention of that neighbor. So just knowing basic skills like that is really important.

Thank you. I'll let you know that I shared that information with counsel. I think everybody was very impressed, not only with the neighbor, but your response as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Y'all have a good evening. Yes, sir.

Thank you.

We have, I think, two public hearings tonight. All of them are requested changes in zoning to the town of Oak Ridge. Mr. Bruce, do we turn this over to Sean Taylor? Thank you, Sean.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Tonight we have, even though this is two public hearings, they're pretty much housekeeping items as part of our annexation process for when properties are annexed into the town. They have to go from the county zoning that's established, that those parcels were established with the county, now to our own Town of Oak Ridge zoning classifications. And that is what this is. And luckily, with these, the first one that is up tonight for its public hearing is rezoning case RZ26-02. It's Guilford County CZ-RPD, which is Conditional Zoning Rural Preservation District. And it's going to go to the town of Oak Ridge Rural Preservation District, or RPD. The three properties are 8232 Ballard Road, 8234 Ballard Road, and 8236 Ballard Roads. The parcels are located on the north side of Ballard Road, approximately 989 feet west of the intersection of Ballard Road and Ballard Farm Road and Deep River Township. And by the time I'm done, you're going to be tired of hearing the word Ballard. So since our rural preservation district and the county's rural preservation districts are basically identical, so that's just going from one, basically you're just changing from county to town with this one.

Okay. Do we have any questions from council to Mr. Taylor?

No.

Okay, thanks. So I ask for a motion to approve or deny.

We have to have the public hearing.

Oh, sorry, public hearing, sorry. We've read, obviously we've read through this, so it seems to be pretty, so there's a public hearing. Is there anyone in the audience that wants to speak for this zoning change? come forward? Okay, there's no one representing for. Is there anyone against this zoning change? There are none. So I assume at this point we can ask for a motion to approve or deny. Close the public hearing. Sorry. Thank you, Ann. So I'll close the public hearing and then ask for a motion to approve or deny.

I move that we approve the proposed zoning amendment based on the following, that it is consistent and reasonable with the adopted land use plan of the town of Oak Ridge. The planning board has unanimously provided, has provided council with its written statement of the proposed zoning amendment, that it is consistent and reasonable with land use plan, and it was a unanimous vote in favor. And the council concurs and adopts the planning board's findings of consistency by reference.

Is there a second? Second. Any discussion by council?

This is great.

All right, good. All right, if there's no discussion from council, the motion's been made to approve. There's a second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Okay, so everyone, one question, Mr. Taylor, the documents that you gave us right before the session, they replace what was in our packages?

Yes.

Okay, thank you. Okay, we go to the second rezoning case. Back to Mr. Taylor.

Our second case is RZ26-03. This is to rezone 8233 Ballard Road, 8235 Ballard Road, 8237 Ballard Road, 8243 Ballard Road, 8245 Ballard Road, 8250 Ballard Road, 8252 Ballard Road, 8256 Ballard Road, and 8261 Ballard Road. From Guilford County Agricultural AG to the town of Oak Ridge Agricultural These parcels are located on the north and south sides of Ballard Road. And again, the agricultural district from the county and the town are identical. So this is just going from county zoning to town zoning. Okay.

Mr. Taylor, it says in one place that these are in Deep River Township, but I assume we just changed that to Oak Ridge, Town of Oak Ridge.

They are in Deep River Township. Oh, okay. Townships were created when the county was divided into different tax districts.

Okay.

And so those tax districts were Oak Ridge, Deep River Township, Bruce's Crossing, and those districts used to, that's where they used to do their own school funding from. So it's kind of just to carry over that we still have those as part of our legal descriptions as part of a historic record.

I should know that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Okay, this, as we're reminded, it's a public hearing, so I'll open that and ask if there's anyone for this rezoning to the town of Oak Ridge by these, I think, nine properties. Please come forward. There's no one that's come forward, so I'll ask if there's anyone that opposes this rezoning from Guilford County to Oak Ridge. Please come forward. And there's no one that's come forward, so I will close the public hearing portion. We have in front of us, just like we did a few minutes ago, documents that were supported by our Planning and Zoning Board. And I'll ask if there's anyone to make a motion to approve or to deny this rezoning to Oak Ridge.

Mr. Mayor, I make a motion that we approve proposed zoning amendment to be approved on the following. The zoning amendment is consistent and reasonable with the adopted land use plan of the town of Oak Ridge. Planning Board has provided the council with its written statement that the proposed zoning amendment is consistent and reasonable with the land use plan. And the council concurs and adopts the planning board's findings of consistency by reference.

Second.

There's a second. A motion's been made and seconded. Any discussion? Then I'll ask for the vote. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? None. Okay. Well, we welcome 12 new residents. into Oak Ridge on Ballard Road or adjacent to Ballard Road. So welcome to Oak Ridge. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. All right. And believe it or not, we've flipped to the opposite side of our agenda. So we're now at a time for public comments from community and organization reports. I know we have hopefully a very lengthy report from the ABC board. Just kidding. Come forward, Jim, and state your name. Thanks.

It will be lengthy as usual. I'm Jim Barbary. I live at 7903 Quiet Place, Oak Ridge. This is the report for the ABC board, and I'm reporting for the Triad Municipal ABC board. Our sales continue to be flat. They kind of wobble along flat down. Liquor competes for discretionary money. It competes with cannabis, gambling, and cans. When I say cans, when you buy a mixed drink in the grocery store, that takes away from buying the liquor at the liquor store. And by the way, that's not made from liquor. It's made from wine, or you couldn't sell it in the grocery store. And then Greensboro has closed its ABC store on Randleman Road due to some structural problems with the building. Their ABC board does not own their stores as we do. and they are, I think, as everybody knows, opening the store on Highway 68 just down the road from us, and we'll see how that affects us. That's the fourth time that's happened to this board, and generally it hasn't been near as big of an effect as we have feared, so hopefully that'll be the case here. So our quarterly distribution for the town is $56,907. So any questions? Thanks. Keep drinking.

Thank you, Jim. All right. I'll now ask if there are any comments from the public. Come forward and state your name and address, sir. Thank you.

My name's Steve Leuking. My address is 271 Chickasaw Drive, a couple miles outside of Reidsville in Rockingham County. Thank you, council, and thank you, mayor, for allowing me to speak. I'm a retired family physician. I practiced for nearly 30 years in Reidsville. I rose to chief of staff at our local hospital, Annie Penn, and at one point was head of the hospital board. I really didn't get into politics. Politics came to me. I'm the Democratic candidate for Senate District 26, which includes all of Rockingham County and pretty much all of Guilford County outside of Greensboro, High Point, and most of Summerfield. Just about everything else in Guilford County is part of District 26. A number of years ago, Working at the hospital and caring for my couple thousand patients, I saw how troublesome it was to try to take care of folks without insurance. So when we had the opportunity to expand Medicaid, I was very happy about that and then quickly disappointed when our state decided to not expand Medicaid for 12 long years. During those years, we saw rural hospitals close at a rate three times higher than the states that had what I feel was a good sense to expand from the start. We saw a lot of people die prematurely and unnecessarily. And some of them were my patients. And I was recognized as one of the top three doctors in the state fighting those 12 years to get Medicaid expanded. And I'm happy to say we've now done that. There's 600,000 more folks in our state now that have insurance. In the House of American Medicine, if you don't have insurance, you're on the outside and looking in. And sometimes when you need help the most, you remain on the outside. My three main priorities as a candidate for Senate District 26 are public education, health care access, and tax fairness. There are many other priorities, but those are the top three. I think it's nothing short of shameful that our state is now dead last in the nation as far as public education funding per student. It's a tragedy in the making. I've spoken to so many families that are struggling with what they feel is insufficient education in settings where the teachers are doing their absolute best and the administrators and the communities. And I'm going to fight hard to bring our public education funding up to a reasonable level. I think a good goal is to match our economic output per capita, which is 30th in the nation. If we were to do that, Our teachers would get a substantial raise, all of our teachers, not just the select that received one in this budget. Our school kids would have so many opportunities, and I think we could hold our heads high. And I'm running out of time. Tax fairness is a big one. I think corporations should do their fair share. Small businesses are having to pay from the get-go. I think corporations should step up and help fund public education. I also feel that... The voucher system has gone far beyond opportunity into the area of a very lucrative situation for the wealthy and for private academies. And I just think we need to shift that back to our public schools. And thank you for your patience. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Are there any other comments from the public?

Counsel, I apologize. I forgot to turn on my timer.

You could have kept going. Okay, thank you. No other people to make comments from the public, so we'll close that session and go to the town manager's report. Mr. Bruce.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mayor and Council have two items tonight. The first is to consider approval of reappointing Francis Disney to the Water Advisory Committee. Is there a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve.

Second.

Any discussion?

He's done a great job on the Water Advisory Committee. It would be great to keep him.

Well, and he has a long level of expertise of how things go in our town, so yeah, I agree. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All in favor to approve Francis Disney's continuation on the Water Advisory Committee, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, the ayes have it.

Mr. Bruce, your second item. The second item is consideration to declare the town concession trailer a surplus. There's been significant discussion about this both amongst council members and with the Parks and Recreation Board. Parks and Recreation Advisory Board has been monitoring the use of the concession trailer and the usage has dropped dramatically since we've invited food trucks to attend events such as Music in the Park. At their meeting on July the 23rd, the Parks and Rec Board unanimously recommended to Council that we sell the concession trailer. First step in that process is for Council to declare it a surplus. We do have an ordinance that authorizes the sale or disposition of surplus personal property that's valued at under $30,000 staff can choose the method in which to dispose of that property getting fair market value for the asset and so the request is to declare the town concession trailer a surplus so that we can sell it there's been a recommendation

I make a motion to approve to declare the town concession trailer a surplus.

Second. Any discussion?

Well, I'm probably outnumbered here, but I feel like the town staff and the Parks and Rec board has made a valiant effort to try to find volunteers to staff it at events like Music in the Park. But I think the one thing that we haven't done is looked to outside groups and said, hey, do you churches, nonprofits, would you like to use this event as a fundraising tool, basically per probably a rental schedule like our other facilities? at our town park. I think this is a valuable asset that I hate to see go without making a continued effort to see if we can make it useful to our town. So I would prefer that we postpone this decision and ask Parks and Rec or even the Special Events Committee to look into this further.

Any other discussion? Okay, we do have a motion and a second to proceed with this. I ask all in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed?

Nay.

Okay, forward to one. Thank you. We have additional new business. Mr. Bruce, do you want to lead us through that?

We have an information item for council, and that's a presentation of the the Town Park and Heritage Farm Park Field and Facility Usage Report. At Council's request, Town staff has been collecting data on our facility usage and also our operations and maintenance costs. This is something that we intend to do annually so that we can establish trends and so that both the citizens and town council understand how we're collecting revenue and how that relates to the operation and maintenance costs for those facilities. So I'm just going to briefly walk through each of those reports. Brock Dunnigan, our park superintendent, is here as well. He took the lead on putting these numbers together and is available if there are any technical questions. So I'll start with the... operational expenses, which is the first item in your packets. For athletic fields, we have two baseball slash softball fields and four multipurpose fields, two of them which have only had a limited amount of use at Heritage Farm Park as we've completed the construction. But in the past 12 months, with materials and staff costs, operational and maintenance costs for those fields totals roughly $74,000. I will note that a third of that was for a major effort to top dress the infields and laser grade our baseball and softball fields. That's not something we do every year. So we would expect next year that number to go down. I do want to note that we have a line on here for the ORYA rebate as an expense. I want to point out that the number, the total rebate earned of $43,000 is labeled as rebate earned because some of that was a credit that was applied to usage. The actual payment to ORYA and rebate was roughly $33,000. The other $10,000 is a credit that was applied to their usage. We've itemized light usage both at the Town Park and Heritage Farm Park. The difficulty here is that we have one electric meter at Heritage Farm Park. So everything, the lights at the fields, the parking lot, the well pump, irrigation, all of those things are billed as one bill. So it's a little more difficult to estimate what the costs are for the lighted athletic fields. But at the Town Park, we billed out where we were billed $12,000 for electricity for those lights. We recouped 100% of that cost through the rental of those fields. The farmhouse community center, you'll see between utilities and staff costs was about $11,000 in the last 12 months. And I'll remind everyone that these are simply operations and maintenance. So this is not capital costs. This is not equipment. This is primarily utilities, staff cleaning, materials like janitorial supplies, and so forth.

And this is for the full 12 months? That's correct. But it kind of had a slow start as we got ready to...

Right. As we enter into a 12-month period in which the farmhouse is fully opened, I would expect that the operations cost and the revenue will both increase in the next year. Shelters is really just staff cost that's been estimated at $1,700 in the last 12 months. Janitorial expenses cover all facilities. They're not earmarked for specific facilities, but we have $5,000 of expense in janitorial supplies. The category other is a catch-all. That's the rest of the park. So all of the operations expenses for mowing the fields and keeping up the 140 acres that are not part of the athletic fields, which was not really part of our effort here, but we wanted to make sure that when you saw our total operations and maintenance that those numbers added up. I will note that our cost recovery is excellent. We recover 72% of our operations and maintenance through user fees. The second page is a detailed sheet on our revenue. The athletic fields, we've broken down to our primary user, which is the Oak Ridge Youth Association, which generated $60,000 in revenue. Again, rebated, $43,000 of that was rebated. So the net to the town is 17, which coincidentally is the same amount as the total income for non-ORY use at the athletic fields, roughly $18,000. Okay. The farmhouse community center brought in $15,000 in the last 12 months. That was 74 rentals and approximately 350 hours. And as the mayor pointed out, it was an unusual year simply because it took some time to fully open the farmhouse. And then once it was fully open, it took some time before we aggressively marketed it. Our open house was not until the spring, and at that point we began a campaign to market that. We do have a breakdown based on the first half of the year versus the second, and there were significantly more of the rental hours in the second half of the year. The shelters brought in $11,000 in rentals. The amphitheater, almost $2,000. And then we have several other smaller revenue sources. Green space permits include anyone who's a for-profit enterprise that's using the park, photography, dog training. The craft show, for instance, all pay a green space permit for the privilege of using the park for business purposes. Special events is not part of the field revenue, but we've included that. It's mostly sponsorships for Music in the Park to illustrate how we get to our total revenue of $156,000. So again, the bottom line that I think we wanted to emphasize is that That cost recovery of 72%, we feel really good about that. I think it shows that our fees are appropriate, our costs are appropriately kept at a reasonable level, and it's a great benchmark for us to continue to gather data as we continue to do this annually, and we'll be able to compare year to year.

And I'm going to add that the... is during the last two years, we've done market assessments from around us. So we know we are consistent with the markets that are provided by other towns in the area. So thank you. Any questions to Mr. Bruce or Mr. Dunnigan?

I just have a question. Is there a plan to have an additional meter for Heritage Farm Park at some point?

No. I mean, I think the reason why the town park has so many meters is because things were added over time. Heritage Farm Park phase one was one construction project, and it was just more cost efficient to do it that way. It would be an expense to break it out into additional meters. Again, I think that now that we have a number, we know how much we pay for utilities at Heritage Farm Park, we can compare apples to apples at that location in years to come. But as we do additional phases at Heritage Farm Park, we'll have additional accounts.

Also looking to, I guess starting now in this season, We have the rentals of the fields that were not really rented last year, just too much. And those should add a significant change there, and that might indicate whether we would want to split one area from another. But let's grow with that before we do that.

I would note that our light costs, what we bill to renters, is the same at Heritage Farm Park as it is at the town park. I think it's reasonable to extrapolate the same rate and the same return from the town park to Heritage Farm Park.

So on the lighting, so I see the 12 grand for Oak Ridge Town Park and almost 8 grand for Heritage Farm Park, but we weren't up and running for the full year. Are we expecting Heritage Farm Park to have basically the same lighting costs as the town park? If you were to... I mean, Brock, what do you think?

Yeah, we've got the same contract with Musco. It's the same light setup. Same number of lights? Exactly, yeah. I mean, so I don't anticipate that being any different than what we've got at the town park.

Okay. And I haven't done a count or anything, but I just kind of figured that with the parking over here that... There were more lights over here than over there. I was expecting to see some difference, but you're expecting about the same? Correct, yes. Okay.

But these lighting numbers at Oak Ridge Town Park, hang on, where'd that go, are only for the athletic fields.

There's a, sorry, do a quick clarification for Mike. The parking lot lights are separate because they are through Duke Power. Thank you. And for the athletic fields. That's right. Thank you. Okay.

But these, the numbers here are just for the lights at the athletic fields, right? At Oak Ridge Town Park.

Yes, ma'am. What you see billed, that was, because I have a separate must-go meter at Town Park because like the town manager said, that was phased out. So everything over there basically is on its own meter. So I'm able to actually extrapolate that from our utility costs because I have a Duke Power bill strictly for the town park fields.

I don't see what the big deal is. There's just a pump over there in the house, right, by the bathrooms? Yes. The well pump, that's what I said, the well pump in the bathroom.

Heritage Farm Park?

Yeah.

Yeah, Heritage Farm Park. So you've got the parking lot lights, you've got the field lights. I thought that was Duke Power, the parking lot lights. They are, but they're still hooked up to the meter that's on the side of the maintenance building. So you've got the parking lot lights. You've got the ball field lights. You've got the bathroom building. You've got the maintenance building. You've got Veterans Honor Green. You've got the well pump. So every time the irrigation runs, that well pump's, you know, activated. So you've got five or six different amenities that are all to that Heritage Farm Park utility bill. I don't see what the big deal is, personally.

I mean, would that spend $15,000 or $20,000 on putting them? Separating it out. Separating it out. It's not worth that.

Right. And we'll be able to see changes as we move forward when we have a full year of field use over there.

Yes, ma'am.

I want to thank you for all the work you and I know Ashley also and with Bill's oversight put into this. I think it's really helpful both to us and to the public to sort of see, to have this breakdown that I know is kind of hairy, because there are a lot of things people like me say, well, does this include that? What does it include? What does it not include? But I think you guys made great decisions about that. I also, I asked you for the historic data, and I thought what I found so impressive is that we have $156,000 of revenue this year. And last year, it was about half of that. So I know, so I asked you, what accounts for the big jump? And part of it was that last year we increased the athletic field fees. So that accounts for a lot of it. But, you know, the farmhouse, the new shelter over at Heritage Farm Park, which seems to be the most popular shelter now, which is amazing. The sponsorships and other park revenue, like the revenue from the rental house and high sales from Kona Ice, all contribute to that increase. And clearly going forward, we're going to have increases both in the field rental and in the farmhouse rentals. And the one thing I would suggest is that If we were going to tweak this report at all, I would make it clear, I would reverse what you guys did. It is really important to note that 43,000 were earned in the Oak Ridge Youth Association rebate. But as an actual expense, we paid out the $33,108. I would also include that in the total expenses at the bottom. And if you do that, the cost recovery goes down a little bit, but it's still great. It's 66%. I think because that is an expense of the town, that it should be fully... I know you're trying to make the numbers match up. But I think since that's an expense, I would urge this council and staff to say, okay, we'll reflect that. You can reflect it both ways if you want to, but I would clarify that. And I think what the manager clarified about the net revenue is also an important component Right, the net revenue. The net revenue from ORYA, you know, we see the 60,000, but we've also got to think of what the net is on that, which takes it down to 16.6,000, as the manager pointed out. And also, I asked for historical data on the farmhouse, and it is true that 15% of the rentals were in the time before it was officially open and advertised, and 85% were since the beginning of the year, basically since the spring. So, I think that's important. And I also thought it was interesting, I always thought that the fields were very labor intensive, but indeed, you've estimated it at just about 10% of the available staff time, which is not huge considering what great fields they are. So, I thought that was interesting. I had a question for you. So the other expenses that you list under the operations, what does that include?

It's just an umbrella of a lot of things. So it's basically for travel. It's training and conferences. It's dues. It's communications. It's contracted services, equipment rental. It's the other utilities that weren't captured in the fields. You've got vehicle expenses, equipment maintenance, small tools, shop supplies, program expenses, Redmond House rental maintenance. So, I mean, it's just kind of a catch-all for the other acreage that is not captured in the athletic fields.

Thank you. And then the other thing I'd like to clarify is that if you look at our budget, the full amount of what we spend on our parks is more like $700,000. And I know that includes a lot of extra stuff. And I did some research on the cost recovery models. And 66%, as I call it, if you include the ORYA, is still really high. And as I looked at all of this, it seemed to me that as a small town without large programs, like Basically, ORYA is our outsourced sports programming, right? And we don't have a swimming pool with swimming lessons and all sorts of adult programming. So, in those cases, often what it looks like people do is they take the full figure, the $700,000, and use that as the way to calculate the cost recovery. So, I thought an interesting point was that that brings us down to 22%. which is below the national average, but given that we don't do a lot of programming, you know, we don't have programming staff, I still think that looks really good. Anyway, thank you.

Yes, ma'am. I'm working on this thing. We'll be down to nothing.

On the other expenses, are any of those things that you mentioned more than $5,000 each or $10,000 each? Are those in the other expense category?

In regards of what? Well, you mentioned a dozen different... Utilities is basically kind of one of our bigger expenses. I'm projecting $58,000 this year of expenses just in utilities, which is probably the biggest ticket item. But other than that, field maintenance and just general grounds care is your big ticket items. Yeah.

Okay, I would just encourage you to look in that deal for anything that really jumps out. Not for now, but for the future to consider whether you might actually have a few more expenses that are $5,000 or $10,000 of the $106,000. That's the first thing. The other thing is, this is great because... I know for Mr. Greeson and I got involved with parks. We didn't really have this consistent information being reported. So I look forward to the 26, 27 years being reported. But I also would suggest that when you report those, you start trending those so we know whether we're going up or down so we can address those as a council.

Any other questions? Yeah, I think this is an excellent summary. I agree with Ann that the Oak Ridge Youth Association is an outstanding partner in the town and handles the youth sports for us for over 30 years. And they do it at a fraction of what it would cost if the town actually ran their own program. So it's that's terrific it's also important that we keep the citizens informed about the costs and the revenue that go along with it so I really like this citizens need to know how their tax dollars are being spent I like this format it's easy enough for me to go through I think that any citizen could pick this up and they could could understand because you guys have made it that basic and that understandable, and I appreciate that. I would encourage us to put this on the website so that people can reference it. And if they have questions, they can reach out to us. But thank you. Great job, Brock. Thank you. Bill.

Thank you. Any other comments? Okay. This was just a presentation. We don't have to approve this or anything. Should we go to the second item B, Mr. Bruce?

This is a consideration of an adjustment to the Oak Ridge Youth Association rebate policy. As you know, as part of the budget approval in June, the council adopted an updated Parks and Recreation Facility rental fee schedule. We spent a lot of time benchmarking other jurisdictions similar to Oak Ridge in size and also nearby geographically. Mr. Hart and Mr. Greeson were part of that process, and as a result of that analysis, we increased our fees. Our baseball and softball rental fees increased for non-resident, or I'm sorry, for nonprofits from $20 to $25 an hour, and our multipurpose fields increased from $20 to $40 an hour. recognizing that that has an impact on ORYA and the invoicing that they'll be receiving in the upcoming year. Staff projected what we expected were impacts to ORYA based on the new fee schedule, and you'll see that analysis in your packets. We are projecting that the costs for the baseball and softball programs will increase by 20%. Therefore, we are proposing to increase the rebate per Oak Ridge resident by 20% from $70 to $84. The soccer, football, and lacrosse programs, we are projecting that those costs will increase by 88% for ORYA. Therefore, we are proposing an 88% increase in the rebate per Oak Ridge resident from $70 to $130. You can see on the second page that we are projecting to invoice ORYA $88,444 in this upcoming fiscal year. And with these new figures, we would project to return a rebate of $67,246, which is a net to the youth association of about $21,000. So we've tried to keep that number at about 75% of their costs are covered through the Oak Ridge through the town's rebate program.

And clarifying discussion we had today, this was based on the Oak Ridge residents playing are the same. So if it goes up, it'll be a little more. If it goes down, it'll be a little less. That's correct.

OK. What is the percentage of residents What is the resident percentage of players that ORYA had over the past year?

I think we're still at about 40, 40%. Just under 40. Yeah.

So just under 40. So that means that 60% are non-residents.

That's right. Correct. And that trend was going down, but it leveled off between the last two years, roughly speaking. Okay. Any questions for Mr. Bruce? And I assume Mr. Donegan at this time.

Do we know in the past, ORYA, I think because we asked them to, offered a lower rate to residents. Do we know whether they still offer that?

I'm not sure. I don't know either.

So none of this rebate? goes directly to residents in any shape or form.

It's not a direct payment to residents.

That's correct. And we don't know what it goes to. I mean, I don't know that it matters.

It allows them to provide excellent programming. I get that. I just, we're, you know, we're funding, we're giving significant funding, 75%, to a very worthy organization, but it is all taxpayer money. I just want to make sure we remember that.

Any other questions to Mr. Bruce or Mr. Donegan?

Well, I guess I just wanted to, anytime I think about it, you know, I know it is, I guess, considered, or it can be considered an expense, but it's really just the absence of other revenue that we're allowing Oak Ridge Youth Association to use instead of pursuing other revenues. So it's not I wouldn't see that as spending taxpayer dollars. It's more so giving up what we could have had for them to use it, right? I'm not sure I get that.

It's not a loss. The revenue would likely be replaced with something else or someone else. So it's not a loss.

I mean, we just rented out the fields over at Heritage Farm Park for $73,000. So it is a loss. Sort of.

It's just something to keep in mind. That it is an expense. It is a trade-off. Maybe that's what you're getting at. It's a trade-off. Yeah. Fair.

As I understand it, the town has been willing to do this to support youth sports and to have activities for the youth in Oak Ridge. And then because the services provided by Oak Ridge Youth Association are attractive, there are a number of kids coming from outside of Oak Ridge. And I understand that's helpful to them in running the best programs they can.

Good point.

Any further questions?

I'll make a motion to approve the new fee schedule. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. I would ask all in favor of the motion to say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Okay. And to say no, but I counted in my head. It was unanimous. All right. Thank you, Mr. Bruce. Thank you. And Mr. Dunnigan. Good to see you. You truly are totally on the clock today. Always. We're going to make you stay here to the end. That's mean.

It won't be a six-hour, 12-minute meeting. You've still got Sam left.

Yeah, okay. Speaking of Sam, we're at the monthly financial update, and I understand there's some other things you want us to consider.

And, Brock, this is what is known as the most interesting time of the entire meeting.

Oh, yes.

Yes. All right. I hope everyone's doing well tonight.

Wow. back that up just a little bit. Makes me sound taller with this. Everyone should have got a copy of the financial reports. This is the first one for the new fiscal year. Everything's, you know, fairly normal. We're still holding a good cash balance of $2.5 million, liabilities of about $17,000, so just a hair under the $2.5 for our fund balances, which is Some of those monies are committed to capital projects and restricted. Behind that, you have your – the balance sheet behind that, you have your income statement broken down by fund, income, and then fund expenses, and then debt service assets. All the normal reports are there. Now, in looking at this, there are a few anomalies compared to prior years pursuant to the moratorium. On my finance officer's report activity update, the wire transfer was $194.21 for property tax collection. Motor vehicle tax is $13,691.51. Motor vehicle goes through the state. There will be—the county's anticipating a gap due to the delays in valuations and bills being issued and information being sent to DMV. They're projecting a motor vehicle tax gap in the month of August, which would have been July collected— would be sent in August. The July monies are those that were from June. So this is a fairly normal motor vehicle tax. We may see that dip this next month. Property taxes, they're down because property tax bills are not going out or did not go out until the first of August. They are predicting that things will come back. The latest information we got was yesterday. As part of the information out to the fire departments, they've done a cash flow projection because some of the departments have timed expenditures like annual loan payments, things like that, with the new year starting and things like that. So they've done a detailed cash flow and everything seems to be following along. So we're predicting a fairly lean July, a lean August, and then things should really come back in September. Other thing that's going to be there, we still think people will make the early payments. The only issue is the time period, instead of being July, August, and September to get the reduction, is only going to be August and September. Even though the bills are going out a month later, there was nothing in the legislation at Raleigh that allowed the... discount period to be extended or altered in any way. So the escrow companies will still try to get everything paid. So it's going to be a little different, but it looks really odd for me to walk in here and say, yeah, we collected $194.21. But this is being monitored. The county is monitoring that for their own purposes for cash flow and trying to get things out. For the month, it totaled $13,885. Our monthly income were sales tax and property tax, which are the two normals, interest. We had some planning and zoning fees, the ABC distribution grants, which are primarily in the capital project funds, historic preservation committee donations, some town special events and park revenues. Our investments, we're still monitoring those for any better or changes in rates that we can get. Staff, we've still got the grant compliance, the ARPA reports. CIP's kind of slowed down because we're wrapping up on quite a few things and work on the water system, which is ongoing. So all of those we're still supporting. Thompson Price Adams and Company, they are proceeding with the audit work. We got a cycle billing portion approved by the local government commission. Each month, and I kind of like this, each month as they're doing the work, they are submitting a bill out to the local government commission. And so they're moving on. We are planning on transmitting. fairly good amount of data to them tomorrow. The thing this week, there'd been some delays due to staffing issues at Forbis Mazers on getting the access for them to look at some of the older records and that is being, I filled out the paperwork on all that on Monday and Tuesday. The new audit firm completed their part on Tuesday, so they should have access within about a week. But they indicated to me in an email today that this was beyond our control, their control. It's not going to delay our audit. So they're really good people to work with. I've been very pleased with their responsiveness. The other thing that I've got, that's kind of it for the finance officer's report, but the annual document for engagement letter, a document of incredibly boring words to most people, But it's our industry requirement. Everyone should have received a copy on that. This is primarily boilerplate. Michael's looked at it. Bill's looked at it. Pursuant to our ethics rules, I have to have a signed engagement letter. It reveals what our rates are, all that we're doing, and specifics. And it's considered the gold standard of my profession that we do this every year with every client. Now, actually, if you come in and I do your taxes, we have one of these for every tax return we do of every type. So sometimes I have people wind up signing like they're writing a book. But everything in here is in compliance with the American Institute of CPAs and what we call our CSARS because we do what is called a compilation. I do need approval on that. The hourly rate is a blended rate for the entire staff to the town. That's remaining the same for this year, and I need a vote of approval on that as well as the finance officer's report. Can we do that together?

I move that we approve the finance officer's report as presented, as well as this year's updated engagement letter for Anders and Barrow.

Second. All right. Motion's been made and seconded. Any conversation, questions to Sam? If not, all in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Thank you, Sam.

Thank you, sir.

Ms. Smith, does Bill sign this or I for the town? Okay. All righty, we'll take care of that then. Thank you, Sam. Moving on, we're at committee reports. So... I know the council has had some written reports, but I'll ask, is there anyone from Historic Preservation that's going to give a report tonight? Then from the Planning and Zoning Board, anyone here from Planning and Zoning?

Well, we had the two rezonings. That's all they did.

Okay. Board of Adjustment, did they meet? Mountains to the Sea Committee.

We got that by email.

We got that by email from Ann Steele this afternoon. So no one, Conservation Easement Committee. Didn't meet. Did not meet. Special events. Bingo. We welcome...

Special Patty. You owe us a minute for last week, so you've got to do it in ten minutes.

Not true. Not true.

Patty Domchasky, 7320 Hidden View Drive. 9-11 Memorial coming up on the 25th anniversary. I attended the July Parks and Rec meeting to obtain their approval to have the permanent 9-11 Memorial at Veterans Honor Green. The two plaques will be completed by the end of the week and the concrete pillars are in progress per the vendor signsmith. Everything is moving along on schedule for the planned install of August 24th. This will be done in conjunction with Parks and Recreation. The cost for installing an electrical connection to the Veterans Auto Green was really cost prohibited. We're gonna just use solar blue lights to light the memorial for the one week before Friday, September 11th. The ceremony is going to start probably around 8.30. We're going to ring the chimes for the times. So the first bell will ring at 8.46, the time that the first tower was struck. Our speaker is going to be Lenny Brzezinski. He was employed by the Port Authority and was involved with the rescue of many of the survivors. Heritage Day, same as last time, a special events committee will participate in the muffin baking contest. Light of the night. Our last meeting that was held in July, we had a workshop afterwards. The committee made 13 additional stars to be hung on the back fence by the fields. Thanks to Amy and Diana for organizing. We're going to need to have another workshop in September or October to make 13 additional stars. We have orders for five pavers, which will be sent in in September to be installed for the Veterans Day, November 11th. Questions, comments?

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Tree board, Mr. Kahneman.

Jim Kinnaman, 8502 Hollow River Court. We're finalizing the memorial program we met today. Tree and marker will cost $350. We'll be working with staff to get it up on the website and also out to social media. We decided the Arbor Day celebration is scheduled for October 22nd. Park staff is currently evaluating tree species and local nursery availability for the eight planned trees, while final selection is set for the September meeting. The tree board will personally plant one of the eight trees as part of the Arbor Day ceremony. We ask council to make an Arbor Day proclamation at your October meeting. We also discussed updating the mulch procedure for the park. Currently, many, many of the trees are over mulched, and that provides some damage for the base of the tree. So we provided park staff with some suggested guideline changes. These guideline changes will actually probably, we think, will actually reduce their workload and also reduce the need for mulch. So that's where we are. Any questions? Thank you.

Where are the eight trees going to go?

Right now, I believe, I always get it wrong, but along the path... Oh, great. Yeah. And these will be the eight trees that will be available for someone to memorialize.

Oh, I got it.

But we're going to proactively plant them, and then people can sponsor them later.

And you're currently still working on a memorial tree and bench?

I'm sorry, as part of the memorials reprogram, there'll be a benching program. That's basically what we're doing. Now, one of the things, we had a short discussion. We did mention, me and Mayor Hartin had a brief conversation. We have other properties that maybe we might expand the program to. Potentially, we're obtaining, I believe, another parcel of land. Yeah, I always forget, that's off of... East Herald? Yeah. So maybe that's where we might expand the program. Somebody may want to put a memorial tree there or a bench. We also thought about reaching out maybe at the Union Cemetery. You might want to put a bench up there. I'm not sure tree planting up there would be appropriate, but maybe a bench might be appropriate. We also thought about approaching the trail committee to see if maybe along some of the trails they may – May may want some benches put in there, but again that would be up to the trail committee They may or may not think that's a good idea or not So that's that's where we're thinking about the program should be expanded to all park prop all town property Potentially yeah, and I'm meeting with Brock tomorrow about the Union Cemetery any cemetery 1030 yeah, so okay all right.

Thank you. Thank you. Mr.. Cameron. Thanks Parks and Rec Advisory Board is there anyone Here I don't see.

All they had was their presentation from Reventon Reeves for the Heritage Farm Park Phase 2 design.

And we were able to observe that.

And the only other thing they discussed was surplus of the trailer.

And Finance Committee? Happy to see you, but I know you didn't meet, and so the Water Advisory Committee did meet. We have a report from Mr. Spencer Sullivan that was given to us this afternoon. Bill, help me. I know we have a meeting coming up. Is it next week?

There is a meeting scheduled for Wednesday at 1.30. The agenda has not been finalized. There may not be action items needed, but we'll discuss.

Okay, thanks. All right, so that gets all the committee reports. So we're down to another session of public comments. Are there any further public comments for the council? Okay, no one's coming forward, so we'll end public comments and take it to council comments. Anyone from council want to make council questions or statements? Mr. Grayson. I think I'll pass.

Yeah, I'll just briefly say it's almost back to school time. So the first thing I think of is school traffic, like a lot of people. I just want to note that, you know, we've been in discussion as a town and just wanted to remind everyone that the construction going on is a DOT project. So we're doing our best to kind of hang in there and ask for everyone to be patient working through that going back to school.

Not to interject, but my daughter was down turning between Bojangles and Devaney, and someone was trying to force the left turn and nearly really caused a very serious accident. Fortunately, my daughter was safe. on her way away from that possible accident. It didn't occur, but it was a hairy experience that she observed, all because somebody, for some reason, thinks they should be able to turn left there. Mr. Stone, any comments from you?

Yeah, coming up September the 10th through the 12th, Ridge Fest. If we need volunteers and if you have an inkling to want to help out, contact Randy Floss or the Merchants Association. Brock could probably use a little bit of help with that. parking directions and all kinds of fun things. So it's always a great time for people to be out there, and it's a great community event, and I encourage everybody to come.

And to piggyback on that, this year we will be having a music in the park in conjunction with Heritage Day, which is not what we've done in the past. Ridgefest. Ridgefest, thanks. We have not done that in the past. We've had one in October. Usually the weather's been questionable and not as well attended. So we thought we would try to bury the two events together so then there will be a music in the park in conjunction with Ridgefest. All right, Ms. Snyder.

And we have music in the park this weekend too, right?

Yes, we do.

Since we didn't have a Parks and Rec report, they would have said that. Here it is.

Radio Revolver.

Radio Revolver.

Sounds good.

So the most important comment I have is about tomorrow. I want you to remember Mayor Jim Hartin tomorrow. It's his birthday. Happy birthday. Here's to many more. And I want to thank you for that comment about the intersection. I think the thing, we do have to be patient, and we have to remember that everything is going to improve, certainly from where we are now. We have these great new sidewalks. There's a lot of good stuff going on. And even though it's a little behind schedule, it's going to get done, and it's going to be great. The other thing I want to say is please come out to the 9-11 ceremony. This is... Patty doesn't talk about this a lot, but the reason we're doing this memorial is because she reached out to D.H. Griffin Wrecking Company and got a piece of the, let me get it right, a piece of steel from the core beam of the South Tower at the World Trade Center that they donated generously in response to her request, and that will be mounted on one of the sort of twin concrete pillars that we're going to install. And on the other pillar will be a plaque telling about the events of that fateful day. And it's hard for me to call it an anniversary, but it is a time of remembering 25 years after when we all need reminders of what happened on that day. So thank you all for being here tonight.

To, again, piggyback, I think all of us are of an age that we can remember exactly where we were when we found out about the attack on the World Trade Center both times. Fortunately or unfortunately, a lot of time has gone by, so there are some people that don't really understand the impact that it had on our country. And I worked for an international company. The outpouring from people all over the world was amazing during that time. Thank you for the birthday wishes for tomorrow. I'll use my brother's accounting. Years ago, he found that adding 10 years and saying that I would be 84 instead of 74, people would actually say, you look great for 84. And so he liked the positive issues with that. The other comment that I would like to thank staff and council. A few weeks back in a special called meeting, we began to look through and update our strategic plan. This is a... Not an easy task. The good news is we have a very good historic strategic plan, but it clearly needs to be updated. Many things that's in our current strategic plan from, I think, 2023, then were aspirational are now done. You know, they're behind us. So when you read our – if you go online and read our today's strategic plan, you can see it's historically – inferior not inferior but from the standpoint that it needs to be brought into the future so we have something to work with for the next three to five years so thanks to staff and and thanks to council for moving forward we it's going to be part of our agenda and many uh special called meetings uh pretty much throughout throughout the year i hope will be done um thanksgiving time frame With that, I think we're at the end. I thank everybody for being here, and I'll ask for a motion to adjourn. Second motion, we adjourn.

Second.

All right, we have a motion to adjourn and a second. All in favor, say aye. Aye.