Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

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Good evening and welcome to the Pitt County Board of Commissioners meeting. Thank you for being with us this evening, for being here. Let's have our call to order and roll call, please. And if you would please stand with me. Commissioner Brown is going to do our invocation.

Dear Heavenly Lord, thank you so much for this day. Thank you for all of the people that have joined us this evening, and thank you so much for what you have put before us with our work tonight, Lord. We ask that you give us discernment, give us wisdom, and let us put you and your people above all else. Lord, thank you so much for this day. Bless the United States of America and Pitt County.

Please remain standing. I'm going to invite our cadets up. And if you would come up and introduce yourself, they're going to lead us in the pledge this evening.

Good evening. I'm Liliana Gales, a senior at South Central High School and currently the battalion commander in South Central's JROTC program.

Good evening. I am Levi Stradley. I'm currently a senior at South Central High School. My role within the battalion is an executive officer. I'm also in the US Army as a specialist.

Good evening. I am Logan Burbaum. I'm a sophomore at South Central High School, and I'm currently the battalion's command sergeant major in the JROTC organization.

Thank you for having us this evening. At this time, please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,

Mrs. Farrell.

You may be seated. Thank you for having us, and have a good evening.

Thank you all for coming out this evening. Do I hear a motion to approve the agenda? Second. OK, please vote. Madam Manager, any public addresses to the board?

Mr. Chairman, you have three signed up to speak. The attorney will read the statement.

Thank you, Madam Manager. Pitt County welcomes all comments on matters of public concern. Each speaker will be allowed up to three minutes to speak. A total of 30 minutes is set aside for public addresses to the board. Please state your name and address prior to speaking.

First is Elizabeth Bonham.

Hello, Elizabeth Bonham, 1811 Bradford Drive, Greenville, North Carolina. I'm here again to discuss the proposed budget cuts for social services that are going to affect our part-time contract workers. our contract workers are vital to our child care our child welfare program and just in the foster care program we currently have about six contract workers who assist our social workers with transporting children to appointments supervising family visits completing courtesy visits for other counties and moving children between placements these roles are vital because although caseloads have improved the caseloads still exceed the state recommended cap Our department is more staffed than it has been a while, but vacancies remain difficult to fill and social workers continue to experience high workloads and burnout. In addition, our agency has children placed throughout the state, which requires hours of travel time that these workers also assist with. Losing our contract workers would be devastating to our team. Their absence would mean increasing the already large workloads and caseloads for full-time social workers. This would lead to a higher turnover for employees, but also reduced quality of service for families and slower response times. All of this leads to higher costs for the county in the long run. as the cost to hire and train new employees is more expensive. I ask that we invest in support services now which will prevent more expensive interventions later. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for coming out.

Victoria Matlock.

Good evening. Hopefully you guys remember me from last month's meeting. Again, my name is Victoria Matlock, and I am the clinical social worker for the Pitt County Department of Social Services Child Welfare Division. My position provides me with a unique vantage point to be able to identify patterns, challenges, and opportunities that may not be readily apparent to staff already drowning in a constant stream of work. In the nearly five years that I've been with the department, I have seen countless social workers come and go because of the demand that this job places on staff. I hope last month I painted a realistic picture of the child welfare system for you all. This is not a field that people flock to by any means. This is not a field where people stay for the money or come for the money. This is a field of passionate and hardworking professionals doing the best they can with the resources at hand, and the thought of cutting any of those resources is confusing to me. Because not only will it negatively affect the staff who have stuck it out, it will affect the quality of life for the children that we are here to serve and protect. Pitt County has over 150 children in foster care. DSS social workers consistently work more than 40 hours a week to manage their extreme workloads. They do this for comp time, not extra money that they're going to see on their paychecks like it is in other places. And when they go to use their comp time, the work does not transfer to other workers. It sits and waits for them to come back, piling up because there are no other workers to fill the void. And now there will be less. I have trouble understanding how cutting the contract workers we already have makes sense when as far as the workload goes, we already struggle to meet the mark. This means there will be less staff available to monitor visits for children to see their siblings and care. We won't have staff available to complete adoption paperwork in a timely manner so adoptive families can finally be whole. and we will continue to struggle to meet the requirements set by the Department of Health and Human Services. Again, I understand that I cannot ask this board to fix the child welfare system, but I can ask that you appropriately fund the one small piece of the system that our county is responsible for. Please hear us when we say we need our contract workers, and the children that this county is responsible for are the ones who will ultimately be affected by this decision. Thank you.

Thank you for coming out.

Joshua Foy.

Hey, good afternoon. My name is Joshua Foy. I live at 318 Haven Drive. I know I came out before to speak with you guys about my experience as a social worker here, and I came back today. I didn't bring any notes because, once again, my work did run over today, so I haven't had a chance to prepare anything. So just bear with me if I'm kind of all over the place here. I do want to discuss primarily our contract workers and part-time workers, because if we do lose those, what that means is I'm out on the road more, I'm doing their work that they were taking care of before. which means that I have less time to dedicate towards the children that you guys are responsible for as the county. So if I'm not there to give them the care they need, that reflects poorly on everybody here. And I think that we really need to consider that because these children are important to us. They're important to everybody in this community. And limiting my ability to care for them and to help them, it really shows through. So I didn't have much to say tonight, but I just wanted to come out and say once again, please reconsider. Please think about everybody and how this will trickle down further. Thank you. Thank you for coming out.

That is all that we have signed up to speak.

OK. We'll move on to presentations, Madam Manager.

Yes. If we can go down front, it'll be our pleasure to present the America 250 North Carolina Essay Contest. Mr. Chairman, we're joined this evening with Kimberly Moody, who is with the Human Relations Commission as the coordinator and several members of the Human Relations Commission. If you are serving on the Human Relations Commission, will you please stand? I want to express our appreciation for them being here tonight and for them sponsoring through the receipt of an America 250 $10,000 grant. One of the activities that they conducted with those grant funds was to do an essay contest for Pitt County school children. And tonight we have the pleasure of recognizing those winners in each category. And so the first winner, I call your name, please come forward to receive your certificate and then remain standing up here until we have one final picture at the end. So the first place winner in the fourth and fifth grade category is Jack Berry. If she's present, the first place winner in the sixth to eighth grade category is Tatiana Ayako. And the first place winner in the ninth to 12th grade category is Amaya Brooks. Second place winner in the fourth to fifth grade category, Reese Houston. Second place winner in the 6th to 8th grade age group is Evan Kito. And second place winner in the 9th to 12th grade age group is Hannah Alligood. And then we have one third place winner present with us this evening in the fourth to fifth grade category, Mia Moore. And we had one third place winner in the sixth to eighth grade category, who I believe could not join us tonight, but just in case, don't wanna miss you, Con Blackman. These ambitious, curious, and bright individuals took time out of their day to utilize their creativity and intelligence and put together some incredible essays to commemorate the America's 250 celebration. We can't thank you enough for the efforts that you made, the pride that you've brought to our county by participating and winning in each of your categories, and we thank you so much. If we could do a final round of applause for all of you.

We're going to do a tweak in for a picture. How do you make them look nice? Yes. How about these three right here?

And then these two come in. Very good. Does that work? Perfect. On three, say, America 250. America 250.

One, two, three. Let's go.

YES. PRETTY NEAT. IT WAS SO NICE.

Think the house is getting ready to be empty. Okay, Madam Manager, we will move on to items for report.

Yes, for your manager's report this evening, you have your next meeting dates. Tomorrow night in this room at 6 p.m. is your public hearing on the budget. June 15th is your next regular meeting, followed by just one meeting in the month of July on the 13th. And then for those who are registered to attend, we have the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners County Advocacy Days on June 9th and 10th in Raleigh. And then lastly, I wanted to provide a report to you all on our first successful employee fun and fitness day. On May 20th, Pitt County hosted its first employee fun and fitness event to support the physical, mental, and social-emotional needs of our workforce. A total of 112 employees participated. and various cultural arts and recreation activities, including line dancing, basketball, cornhole, volleyball, fitness circuit, trail walking, pickleball, yoga, meditation, art classes, and a farmer's market community garden lesson exhibit. Wellness and Cooperative Extension offered healthy smoothies. We'll share photos and videos in the future County Connection newsletter of the event. But a big thank you goes to our Cultural Arts and Recreation Department, public information, public health, soil and water, and emergency management teams for creating a very successful event. We did it at the Pitt County Office Park North and our employees very much enjoyed it. These are the types of things that we are maximizing the availability of our resources. for employee retention. And so thrilled that we were able to offer that and that it was a huge success. That's all that I have.

Thank you, Madam Manager. Do I hear a motion on the items for consent? Second. I've got a motion and a second. Please vote. Thank you. And Madam Manager, we'll move on to items for decision.

First up is Kelly Andrews, who will be seeking your approval and award of a contract with the Timmons Group for due diligence services at the Megasite. Kelly?

Thank you, Madam Manager. Good evening, Chairman Smith and Commissioners. Tonight I bring before you the results or recommendation of the RFQ or Request for Qualification process for the Megasite due diligence. As you know, we were awarded $2 million. by the EDP&C Megasite program to study the designated site called the Pitt County North site. And on March 16th, 2026, we issued that RFQ for Megasite due diligence services and received 10 responses for the RFQ that were received by the due date of April 17th, 2026 with all required documentation. Those 10 were due deck, East Group, Kimley Horn, Seaman Whiteside, Thomas and Hutton, Timmons Group, Wooten Company, ESP, HDR, and WSP. There was a selection team that studied and reviewed each of those for qualifications and recommend Timmons Group on the basis of demonstrated competence and qualifications for this project. With approval of the selection, the next step is negotiation of a contract for specified services at a fair and reasonable fee not to exceed $1.16 million. And the balance of that against that $2 million award is preliminary engineering reports that Greenville Utilities will conduct for wastewater, water, and natural gas. Those were estimated at about $840,000. So the balance of that is for our due diligence services. So our recommendation for you tonight is to move to approve the selection of Timmons Group for these services and authorize the county manager to execute the contract relating thereto in the amount not to exceed $1.16 million.

Any questions for Kelly?

Do we hear a motion for approval? I pressed it for a question. Isn't that how you get a question? Kelly, You were speaking quite fast. I won't go as low as a fifth grader's explanation as to what due diligence is for the district and for those people who have questions of me.

Yes, ma'am. So the due diligence services, which we do for other industrial sites or most of our industrial sites, are services such as a phase one environmental a geotech survey, a wetland delineation or determination if there are any wetlands, archaeological and cultural resource studies to see if there are any endangered species or cultural resources, Native American-type artifacts, sites that we need to be aware of for further study and all of those services on that 3,300 acres, as well as helping determine what within that 3,300 acres is 1,000 plus or minus acres, or actually 1,000 plus acres that will be determined, hopefully, to go forward for further development and due diligence services.

Well, those people who question me about the position that I have on it, that I am more for it than I am against it. And I do share that with them when they talked about it. But I said that if we get the mega site here, we will get some assistance with concerns about our water table and our water resources and other infrastructures such as the filling of septic tanks. That mega site will help that particular part of it. And for those reasons and those things, because it really hurt when you hear a resident talk about, I have to go to someone else's house to take a bath before I can get my... um, dialysis, uh, done in the daytime. So there are some serious need as to why we need to support the mega site. And I'm thinking that that would help that particular situation. Am I correct in that?

Yes. I mean, this will scratch the surface. Um, this is the first, um, you know, set of services that we done to determine, um, how and in what ways we continue to develop and study the site for that and for utilities and for the types of development that we want. So all of that and more. Thank you.

I know they have already expanded Briley Road a little bit and put in some drainage pipes, which are very much needed. So there are some reasons of problems that this mega site will pay for. And that's a good reason, too. Yes, ma'am. Thank you so much for answering it in plain. I didn't say fifth graders, but as plain as you could so that the people would know why it is a good reason to accept that.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to move that we approved the selection of Timmons group and authorized the County manager to execute the related contract in an amount not to exceed. Um, um, what was the one point 1.16, $1.16 million.

Thank you. We've got a motion and a second, please vote. Okay. Thank you. Madam manager. Number two.

Yes. Your next item are re-appointments to the Human Relations Commission. Kimberly Moody, clerk for the Human Relations Board, is recommending the re-appointment of Mary Perkins Williams, LaChancie Staton, Carlton Dawson, and Chantel Hawkins. If you appoint these individuals, it will be an exception to your rule due to their length of service.

Motion to approve. We've got a motion to approve and a second. Please vote.

Yes, ma'am. I do have a question. I was looking at the names on the and I see that there is a another vacancy or should be a vacancy because the person in 2022, I believe it is the former representative person. So is that should that be that position be reappointed?

You're saying there's a vacancy on one of the... Because of the expiration date.

And which seat number?

I was looking at it.

Hmm. Oh, seat five for John Moore for the town of Farmville. Looks like his seat expired 6-30-22. Florida, I know Kimberly has stepped out for a moment. Are you familiar with that appointment? I am. OK, if you'll come forward and answer.

So we have been trying to recruit someone for that seat after Mr. Moore stepped down. And to date, we've not been able to get anyone to accept that seat. So they are trying to actually find someone to fill that seat.

with the attribute being from the town of Farmville? From the town of Farmville, yes. So as soon as a qualified applicant comes, we'll bring that name forward to the board for appointment.

Okay.

And are they in the same situation?

Yes, same situation, yes. Same situation, yes.

Thank you, Florida. Thank you. OK, moving on to number three, Madam Manager.

Yes. That would be a reappointment to Pitt Community College Board of Trustees. It's recommended that you nominate Charles Ellis as a reappointment with a term ending June 30, 2030.

I have a question about the Pitt Community College group. There was a leader in the community who was concerned about their representation and as well is that board should be representative of the county as a whole because as said to me, it looks one-sided.

Is that a question for me?

Meaning?

That it should have a broader perspective of the population of the county.

I think there's commissioner picks. There's also some general assembly picks. I think there's a variation of it. It did not.

I didn't see it anywhere. So I didn't know exactly

And if what you're getting at is the diversity question, there is diversity on that board. Your last appointment was Richie Williams to the Pitt Community College Board. So the board was intentional.

How many are there? Because this is recorded, right? Sure.

I'll have to get back to you on that in particular because I don't know off the top of my head. I do know that for this particular appointment before you today, it's a reappointment. Mr. Ellis is eligible for reappointment, and typically we will do that reappointment when someone is eligible and has dutifully served. And then when the maximum number of terms has expired, then you'll look to replace with another member from the community.

Could we have it so that the public would know without...

Certainly, and I believe you could go, I can certainly provide that to the board, or you can go to the Pitt Community College website and you can look at all of their pictures.

I haven't thought about doing that.

Mr. Chair, I support Mr. Ellis, the reappointment to the board. Is that a motion?

Second. Got a motion and a second. Thank you. Please vote. Okay, Madam Manager, number four.

Yes, and then the last one is an appointment to the Rivers East Workforce Development Board, and it's being recommended that you appoint Randy Clifton to the Rivers East Workforce Development Board for a term that would run from June 1st, 26th through June 30th of 28th.

Okay, pleasure to board.

So moved.

Got a motion. Do I hear a second? Second. Okay, please vote.

Okay, is that all items for decision, Madam Manager? That concludes your items for decision.

Okay, I will start from my left for Commissioner comments. Commissioner Manning? Okay, Commissioner Nunnally? Commissioner Floyd-Huggins? Commissioner McLaughlin? Man, what in the world? Commissioner Weaver? I know you have a comment. No, sir, no comment, Mr. Chairman. Okay. Commissioner Brown? Excellent agenda, Mr. Chair. It went fast tonight. It's unusual. Commissioner? Okay. Okay. Well, I think we have a closed session. So if somebody will make the motions, we'll move on in the closed session.

Thank you all for being here tonight. Mr. Chair, if I could just read the graph briefly. Yes, please. It's been suggested that this body go to the closed session under the following grounds. One, to consult with an attorney employed or retained by the public body in order to preserve attorney-client privilege under North Carolina General Statute 143.318.11a.3. which privilege is hereby acknowledged. Two, to discuss matters relating to the location or expansion of industries under North Carolina General Statute 143.318.11a.4. And three, to prevent the disclosure of information that is not considered a public record under North Carolina General Statute 143.318.10. Thank you, Matt.

We have a motion and a second. Please vote.

Thank you.

Okay. Welcome back. I'll entertain some motions here.

I'd like to make a motion to approve the closed session meetings of May 4th.

Got a motion and a second. Please vote on that. Okay. I hear a motion to adjourn. Motion and a second. Please vote.

Sure. You got it buddy.