Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Ladies and gentlemen, call this meeting to order. The mayor and board of commissioners for May 13, 2025. Can I get the roll call, please? Pauline Braun, Emily Kleiner, here. Mayor Marian here. Dave Warick here. Will you rise with me for the pledge of Oh, sorry. Pearson here. Let the record show you have a quorum. Thank you. You rise with me for the pledge of 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. You bow your heads with me for a brief prayer. Father God, I come to you tonight on behalf of our town. Lord, I ask that you watch over our citizens, watch over our elected body, God, and their families. be with us as we're here tonight and as we leave. Please watch over our uh police officers and our emergency services as well as our troops serving here and overseas. Jesus name. Amen. All right, moving forward. Consent agenda. Town administrator. Do you have that? Yes. You have the approval of the April 8 2025 town meeting video summary and then a listing of the next four upcoming town meetings which all start at 5:30 p.m. Well, since we were having a discussion about the upcoming town meeting on July um before this are we were saying that July 8th isn't going to work. Do you want to announce it at a at a sooner sooner date? We'll just say that the July 8th meeting is going to be rescheduled and then we'll try to pick a new date for it. I mean, technically you can leave it the way it is. There it goes.

Um, you could leave it the way it is because you still have another meeting in June. And in the meantime, we can coordinate schedules to try to find the right date. Fair enough. I move to uh approve the consent agenda. Seconded. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? I I consent agenda. Passes. Moving forward, there is no public presentations or any unfinished business. Moving forward into new business. Resolution 2025-11, town administrator. Do you have that? Yes, I do. So, what you have uh before you is a resolution that would make changes to the town's personnel manual. Um, and the changes are born out of new regulations that have come down from MOSH, which is basically the Maryland version of OSHA standards. And those standards are now talking about um policies that we need to have in place to um manage and identify heat illness of our employees that work outside. Uh provide them adequate um water uh during those times and then basically a cooling off period. uh when they become overheated or work in excessive heat and then to also have some policies in place you know for instance that the employee if they're not feeling well can step up and say hey I'm not feeling well and it gives some direction for the supervisor to properly manage that this is all born out of basic basically um OSHA requirements coming down from the state so we have uh

Judy uh the assistant town administrator uh put together a framework of a plan and we modified it a little bit, but basically that's what's in the resolution. If you'd like, I'd read that into the minutes, please. Thank you. So, you have resolution 2025-11. I'll skip the first two boiler plates. I'll summarize the third boiler plate which is basically the standard language that talks about uh how our personnel manual is created uh what its intent is and then uh the the subject matter typically in a personnel manual and then how you go about changing it and then the fourth boiler plate basically I'll start from there whereas the town of rising sun recognizes that as climate patterns change and summer temperatures increase, employees, particularly those in public works and outdoor service service roles are increasingly exposed to dangerous heat conditions that pose significant health and safety risk. Whereas in response to these changing conditions and in alignment with the Mau Occupational Safety and Health MOSH guidelines, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA best practices and the University of Maryland heat safety program. The administration has developed a heat illness prevention and management policy designed to safeguard employees working in elevated heat index conditions. And whereas the policy establishes clear procedures, responsibilities, and training requirements to reduce the risk of heat related illness, ensuring employees have the knowledge, tools, and support necessary to perform their duties safely during periods of extreme heat. And whereas the mayor and commissioners wish to formally adopt this policy to further

protect the health and welfare of town employees and ensure compliance with applicable safety standards. Therefore, it be enacted and resolved that the mayor and commissioners of the town of Rising Sun hereby adopt the document titled section 6-20 heat illness prevention and management policy as attached here too and direct that it be formally incorporated into and made an official section of the town of Rising Suns personnel rules and regulations to be included as section 6-20 of the proposed manual. Um and that is being uh potentially voted on tonight. When you get to the actual section of 620, um there's basically a a purpose here at the beginning that obviously is to help protect employees from heat related illnesses. Um this policy comes into play and the way it reads is applicability. This policy applies to all employees who work indoors or outdoors where the heat index equals or exceeds 80 uh 80 degrees Fahrenheit for more than 15 consecutive minutes per hour. Additional requirements apply when the heat index reaches 90 degrees Fahrenheit or above. We put some definitions in here. Uh the definition for heat index, a definition for light work, moderate work, and heavy work. You can see that uh there are some policy requirements uh the supervisor's responsibilities supervisors example public works manager department head shell monitor daily heat index levels using the NYOS heat app or NWS heat risk map. Adjust hydration and rest schedules in real time based on heat index personal protective equipment use and job intensity. Ensure that employees shall be provided with at least 32

ounces of cool potable water per hour when exposed to heat above 80° Fahrenheit. Supervisors shall implement adaptive break schedules based on project start times, physical intensity, personal protective equipment worn, and heat index. Brakes must align with the following minimum standards shown in the table below. So when you get to the actual table, this basically is a table that talks about heat ranges between 8 and 84.9 degrees, 85 and 89.9 degrees, 90 and 100 degrees, and then over 100. And then the classifications of work, light work, moderate work, and heavy work are columns. And if for instance, if you look when somebody's doing light work, you're not required to have designated breaks after a certain amount of time working, but you're still required to provide the water for them. When you get into moderate um work, there's no rest period required for 80 to 84 or 85 to 89, but you still have to have three quarts of water available per hour. When the temperature gets over over 90 degrees, you do a rest period every 50 minutes. um you can't work any more than 50 minutes and you rest for 10 minutes. And when the temperature gets up over 100°, you um can work no more than 40 minutes in succession with a rest period of 20 minutes. And then if you look at the chart for heavy work, it follows the same outline for that. Um, you're also supposed to add five degrees when personal protective equipment is uh worn. Uh, the supervisor needs to verify all employees have completed annual heat

illness prevention training. Identify and monitor new, returning, or high-risk employees during acclim accation periods. Provide access to shaded or air conditioned recovery areas, example work vehicles. Keep records of hydration schedules, training, and incident responses. Conduct daily check-ins when temperature exceeds 90 degrees Fahrenheit using a buddy system, cell phone, or other communication method. Number two, the rights of employees and responsibilities. Employees may take unscheduled cooldown breaks if experiencing symptoms without fear of reprisal. B. All employees are responsible for recognizing early signs of heat stress and notifying a supervisor. C. All employees shall be encouraged to stay hydrated and rest is needed, especially in extreme conditions. Number three, emergency response and cross reference. Section 2-1M of this manual, general employee conduct, requires that all accidents and injuries be reported immediately. Supervisors shall activate the emergency procedures outlined in the town's heat stress management plan, including on-site evaluation, immediate cooling of the individual, calling 911 if symptoms escalate, example confusion or collapse, transport to emergency services if necessary. B. Emergency procedures must be posted at all job sites and employees must be trained in recognizing and responding to heat cramps, heat exhaustion, heat stroke. Supervisors shall ensure direct communication access. Example, cell phones is available at all job sites. For training and education, all affected employees must complete annual heat illness prevention training. B training covers symptoms, risk factors, emergency procedures, and acization. Rest and recovery locations.

Employees may recover in air conditioned vehicles or shaded areas as designated by the supervisor. Supervisors are responsible for ensuring sufficient access to recovery spaces. Number six, um, acquisation procedures. Employees shall be monitored during the first 14 days on the job, after seven plus days off, or during heatwave conditions 10 uh degrees Fahrenheit above recent 5day average. Training will address the risk associated with personal protective equipment, underlying health conditions, and clothing. Seven, emergency protocols. Emergency procedures must be posted and recovered recovered in training. All staff must have access to a phone and are permitted to call 911 for heat related incidents without penalty. Supervisors must monitor employees for symptoms of heat related illness and respond accordingly. So again, this is an effort obviously to make sure that our employees are safe, especially our public works employees or even police officers that are out on crowd control or something during hot days. Um we want to make sure that everybody is safe and this is consistent with uh new newly refined OSHA and MOSH guidelines. So, that's the uh resolution that we're recommending that you ratify and adopt. Could I get a motion to approve this resolution? Second. Seconded. It's been moved and seconded. Uh want to thank Judy and Calvin for all their work in this and making sure that we're up to date and uh in compliance. Uh all in favor? I passes. Thank you. Thank you, Augie. Got you. um proposed ordinance 2025-02 which is the flood plane code. Do you have that? Yes, I do. So, this is

20252 which is an ordinance to make modifications to our flood plane ordinance. It is a 50-page document. I do not plan on reading the entire thing. Um however, I'll give you the salient points before I do that. This is a document that will sit Um, it's not a document that we're recommending be passed as it emergees the ordinance because we already have a flood plane management code in place. However, our flood plane management ordinance is based upon the model ordinance that the state of Maryland uh department of MD or Maryland Department of the Environment MDE puts out in response to FEMA regulations on flood planes. And so they they make it easy for communities to not have to create an ordinance from scratch. So they develop a model code and again I think what's important for people to realize is that you are as a community you are able to participate in national flood insurance if your property is prone in areas to flooding only if your community enforces FEMA regulations or flood plane regulations in areas in your community that are in flood plane areas. And we do have a swath of area that comes down basically from the Legion post through uh in and around Bucks restaurant, jumps over, runs next to the car wash, and then runs along the stream all the way out to Walnut Street, affects the trailer park that we remember was flooding, goes under Mount Street, and then passes by the uh into the Reynolds

Farm field there. and then out on route one there. So, it's it's a big area, but it it doesn't cover uh a large portion of the town. And fortunately, there's a lot of area that doesn't have any construction in it, but there are areas that do. And so, we are required to keep our flood plane ordinance up to date. And the way we do that is to modify it whenever the state comes out with a new model ordinance. And they did come out with a new model ordinance in 2018. So, I'm just going to skim through here um the boilerplate language on, you know, um uh the the third boilerplate language regarding chapter 10, where it's at, what it's what its purpose is, and how you change it, and that the fourth boiler plate, the town desires to maintain participation in the National Flood Insurance Program. This is important. If we don't do this, people in our community that need or rely upon flood insurance can have that revoked because the town is not um actively enforcing uh flood plane regulations. So, it's not the town that needs to participate in the flood plane insurance program. It's to enable our residents to be able to participate in that. So, um you get into the actual changes in the code. Um, when you start on page five, everything that is in black is the existing language. Things that are changed are in red and underlined if it's new language. And then strike through is text that's been removed. So just to give you an example, the first one, this is really not a big deal, but

when our code when our flood plane code was adopted back in 2014, the state of Maryland referenced the zoning regulations as article 66B that has since been changed and replaced by new gnome clature of the land use article. So, all that's doing is properly referencing the state statute that has to be mentioned in here. Um, you see there's a lot of areas that are not changed. Um, there's some subtle things that had to be changed because when the town adopted our ordinance back in 2014, the NA department of the environment did all the fieldwork to give to us. But when they reference sections of the code, they reference the sections in the model code and not the town code. So for instance, um if you look at this first one, they're referring you back to section 1.5. That 1.5 is in the model code. So you would have to look up our town code to see that we're actually calling it section 10-104. So, as you're going through the document, you'll see all the instances where we've made those changes here. Um, there are uh a couple things that we had to provide some definitions for and one of them I want to introduce to you is a code enforcement appeals board definition. If you remember a couple months ago, the town of Rising Sun, because of our involvement in building inspections and rental and property maintenance, by law, we're required to create an appeals board to give people the right to appeal a decision of a code officer. And so, we created a code enforcement appeals board. And in that

document that we created, we structured it so that the code enforcement appeals board could be used for appeals of any types of things out there. And so you're going to see when this code was originally created, the MA Department of the Environment just said, well, the town has a planning commission, it has a mayor and commissioners, and it has a board of zoning appeals. Let's just reference the board of zoning appeals as the one to handle any request for variances or appeals. We have since rationalized in our mind that the zoning board of appeals their skill set is more in terms of zoning language where a lot of the appeals that would take place here are more of a building construction type thing. So when a board would be hearing up here, somebody's talking about building and construction and wood and lumber and loading and stuff like that, it's more engineering and our code of enforcement board of appeals is made up of people that have skill sets that are more closely aligned to that. So we think it's a better product not only for the applicant but for the town to maintain the integrity of the system to change the name of who the board that will hear those appeals from the board of zoning appeals to the code enforcement appeals board. So that's the reason for that definition. You will also see throughout the document where where wherever the board of appeals is mentioned there's a strike through and code enforcement board of appeals is put in there. Um this one here definition this is an example of when the department of the environment updated their model code they added more

definitions. So we needed to add those definitions in here also. Um, so you see mixed use structures. The other one I just showed you, the only thing that's a couple things that we put in here um is there's a term called substantial improvement and substantial damage. And what that basically means is that when a property is located in a floodplane area, and the best way I can describe this is that buildings for whatever reason end up in flood plane areas. Sometimes it's because they were built long before anybody officially designated as a floodplane area. And then other times they end up there because maybe people were not paying any attention and they were allowed to build in a floodplane area. But the federal government and FEMA, the experts in this area have said we can't keep having these storms come along and potentially people dying or property damage resulting because people are located where they really shouldn't be because of flooding and natural disasters. And so what the federal government did many many years ago in in the regulations was basically say that if a building or a structure is in the flood plane and it incurs more than 50% damage based upon the the appraised value of the property, the property cannot be fixed in its current location. it would have to be brought up to code, which would mean elevating it. Or in some cases, if you're at a flood zone, you can elevate it. If you're at a floodway, the building has to be removed

in its entirety. And so, the state has um updated their definitions on substantial improvement. But here's another thing that the the federal government provided for which is new is that just to be bluntly honest, sometimes landlords or uh people that own would if they incurred 50% damage, they would stretch it out over a period of time or they would say, "Hey, here's my permit to fix this." That in itself is not over 50%. So I haven't exceeded the limit. So the federal government started realizing that that's an unintended loophole. So they left it up to municipalities to either have just substantial improvement or they could do two, five, 10, 15 upwards of 20 to 25 years of a cumulative effect. So, that would mean that a landlord or a property owner who had a a a property that was, let's say, appraised at $100,000, they if they came in and did a building permit for $25,000 one year and then two years later came back with a building permit for $26,000. they're over the 50% threshold, but they would say, "Hey, I I it wasn't it it you didn't have a code that said it was cumulative." So, we're creating cumulative language and the staff is recommending between 2, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 that we make it five because we feel that 10, 15, and 20 is going to be too ownorous of the property owner. In

that case, we think that two years is too short. We think five years is is the sweet spot here. So, this language is basically saying that those repairs that you make and upgrades that you make, they accumulate over a five-year period portion of time. And if you if that total exceeds 50%, then you have to bring the property up to code. I think it's important for everyone listening is that this is not sometimes we think it is, you know, a government overreach in terms of the town of rising sun that just charge building permits or just do whatever. This is not something that applies to any other property. This applies to properties that are in what has been designated as a very dangerous area because of flooding. And so by doing this, you're mitigating the pro probability of somebody getting hurt. And that somebody getting hurt is not always just the occupant of the building. It's your volunteer firefighters that come out to respond. It's your police department. It's the neighbor who sees flooding and goes to help the elderly woman and they get electrocuted or they drown or something happens because of it. So these provisions are for uh areas that are considered to be very vulnerable and have a high risk of um injury and damage. The other thing that's that is clear here is that and this protects the property owner. The code department can't go to a property in a flood area and say your gutter is bad and then come back three weeks later and say your front deck has to be fixed. All those property maintenance things. If if somebody is required to fix something as a result of

a code violation, that is not included in the mathematical calculation of 50%. It's only if the property owner does it voluntarily on their own or if it's a result of damage for any reason. It could be damaged by a tree. It could be damaged by a fire. It could be damaged by a flood. But it protects the property owner from the code department saying, "I don't like that down there, so I'm going to nickel and dime you with a bunch of p code violations to get you over the 50%." So, that's a protection that's built in there. Um, other than that, there are no other substantial changes other than the definitions and requirements that the federal government said we had to put in there. To recap, the significant changes are the five-year cumulative um evaluation of substantial damage and the changing the appeals process from the board of zoning appeals to the code enforcement board of appeals. Other than that, everything is just what we're required to do for uh the model code. Again, we have to send this to the Mau department of the environment for their review. So, it won't come back to you until MDE is signed off on the recommended updates. So, that we're just starting the clock by introducing it tonight. Thank you. All right. Moving forward into citizens input. Would anyone like to speak this evening? I guess uh hello mayor, commissioners. I did not plan on speaking this evening. So, uh, uh, my unprepared remarks are one, my name is Chris Comr. I'm the director of government affairs for Comcast. Uh, as you know, we're expanding our network in the in the parts of Cecil County and we

look forward to serving the the town of Rising Sun. Um, it's as we go through this process, um, I shared a draft agreement with the town. It's based on the same agreement that we, uh, used in Perryville and Port Deposit. Uh so consistent with with all of those uh we're happy I'm happy to answer any questions you have as as you have time to review that uh or come back for a meeting if as needed. And then uh the project itself, you know, there's a lot of work that goes into it such as um getting the franchise agreement to be in the town's rightway, but also working with utility owners uh to be able to to uh attach to their poles. Uh sometimes that requires make Freddy requirement to those poles. A lot of engineering that goes into that before we can actually start work. So it's we'll be we'll be working but you may not see us working for a while. But as we get closer to working in the town, I'm happy to come back and bring someone from our construction department uh before we start doing anything to help answer any questions you have or set expectations, let you know where we'll be working on certain days and kind of keep you up to date. And obviously if there's ever any constituent issues, uh I'm here to help as well. So, I I'll leave some business cards if anyone uh has questions over the next few weeks or months. By all means, uh feel free to reach out. Thank you. It's nice to meet everyone. Nice to meet you. Thank you. Yeah, man. Appreciate it. All right. Moving forward in the staff reports, town administrator. Yeah. One of the things that I would like to um touch on is um we did on on behalf of the town, I did participate in an interview with NPR regarding uh the brick funding and I want to make sure that um we eliminate some misconceptions that might be out there. Um we've gotten a lot of positive feedback regarding the interview. Um

basically what it comes down to is the um the town and you've heard me talk about this. The town is facing an unfunded mandate to comply with MS4 requirements. And that basically was reducing the town's nutrient footprint. And I've always compared that to the carbon footprint. We're required to reduce the nutrient footprint and we had an estimated cost of like 1.752 million to do that. Technically that has to be done by uh December of 2025. We are one of many communities in the state of Maryland that have told the state it was an unfunded mandate. We don't have the money to do it on it. Um, in addition to that, the town, as you know, built a brand new wastewater treatment plant back in 2016, and it decommissioned a 10 acre lagoon down there on site. And we actually got a benefit from MDE because the cost of that wastewater treatment plant was $16 million. I always remind everybody it's the same technology that could have been done in 1997 for like $1.2 million, but it cost $16 million. By the time we did it in 2012, but in order to decommission the lagoon at that time, it was estimated that we would have to spend about another $3 million on top of the $16 million to decommission the lagoon. MDE allowed us to keep the lagoon in its current footprint as long as it didn't become an issue, but we had to decommission it at some point in time.

So what the town had set out to do was to qualify for the MS4 requirement we have by decommissioning the lagoon and turning the lagoon area into a wetlands buffer to deal with all the water runoff that comes off the farmer's fields uh behind the sewer plant. Now, what people don't realize is when you talk about reducing the nutrient footprint, the nutrient footprint is basically all the stuff that gets into the waterway that the environmental folks think is has a negative impact on aquatic life and stuff like that. And so that could be grass clippings, it could be motor oil from your car, it could be fertilizers, it could be lots of things. And guess what comes off farmers fields is that kind of stuff. And so what we and and it's not that the farmer is in violation. I'm not suggesting that they're in violation, but that drainage goes into the stream next to the lagoon. And what we would have done would would to be spend like one n72 million dollar on rehabbing the stream to be better equipped with dealing with any other contaminants that get into the stream. Basically rehabbing the stream so that it becomes a filtration system to stop stuff from getting into the aquatic life you know down uh further south. So when we had the ability to decommission the lagoon and check off that box of $3 million, we could turn it into a wetlands buffer. And so in essence, we would be we would uh we would be able to decommission the lagoon um and and satisfy the wetlands buffer

at the same time. So what also came up afterwards is for whatever reason um and and what I think is actually going on is that when we used to operate our lagoon and we put sewage in it and it naturally went through its process, it always had an effluent coming out the other side. So it would go through its biological process, go out the other side. So the level of the lagoon always stayed constant. Well, when we decommissioned the lon lagoon, we had to block off that effluent pipe. And so then you ask yourself, well, if it's blocked off, what stops the lagoon from rising? Well, when you have rainwater coming into it, hypothetically, you could say, well, that's what that might be an issue. But not to belver the point, but when you factor in um not Mother nature in general, the size of the pond itself, rainwater falling into it evaporates over time at a much greater rate than what would be able to overflow out into out out into the stream or overflow its banks. But what we realized shortly after opening up the sewer plant, which never would have materialized while the lagoon was open, is an underground stream or an underground spring. And anyone who's been around here knows that when you went up on that upper bend, that bank was always wet. So there's an underground spring going in there that's raising the level of the lagoon and we have to pump that out and pump it back into the wastewater treatment plant which is not a very efficient use of equipment, electricity, so forth and so on. So that was the other benefit of

decommissioning the lagoon for cost savings to our residents down the road and greater efficiency. But with that underground spring there, we are now seeing where there's a lot of stuff coming off the farmer's fields that's actually just cascading right into the lagoon. And you remember the videos I showed you of the tropical storm in 2021, another one in July of 2022 and then uh a third one a couple months ago where we have rainwater coming off the land around us into the lagoon and it potentially overflows which puts hypothetically a hazardous material or unsanitary material out into the stream. So the brick funding that we were applying for and the terminology used was to stop the lagoon from overflowing and putting that bad stuff out in the environment. That is everything that brick funding was designed for. um the current administration in trying to cut um wasteful spending in the federal government decided to just defund the entire brick funding program. So even though we were essentially awarded $5.5 million, that money was taken away from us. And so the crust of the interview was basically that we understand the motivation behind making those cuts and we all as individual citizens realize that there's probably a lot of wasteful spending being done in the federal government. So the town of Rising Sun was not jumping up as a victim saying, "Oh, poor us. You took our money. You shouldn't have done it." We're in support of what the federal government is trying to do, but we think there was an unintended consequence in the way they did it. And that's what I

had said in my interview. I wish they would have used a surgeon scapple instead of a dull butcher knife to cut the fat out. So, but what So, that's the town's official position. We're in support of what the motivation was. We just are going to need other solutions. We we want to work with the federal government to try to find other solutions. Otherwise, we're still facing these unfunded mandates, potential sewer overflowing. So, we've reached out to the federal government to try to resolve that. But what has gotten twisted over the last two weeks is a mindset in the community that we were doing the brick funding because our wastewater treatment plant was at capacity and we could not treat waste water. They're apples and oranges. There's for all intents and purposes, there's two wastewater treatment plants down there. one that's been abandoned and decommissioned, which is a pond that's overflowing, and another one that is fully functioning and is a a a functioning above and beyond environmental standards. There's no issue with that. So, I want to make sure that people don't continue with this misnomer that we applied for grant money to get more capacity so we could simply allow more development to come into the community. So, I just I just wanted an opportunity to address that misnomer out there. Thank you, Chief. I'm going to be brief. Um, two things I have. Recently, I put out an inquiry on social media about employment, letting people know we're hiring. Um, within a 36-hour period, I've received 17 inquiries. Hopefully, we can get some quality candidates out of this. Um my estimation and experience I think that'll drop down to about 50% real quick. Then they will slowly weed

down to maybe we'll get two or three that we can put through an academy. So hope that goes well and uh we can continue to get you know um inquiries about employment for police officer. Second, um as the weather starts to get warm, we start to get more foot with traffic throughout town, we will be pushing enforcement of the crosswalks. Um there's a lot of concern about children and people just crossing the roads, especially along 273. Um under Maryland law, if a person is in a crosswalk, all vehicle traffic must stop and allow them to cross. and we will be holding you all to the letter of the law in that if a person steps into the crosswalk, you need to stop. So, uh the officers have been instructed to uh uh take action if they see violations of that nature and uh we'll be out and about doing that. And that is my report unless there's any questions. Thank you, Chief. Moving forward in the mayor's report, it is also brief. Wanted to give a huge shout out to the Rising Sun High School lacrosse team, the baseball team, and the softball team. They are all in the regional championships. They have won the regional championships and are going on to the next round. So, we want to give them a huge shout out. Uh, as president of the Maryland Mayor's Association, we hosted a reception for the If I Were a Mayor essay contest, we had our first winner from Rising Sun in about five years, uh, Rayan Kennedy. Uh, it was great to visit with her and all of the other winners, uh, from throughout the state. Uh the first lady came and presented proclamations on behalf of the governor's office. It was just a great event. Um last but not least, I wanted to just take a moment to um address obviously the sad news that we're hearing of the two businesses that are closing on our main street. Uh we know as a board that times are tough and that inflation continues to drive up the

cost of just about everything. Um but that is not just an economic shift. It's something personal for these businesses and uh to the owners and staff. Uh we want to thank them for taking a part and being a part of our main street story um for being a part of our town and we wish them nothing but success in their future endeavors. Uh that concludes my report. Moving forward into the commissioner's reports. Commissioner Klein. Um I wanted to report on the um planning commission meeting that we had last Thursday. Um it was a it was a great success I think. Um very well run. It was well attended by members of the public. Um which we love to see and there was great u discussion. There uh were very thoughtful questions asked of members of the board and the public and um I believe that it went as smoothly as we could have wished. So thank you to um everybody who prepared for that. Thank you to Jay for um being the uh hearing officer and um we're we're very excited about um what we pushed forward which was the preliminary and final plans for Stevens Preserve and we look forward to hearing more from those parties as well. So that that concludes my report. Thank you Commissioner Cler. Commissioner Warick um I'll be brief. Uh on Earth Day, we had numerous sixth graders from Rising Sun Middle School who cleaned trails at Veterans Community Park and planted flowers in town hall. I'd like to thank uh public works uh Wanita and Mrs. Dorsy for uh for their help with that and uh thank the mayor for attending that event. And all right, everybody in line. Thank you. Um thank you. Town administrator.

No, I'm good. Did you forget about me? Oh yeah, sorry. Augie. Augie, that seems to be a common theme. Go ahead. I'll be brief also. Just a reminder, it's getting warm. Little League is up and going. We're going to have more foot traffic in town. So, please, please be aware of people, young, young children especially, moving around. Just be cautious. That's the end of my report. I'll make sure to remind Wanita about that. Augie, um, as you can see on the agenda, we have our yard waste and upcoming town events, uh, and holidays, as well as the board of zoning, appeals, and planning commission schedule. Is there anything else to come for the board this evening? Hearing nothing. Can I get a motion to adjurnn? So moved. Seconded. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? I. I. Thank you.