Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to call this meeting to order. The mayor and board of commissioners for June the 10th, 2025. Can I get the roll call, please? Emily here. Dave. Mayor here. Here. Dave Warick here. Let the record show you have a quorum. Thank you. Will you rise with me for the pledge of allegiance, please? Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Will 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. I ask that you watch over our elected body and their families. Lord, please be with our police department and our troops serving here and overseas in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. All right. Town administrator consent agenda. Do you have that? Yes. Um you have that before you. Dennis is by mic. I hear you in here. We're good. All right. Um, so you have the consent agenda before you. It's the approval of the May 13, 2025 meeting minutes. And there's also as uh the board adopted in the personnel manual many years ago, whenever a holiday falls on either a Tuesday or a Thursday, the board has the option of granting the Monday before the Tuesday holiday as a day off uh holiday and the Friday after the Thursday holiday as a day off. So, I have that listed um as an action item

under the consent agenda. As always, you guys can either uh vote on the consent agenda as is or you can pull one or more of the items out of the consent agenda if you want to vote on them separately. What's the board's pleasure? Move to approve the consent agenda. I second it. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? I I No, the one thing I'd like to follow up on is the July 15th meeting is an odd it's an it's the uh third Tuesday of the month because we had scheduling issues um during that that time period. We were first going to be uh having the town meeting on July 8th, I believe it was, and we moved it to July 15th. That is also the night of a public hearing for the various annexation resolutions that we've been looking at over the last uh couple of months there. Off the top of my head, I believe there are three properties that are subject to a public hearing for annexation. So that's what the July 15th date. I have to join by Zoom that night. Excuse me. I have to join by Zoom that night. Okay. Uh town administrator, does that include the uh is that for one of the properties? Is that the service station that's out of town? Yes, it does. Okay. All right. Thank you for that clarification. Uh there are no public presentations tonight, so we're going to go ahead and move into citizens input. Miss Mayor, same old same old. We have got to do something with the water issue down in Valley View because I am tired of getting up at 11 and 12 o'clock in the in the morning when it's raining with a snow shovel pushing water over the sidewalk so my house don't flood.

The when I come up I looked at the drain. The drain is not big enough to hold the water. When all that water comes from the overflow pond, that's where the overflow is. It comes behind all those town houses. We got to get something's got to get done. It's It's not fair that I have to sit there, you know, when it rains or gets up in the middle of the night when it rains and out there shoveling water because the lower swale did the fills up. Did the swale fill back in? No. Oh, further up. That's a different story. Well, give us a different story. Let's see. There's fences. And then someone took and put a porch type thing out and filled in the swale, put gravel and all that, that's all filled up. So when the water comes down and then her house floods too because the water has nowhere to go. The one that filled in the swale house floods. And it's not that I'm trying to cause problems with my neighbors, but even if we can get some drains like we did the upper swale, maybe if we can do that for the lower swale for maybe the water to get caught up further, then we we can look at it again. I know over the years we we've tried putting in the the swale, deepening the swale, and then we put in that drain, and I thought the drain was big enough. Then for the upper part, it works. It's perfect for the upper part. It's the lower swale. It's the lower swale clo uh closer to the houses. Okay. That's where the problem is. Is there a drain under the sidewalk too? There. I have a drain underneath my

sidewalk that has two pipes. They can't handle it. There's just so much water. Yeah, I know. We put That's the drain that that the town put in on your property. Yeah. Yeah, but last Wednesday, I mean, I'm out there with the shovel when it's raining really hard during the day. And so, and then now I have two dogs and they all decide that, you know, it's a pond. Told you about those labs. Oh, it's not a lab. I had to put her to sleep. I'm sorry. I have a blue healer and a pit terrier. A blue healer. Oh, yes. Yeah, believe me, my granddaughter bought it for my great grandson. Don't ask me why, but she did. Calvin, yeah, we can look into it. I'd appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. You would think I'd know the back your backyard by pure memory now for as many times as we've been out there over the years. Yeah. Well, I have the one the one drain at the end or I at the upper part. But and Calvin, this this wasn't something that the town did. It's a product of bad development. Is that correct? It's it's it's a product of the streetscape when they put that overflow pond in at the PNC Bank. I don't know why they didn't put the overflow into a drain like to take it out underneath the street. They put the overflow and as it comes right over and flows right down behind the houses. Okay. To to answer your question, mayor, yes, it is a it was a design from the developers. Okay. All right. Let's go ahead and move into

unfinished business. Oh, sorry. Would anyone else like to speak this evening? No. Just kidding. um an unfinished business proposed ordinance 2025-02 which is the flood plane code update. So you have that this is something that you um read into the minutes at the last meeting. Um, sort of a synopsis of it is that our we are required to have a flood plane ordinance in order for the town and its residents to qualify for national flood insurance. If we do not have the ordinance and we don't enforce the ordinance, we technically can be removed from the National Flood Plane um uh program uh uh making it impossible for residents to be able to get flood insurance if they need it. Um it is frustrating. It's you know, we always talk about an unfunded mandate. This is a regulation on the on the federal and state level, but they dump it on the local municipality to be the enforcement agency of it. So, there is what MD puts out as a model ordinance. Um, I can't tell you objectively whether or not the town had a how how long how far back the flood plane ordinance goes. I know that when I came here in ' 07, MDE advised us that we had to update it and we did update it around 2013 using the model ordinance at that time. The state came out with a new model ordinance in 2018.

And there are uh there are some subtle differences in that model ordinance and ours. But one of the biggest um issues with our existing ordinance, and you see it in the red striketh through is it where the model ordinance, let's just say the model ordinance said it must be built in accordance to section section H of the model ordinance. When they did our when MD did our code, they referenced section H, but our code is not set up with that type of nomenclature. It would have been section 10-500.2, whatever. So, there were all kinds of references to go to get other information that really didn't work unless you had the model code to see where the model code was telling you to go and then you would compare it to our town ordinance. here. There's three other um salient changes to this ordinance. Number one is that in the original ordinance um it had um it had referenced that anyone wishing to appeal the flood plane ordinance would go through the town's board of zoning appeals. And we have since created a code enforcement board of appeals that handles things like uh dimensions and topo and things that are more structural and engineering wise. And we just feel that our board of code enforcement appeals is better suited to handle this type of uh appeal as opposed to uh the board of zoning appeals. So this uh ordinance makes reference to the fact that the appeals process will go

through the code enforcement board of appeals not the uh board of zoning appeals. The other salient change in this is that um the when somebody has incurred a significant what is called substantial damage to their property. they have to bring their uh their property up to code in terms of raising it above uh what the environmental folks have determined is a base flood elevation. And typically you have to be 2 feet above the base flood elevation. So the base flood elevation is is derived by a a um an altitude above sea level if that makes sense. And I think I talked about it at the last meeting when the base flood elevation in a particular area might be 300 feet above sea level. That's not suggesting that the sea is going to flood and flood, you know, get that high in in our area. It's just a a a form of a measurement that they use to say what the base if if there's a substantial rain what the scientific estimation of where that flood level will be. So if you hypothetically have a base flood elevation of 300 feet and the bottom of your property is let's say 2 feet below that at 298 feet above sea level, you're below you're you're hypothetically projected to receive up to 2 feet of flood water into your property and hypothetically into your home. And so what the FEMA regulation says is that you not only have to raise your building

if you incur substantial damage, you have to raise it up to the base uh flood level of 300 ft, but there's a safety margin of two additional feet above that. And so if if if you incur damage to your property or you do improvements to your property that are more than 51% or 51% of the value assessed value of your home or appraised value of your home, you're no longer, let's call it, grandfathered, so to speak, in your existing condition. So there was a loophole in the federal law that people that were trying to get around spending the money to properly bring their property into compliance would have damage to their property. and they would just pull building permits out, you know, slowly like a dripping faucet, so to speak, over a long period of time to avoid that one-time expenditure that would be over 50 uh 50% or 51% or more. And so the federal government gave local municipalities the ability to say that it was accumulated damage and repairs over two, five, 10. You can go as high as 20 years. So that would mean if somebody came in and was making improvements to their home, if the value of let's say over a 20-year period, finally got over the tipping point of uh equal to 51% or more of the value of the home, they were no longer compliant in the flood plane regulations. From a staff level, we thought it was unfair to go to a high number, but we do think it's reasonable to say over a five-year period so that you can get these properties uh into

compliance. And one of the things I want to point out from from the staff's perspective, what we're looking at is not only the life safety aspect of the people that are living there, but also the emergency responders that are repeatedly called out to some of these areas to deal with these things. And they're in, you know, rapid water sometimes in the middle of the night, all kinds of debris in the water. We have some areas where there are no electrical power poles or telephone poles in the area. All the electric area comes into basically a transformer sitting on the ground which hypothetically becomes submersed in water. Now, there are safety precautions built into that so that there isn't a catastrophe, but it's just a risk um in there that we don't really want to put our emergency responders in that position all the time. So that's one of the changes is to say that uh any repairs or upgrades um repairs, damage or upgrades over a five-year period are total together to to reach that 51%. The other change in there, as I'm scrolling through the document, you can see the red strike through. Um here's where we have the definition of the code enforcement uh appeals board. Um, a lot of the other red stuff is just matching the nomenclature with um, the model code. There were some definitions that the model code said that we had to put into the document. But the other salient point here is that the the floodplane regulations were silent on what do you do as a

municipality or a code enforcement agency. Once it has been determined that there's a danger uh to occupants who are there, the the code is silent on how to deal with that. And so what we're doing is using our property maintenance code, the language in our property maintenance code, which is recognized internationally as a way to deal with dangerous properties in terms of uh placarding them, making it clear that they're dangerous, making a determination that people cannot stay in that building, a time period for the owner to fix the problem, the ability for the the town to take mitigation action to eliminate a hazard. Um, and then a process for the property owner to appeal that decision. So, what I'm saying to you is if FEMA, in talking to FEMA the other day, they actually said they might borrow our language because they recognize that their code was silent on what do you do after the catastrophe is over, the flooding is over, and the properties are unsafe. how do you deal with that? And so we have good language in there talking about how we would deal with those unsafe and dangerous properties. So that in a nutshell is what this ordinance um is. We had to submit it to the Mau Department of the Environment uh for their review. They uh verbally had said to me the other day that they were very comfortable with it and we should be getting a letter in the next week or two confirming that. So, we were required to let them know that we were doing this and we at least verbally got a sign off on what we're doing because we're not really doing anything any significant of any significance. How many of these properties, Calvin, uh do we have

currently that need to be up on the regulation of of the flood plan? Um I would say off the top of my head, we might have maybe 35 to 40 occupied properties, but we have a lot of structures like accessory sheds and swimming pools that are in the flood plane areas. But in terms of where people could really get hurt, I'm guessing like, you know, 35 to 45 total properties that are affected by by And how many of them are mobile? Um, we have one property that contains 30 mobile homes in total, but 21 of them are actually in the flood plane area. the remaining ones are above the flood level. So the likelihood of them ever being impacted is not very great. Okay. Thank you. So are we asking for a motion on this? Um it is you if you guys are comfortable with it, you can adopt this ordinance tonight. Is there a motion on the table to approve this ordinance? So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion regarding this? Hearing none. All in favor? I I passes. Thank you. Town administrator. New business. Resolution 2025-12, which is our fiscal year 2026 operating budget. Town administrator, do you have that? Yes. So, before we get into the actual resolution, um we just want to follow up on a lot of the leg work that's been done on the budget. Um, for the last couple years, we've had a rather straightforward budget. It's not that complex. We developed the system many, many years ago. Um,

I can say with a very very high success rate that the town typically comes very very close to its revenue projections but typically spends less than what we project from an expense standpoint which is good in the standpoint that um we've all talked at nauseium in the past of how the sue water moratorum affected the town and the reduction of real estate tax values. You know, we talk about um the town of Rising Sun's total total overall assessed value of properties being about $236 million back in 2010, which was the apex of the property values going up out of the 90s and early 2000s. and that generated about $900,000 of real estate tax at that time. The town just passed the $236 million assessed value last year. This year, you're going to see that our overall assessed value is uh roughly $243 million in change. And that is how the real estate tax rates is derived by basically taking that overall number and dividing it by 100 and then multiplying that by our tax rate. And that's that's consistent throughout the state of Maryland. So the point I'm driving at is that the the housing bubble and the sewer and water moratorum really had a significant impact on the town of Rising Sun. And when we get into the actual uh resolution, I'm going to point you in

the direction of some really remarkable data that's coming out of of what has happened up to this point. But you have a budget that's um divided into our general funds and our proprietary funds. Um, just as a reminder, the auditing standards for a general fund and proprietary funds are different. Um, we've talked about this in the past. When you look at the proprietary funds, we have to show depreciation as a cash item. So, when we get to the end of the proprietary fund, you will see how we pull depreciation out of it because it's not really a cash in cash out value. And if you just show the depreciation in there, we would be way underwater in many cases because depreciation is basically a a a value attributed to your infrastructure and your roads and your vehicles and it's you know it's an accounting thing that you have to depreciate that. So the number is really high. So it would skew our bottom line budget. Um, the other thing I always remind the board is that because, and I'll say this honor, honestly, other communities all over the country have, I believe, a lot more flexibility in the way they do their they can do their budgets. And we've talked about this before. Even in your household, they always recommend that you have maybe six months to a year, a year and a half of savings to cover all your expenses. And that in case a a catastrophe happens, that holds true to municipal government. So when you're looking at the total of, you know, just in quick math, the total across the board of all of our funds is

probably like $5 million. We should have a year and a half in reserve. And the only way you build that up in reserve is having a lot more revenue coming in than expenses. And you roll that additional money into your rainy day funds. And that's one of the reasons why the town had took such a hit when it came time for them to build their water and sewer plants back in the day. They had no rainy day funds set aside to do that. So they had to take on massive debt. We talked about that $26 million. And you divide that among a thousand rooftops in general terms and it's a lot of money. And it's the reason why our water and sewer rates are so high is because we're digging out of those financial decisions that were made many years ago on how to guide the town going forward. So, we only you're going to see in this budget and and people and and some of you folks have been on this board for a while, Auggie, you go way back. We typically balance our general fund with like $14,000 surpluses. And when you're talking about a a $2.5 million budget or $3 million budget across the board, balancing it on a $14,000 surplus, that's not a whole lot of margin for error. But yet, as we always say every year, and I think it's important for residents to recognize this, we are one of only two communities in Cecil County that offer the robust services that we do of code enforcement and building inspections. And now we're doing our own storm water management, and we provide police protection. And there are some communities in Cecil County that don't do any of that. And in some of those communities, those tax

rates are actually higher than our tax rate. And we're going to see that in in the the later data that I give you. So this elected body, prior elected bodies for the last more than a decade have done a really good job of keeping real estate tax low, actually growing the staff to provide the robust services. And let me put this in perspective. There are communities in this county that have maybe slightly more population than they than we do, but they have sometimes two to three times more number of staff that we do. We're right now we're budgeted for 14 staff members, which is significantly lower than our similar communities in the county, but we're actually only operating with nine right now for a variety of reasons that, you know, we've talked about before and will continue to talk about. Our budget reflects filling those vacancies in in here. So what I'm saying to you is this is pretty standard for what we've had to do over the years is, you know, keep the momentum going forward without reducing uh staffing, reducing services or raising taxes. So one of the things that we did as a staff this year to make it a little bit easier is, you know, when I first came here in 2007, the budget was like two pages and that was it. And so I always joke, we used to have, you know, a miscellaneous line item that had two or $300,000 in a miscellaneous line item. He's like, how in the world do you objectively do a budget with that much in miscellaneous? So one of the things we've done over Would you like an answer on that? Yeah. No.

So, one of the things we've done over the years is divide our general fund into individual departments. So, you can see how much is being spent on public works. You can see how much is general admin. and we've diversified that into emergency management, uh, parks and recreation, streets, and then I think it's been very beneficial when we're talking about very small margins at the end of the year to really drill down into what is really needed at each one of those departments to make sure we can meet our targets in the future revenue-wise and taskwise. But that also gets, you know, I don't want to dismiss it, but it also gets pretty mundane and a lot of details in terms of sitting here and going over the budget and all those because you could ask a question and in order to answer it, I we uh Judy and I might have to go to seven or eight different pages in the document to say there's a little bit here and there's a little bit there because we diversified the expenses. So, what we did for you this year is, and I'm sort of being comical when I say this to you, but picture the budget as a cake. And we baked a cake for you. Here's your budget. And so, what we have given you is a summary sheet of what the ingredients are in the cake. And so on that summary sheet in the general fund, you can see all the all the items broken into categories of what is in the uh general fund um what was baked into the general fund that we felt was a priority. And when I talk about priority, I'm talking about the concept of keeping the lights on, keeping the

place operating. what do we have to do to do bare minimum? And then there were some other things that we looked at as being secondary in terms of they're not absolutely critical. we could do some finagling, do without, you know. So, we put them in a secondary category for you to be able to see that. And then we put things like optional into where at the end of the day, we really don't have to do it, but as a staff, we're recommending that we do do it. And on your summary, you're going to see the money set aside for community events. And those community events are um Sunfest, Spooktacular, and Winterfest. Winter Extravagana. Winter Extravaganza. So, thank you, Mr. Mayor, for correcting. We we we as a staff are, you know, understand the importance of that, what it means to the community. We just I know the mayor's going to talk about it. We had an amazing sunfest, you know, a lot of participation, a lot of goodwill, a lot of community spirit. Um, winter extravaganza allows people to come out and enjoy carriage rides as a family and take photos and build memories. And the tractor supply or the tractor um parade is one of the, you know, the hall, it's now becoming a hallmark event in the county. it's taken off so well and so we can take pride and ownership of that and so can our residents. So in baking this cake for you but trying to keep our you know be able to maintain the tax rate without raising it and still provide the services. We said let's make sure we're funding that ex you know those uh those

community events. So that's basically what you're looking at on your general fund in terms of what is priority and what is not priority. Um and how the budget the ingredients that were in the budget. So, you're going to see it later on in the um in the resolution, but basically we have 3,767,582 of projected revenue and $3,764,97 of expense for a fund projected fund uh uh fund balance at the end of the year of $3,00 485. So that's consistent with what we've had to do over the last couple of years. And I'll highlight that a little bit more. But um buried also in the details in here that I think is important is that we have to we have to fill the vacancies on our staff. And so this budget reflects filling those vacancies. It also projects increase in electric that everybody's experiencing the area. It it reflects uh putting money into paving some roads, uh picking up some vehicles, taking care of some things at uh Veterans Park like the pavilion. Um it's not just a tighten up the budget and don't do anything to enhance the community. We've never done a budget that way. we've always sort of rolled the dice and put our chips in the middle of the table and you know move forward with this stuff and then um evaluated it as the year goes. And so that's why it is pretty neat that we typically hit our

revenue marks and even though we prepare for a worst case scenario, we never seem to spend what we say we're going to spend in expenses. And that's because all of the staff, including the elected body, is very conscious about the money that's being spent and we want to get the best bang for our buck. And so that is a snapshot of the general fund in there. Um I think I I I think it's also important to raise at this point. um you know, in the police department in in particular, we we need we needed to make some improvements in our police department because regardless of one's political, you know, uh position in the world, obviously going back a couple years ago, um it's very difficult to attract police officers right now for a variety of reasons. There's been a lot of changes made where maybe you can make an argument that there's been too much of a push to hold law enforcement accountable for things that might have not are perceived as not being done right. And we all know there's there's two sides to everything and it gets really complicated. But the point is it's driven a lot of aspiring candidates away from wanting to be in law enforcement. And so what we're seeing and the town has experienced this that we've had officers that have jumped to greener pastures because everybody from the cities to the the state and the counties all over the place are all competing for a smaller pool of candidates. And it's getting really hard to attract those

candidates. And so we are, this will be the second time in the last, I'm going to say like five years, we we're projecting to make some salary adjustments in the law enforcement arena to make us more competitive. We did it a couple years ago and we got great results, but I guess everybody turned around and said, "Hey, look what Rising Sun's doing. Let's do that and do it one better." And so we we are spending money in a manner that we we want to move our town forward, but we also want to make sure that our town continues to be one of the safest communities in Cecil County with one of the lowest crime rates. And so the elected body and the staff and the chief, we've made a commitment to making sure that we put the community's best foot forward to be able to um do that. Um, so there's there's a lot of thing other things in this uh budget. Um, we have computers just like anyone else does. We have computers that get up there in age and they're slowing down. And as we're automating everything, we have to upgrade computers. So, we have that. Um, we have public works vehicles that we have one or two where if I didn't know better, I would swear Fred Flintstone could drive it because there's typically like no floorboards underneath it. You can see down to the road in certain cases. And so we've been putting gum and chicken wire on these things over the years. And so we got a couple in public works that we have to go ahead and make the commitment to uh to uh replace. Um we have a lot of stuff a lot of good stuff coming to the church. Um we're going to be spending uh we're going to be making a really good investment. Uh

the mayor will be um I believe the mayor already did release a visual of it a while back. We're making a big investment in our downtown uh area to make the church a cultural center and make it a place where if we have a parade, people can hang out on the on the patio that we're going to build. If you go to any of our local businesses and buy a sandwich or buy a coffee and you want to sit outside, it'll be an open area for you to be able to sit outside. We have some really exciting stuff going to happen inside the church. We're working with some other entities. It we it hasn't been finalized yet, but it's going to be really cool what we're going to be bringing um to the town from a cultural standpoint. Um as you know, we have purchased properties in town. Um we have purchased two properties and we're taking possession of a third. And we've uh you know, thanks to the mayor and the elected body, we have built fantastic relationships with the state of Maryland and we're starting to see a lot of grant money funneled our way to improve our town. What I'm saying to you is I just got done saying our margins are really close, but we put ourselves in a position with assistance to buy properties. And so we're buying uh two, we're getting possession of three of the properties. All three will be torn down. Two of them will be turned back over to the private sector to uh reimburse the town for some expenses, but to have a clean slate to build something else there that's bigger and better and works better within the economic ecosystem that we are trying to build. The other

property we're going to turn into a municipal parking lot that will be ideally situated in our downtown area to help help our entrepreneur mom and pop businesses over the next couple of years. And I'm going to highlight it again in the resolution. You're going to see evidence of this. The town of Rising Sun is becoming a very attractive place for investment. And we have corporations wanting to come here. But I know this elected body and our staff is committed to always elevating the entrepreneurial spirit of Rising Sun and putting them in a position to prosper and be successful. And that's why we're making some of the investments in the downtown area. So again, I'm talking about very small margins in our budget, but I'm talking in essence um 740741,000 worth of capital investments that we're talking about making going forward on top of the investments that we already made. So that's the general fund. The proprietary fund, what it's basically set up the same way. you have a uh a summary page that provides the priority and in both the priority and the secondary line items in there. What makes the proprietary fund a lot easier is that and a lot of people don't realize this that 99% of well let me correct myself there a large percentage of the revenue that or the charges that we have to charge are simply paying back debt service. Again, I ask people and everybody members of this board are paying this sewer and

water rates. Um, that's what we inherited. That's what we had to dig out of a hole. But a large percentage of that is just being paid through the debt service on it. What I'm saying to you is the town of Rising Sun has made no money per se on the water and sewer funds going back to maybe all the way back to like 2009 uh 2008 2009. We've had very very small margins of at the end of the year because we're pumping all that money in the debt service. And you've also heard me talk about the other thing that comes down our our way is when the federal government and the states and the environmental folks get together and say hey we have to do things in the environment. Nobody is sitting here saying we don't want to help the environment. The frustrating thing is the feds and the state come up with the idea and then they charge the little old municipalities with spending the money to do it. And I've talked about this before. We have under an MS4 requirement basically a $2.75 million bill that we have to come up with to comply with nutrient loading that goes into the Chesapeake Bay. It's as simple as that. And so the feds and the state come up with the idea, but they basically tell a thousand rooftops with a, you know, a $5,000 margin, a $14,000 margin, go try to figure out how to raise $2.75 million on top of that. And so it's convoluted. It's confusing, but we are muttering our way through it. And so the water and sewer fund is pretty simple because there aren't a whole lot of areas where we can cut anything. There's no waste in it.

There's no surplus. So at the end of the year, you're looking at the um the total between between the two funds. The sewer fund um the total between the two funds will be 48,839. uh $48,839 between the two funds is what our end of the year net gain will be. That's actually a little bit higher than what we've done in the past. So, our budgets are straightforward. Um at this time, I'd be happy to answer any questions you have regarding the budget before we get into the resolution itself. Does anyone have any questions or are we good to move in the resolution? We're good to move into the resolution. All right. So, in order to adopt our budget, we pass a resolution for it. We already pass the tax rate. Remember I talked about that the elected body committed to keeping the tax rate the way it was and charged the staff to to get creative to have a balanced budget and that's what we have delivered as a balanced budget. So you have resolution 202512 before you. It's a resolution adopting an annual budget for the fiscal year July 1st, 2025 through June 30 of 2026 and authorizing the collection of taxes here in levy accessing assessing service charges and appropriating funds for the fiscal year. I'm going to go past the first couple of boiler plates, the first three. I'll go to the fourth one because that's where the salient information is. Whereas the town has

received a notice from the Mau department of assessments and taxation that for the tax year beginning July 1st, 2025, the estimated real property accessible base will increase by 3.12% from 235,86,64 to 243,161,490. which is a 7,354,886 increase over last year. That means the value of properties went up higher. We're going to focus on that in a second. Whereas the town of Rising Sun, like other small municipalities, is facing significant challenges in providing basic services such as streets and sidewalks, maintenance, props, trash collection, and other amenities to our residents. However, Rising Sun is also unique in the amount of other services that are provided through real estate revenues such as daily police patrols and protection, weekly trash, recycling and yard waste collection, sfest, spooktac spooktacular, winter extravaganza parade, tiger trot, little parade, carol sing and other family fun activities. And whereas the past year has brought continued economic pressure on municipal operations, even as overall inflation has moderated, rising sun's cost for essential materials such as asphalt, concrete, piping, and other infrastructure components remain well above preandemic levels. and construction related expenses continue to rise due to persistent supply chain

challenges and market volatility. Energy and utility costs to tied to operating town facilities, lighting public areas, and maintaining parks have also increased between three and 15% year-over-year. At the same time, the town faces growing compliance obligations from state and federal mandates, including storm water regulations, ADA accessibility requirements, and environmental protection standards, many of which impose a substantial cost without providing corresponding funding. Despite these economic pressures, the town's real estate tax base increased by only 3.12%, resulting in a projected revenue increase of just 2.5%. A modest gain that does not keep pace with the rising cost of delivering essential services and community programs. And whereas the town recognizes that this is an impact on all of our residents and businesses, and we continue to work to automate and streamline our services to achieve greater efficiency and services while maintaining comparable tax rates to the other seven Cecil County towns. With our current tax rate estimated to be the fourth lowest overall tax rate in the county, the lowest percentage of tax rate increase over the past nine years, the second lowest real estate tax burden per resident, the fourth lowest tax burden on the median household income of our residents, the fourth lowest average residential town tax bill, and the lowest median tax rate. And whereas in addition and in order to lessen the tax

burden on our residents, the town of Rising Sun is the only local government that provides a 2% discount on all real estate tax and debt service tax if paid in full by July 1st of 2025. And whereas although the last two decades have been challenging, the patience and resiliency of our residents and businesses has clearly pushed our community to the front of the line as a place to raise a family and operate a business. And this progress is reflected in Rising Sun's housing market, which ranks among the top performing towns in Cecil County. were actually number two in the housing market. Whereas home values are not only outpacing the county's average, but have grown by over 3.2% in the past year alone, signaling strong demand and investor confidence and a high quality of life that continues to attract new families and businesses alike. And whereas to that end, the mayor commissioners have developed an annual operating budget for primary governmental and proprietary fund activities for fiscal year 25 C attached that are designed to make investments in our infrastructure, main street revitalization, repave our roads, fix sidewalks, and offer additional amenities and services to our residents. And whereas the primary governmental fund has a balanced budget by way of reserve fund transfer to reflect possible expenditures that will be tied to the American Rescue Plan and American Jobs Plan. The fund has a total revenue projection of roughly 3,767,582 and projected expenditures of 3,764,97

and will result in a surplus of roughly $3,485 at the end of the year. And whereas the proprietary funds have a balanced budget with total revenue projections of roughly 2,573,156 and a projected expenditure of 2,524,317 and will result at a surplus of roughly $48,839. Whereas the budget will be based upon the following already established tax rates and service charges as follows. The tax rate for all real property not otherwise exempted and located within the corporate limits of the town of Rising Sun shall remain at 0.46 for each $100 of assessed value as approved previously in resolution 20250. The Cecil County Department of Finance will collect the real property tax and the debt service and utility tax listed on the annual real estate tax bill on behalf of the town of Rising Sun. The town will continue to provide a 2% discount upon payment in full of any real property tax if taxes are paid in full by the end of July 2025 and a 1% penalty each month for any payments received after October 1st of 2025 until the balance is paid in full. Such taxes on land and improvements shall be computed on the valuation of said properties as certified to the town of Rising Sun by the Maryland State Department of Assessment. The tax rate for all tangible personal property of business, utilities, or contract carriers operating in the corporate

limits of the town of Rising Sun, shall remain at 0.90 per $100 of assessed value of all tangible operating personal property, including commercial inventory in computing and levying such taxes on tangible personal property. The valuation of said properties as certified to the town of Rising by the Mau State Department of Assessment shall be used as the assessed valuation of tangible personal property. The town shall maintain one flat $384.36 debt $36 debt service and utility tax assessment on all real property tax parcel that is currently developed. who is vacant, not developed, but can be developed in accordance with the town zoning code unless such property is declared non-developable and currently exempt is spelled out in resolution 20 2016-10. The charge is assessed against an individual dr dwelling unit or independent commercial space with the intent to have each unit cover a portion of the cost related to debt service financing of town buildings, parks and property, past utility upgrades, vehicle streets, and sidewalk restoration. And regardless of the types of services provided, the level of service, or the lack thereof, this assessment will be reflected on the annual rural property tax bill issued by the county and will be subject to the same discounts and penalty fees as real property tax. If a new dwelling unit or business space is built, rented, or otherwise discovered after July's tax bills are issued, it won't be charged the debt service fee on the county bill that year. Instead, the town will issue a separate prrated bill

to the property owner for that year and included in the following year's county tax bill going forward. Number seven, the town shall collect on a regular schedule without extra charge all normal household originated trash and recycling from single family dwellings in accordance with chapter 7 of the town code. In addition, certain commercial properties and locations with multiple collection points may also be provided services in accordance with chapter 7 with the cost for these services to be assessed in accordance with the town's fee schedule as adopted and modified by the merit commissioners. Number eight, some revenue projections as shown in this budget are related to fees as indicated in the town's current fee schedule as set by resolution from time to time by the board of commissioners. Number nine, the town's utility rates will continue the following the prescribed proformer plan for water and sewer as adopted by resolution 2016-13 and as modified from time to time by resolution of the mayor commissioners with the rates to match the p the pro projected charges for the calendar year 2026 as shown in the town's water and sewer rate table. Number 10, discounts for early payment of utility bills, failure to pay utility bills, building permits, and other service fees due to the town will continue to be spelled out in the town's fiscal poly policy and adopted fee schedule, which can be amended from time to time by resolution of the mayor commissioners. Therefore, being enacted and resolved that the merit commissioners of the town of Rising Sun wish to adopt the proposed fiscal year 2026 annual budget to include the tax rates and service

charges as set forth. Now, therefore, be it further resolved that the merit commissioners have passed, approved, and adopted this resolution on this 10th day of June. The last thing I want to show you because I I said I wanted to bring this home. There's devil in the details on this which are very interesting. So, hear me out on what I'm saying. Overall, the town's overall real estate tax base increased by only 3.12% this year, down from a 5.5 increase the year prior. Our local housing market continues to show strong performance with home values rising by 3.2%. 2% over the past year. This modest taxbased growth is primarily due to the absence of new residential construction. However, it underscores a more meaningful trend, the consistent appreciation of existing properties. This sustained growth reflects the ongoing investments made by local business, property owners, and the town itself. All of which contribute to a strong, resilient market. It also speaks to the enduring charm and character of Rising Sun, the qualities that continue to attract new interest and strengthen community pride year after year. What I'm saying to you is we don't get new housing builds in our community. We don't get brand new properties that come in with a brand new tax rate that gets thrown on top of our projected base rate increase from year to year. The other communities in Cecil County get the benefit of that. And so what's remarkable is that it is very clear that our community is very attractive and a

lot of investments are are coming to the town. What I mean is people are investing in what they have now because it is a good a good investment. And so when I say the overall tax base is growing only by 3.12%, it's not getting that growth from a new commercial building. It's getting it or it's not getting it from a new residential property. It's getting it from all the businesses that are investing in in the area and the homeowners that are investing and people that decide they don't want to live in the town anymore, but they're selling it for significant amount of money, more than what they bought the property for. We are number two in this county in home values. The only one that has a higher home value than us, I believe, is Chesapeake City. The average home value in this community is $393,000 is the average home value. And so that home value is growing at a rate of 3.2% and it's growing at a faster rate than the county is in its totality. So that's an encouraging piece of financial news. The other thing that I think is important is I mentioned about our median effective property tax rate being the lowest in the county. And so when you want what that means is that the median affected property tax rate shows the percentage of a home's market value that a typical homeowner pays and property taxes each year in a given area. and it provides a clear measure of local property tax burden relative to home value. It's calculated like this. If the annual property tax is divided by

the home's market value, so if a home in Rising Sun has a value of $300,000 and the owner pays $2,430 in property taxes, their effective tax rate is 0.81. 81. Why is this important? This provides a real life perspective. It tells you how much residents actually pay based on real home values, not just tax rates on paper. This provides home buyer confidence that they can compare the town's uh towns fairly and understand local affordability. It provides a benchmark that enables us to not only compare ourselves to other Cecil County communities, but it allows us to compare ourselves to the state and national. So rising sun's median effective tax rate is 081. Maryland's Maryland is 1.06. The national median is 1.802 and Cecil County is 089. So that means that rising sun residents pay less in property taxes relative to their home value than most Marylanders and Americans and that includes Cecil County on the average. That reflects strong fiscal management and growing home values without disproportionately increasing the tax burden. What contributes to this? ongoing investments in public spaces, infrastructures and amen amenities, homeowners making those investments, businesses making those investments, stable municipal tax rates, and rising home values driven by community character, safety, and quality of life. What I'm saying to you is we're

actually doing pretty good despite the uphill battle we've had for nearly 20 years. So that's encouraging because there are there are other benefits coming over the horizon that's really going to put this community at a very sustainable position for for the foreseeable future. So could I get a motion to approve uh the budget? So moved. Seconded. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Yes. On page two, is the real estate and debt service tax paid in full by July the 1st or August the 1? On which one? Which which page two are you looking at? The resolution two of six of the resolution for the discount. It's by August 1st. August 1. It's by August 1. Is there a typo in it? No, a correction. You said July 1. Okay. Is there any other discussion? I just wanted to thank the staff. Uh, this budget reflects the board's continued commitment to conservative principles, living within our means, priority prioritizing essential services, and uh, protecting our taxpayers. So, thank you for your hard work on this. We do appreciate it. Uh, all in favor? I I budget passes. Thank you, town administrator. Thank you, staff. Moving forward into staff reports, town administrator. Um the only thing that I um I gave you a little bit of an update on the uh what we're doing with the church. Um we're going to settlement on the third and final property that we're getting acquis acquisition of on June 27th. Um we're

getting prices for demo. We're securing grant funds for the demo. Um, our intention is to take the buildings down and then probably put a crush and run on it and be able to use those areas for temporary parking as we continue to move forward with the redevelopment of the downtown area. Um we're also getting ready to start moving on the grant that we got for community park um and Triangle Park, the dog park that includes a new tot lot, bathrooms, uh dog fountains. There's a lot of moving parts to that that we still have to to figure that out, but that's on the horizon uh coming. Uh we're in paving seasonings uh season. So Judy will be working with her team to start, you know, working out a a paving schedule on uh some of the roads. I'm saying upfront, we know that we can't pave all the roads right now. We're taking the most priority ones, but we do have a long range plan on continuing to work on paving all of the roads over a short uh period of time. So, that concludes uh my town administrator's report. Thank you, assistant town administrator. No, tonight I don't have a report. Thank you. Uh chief. Okay. I have a few things to cover. Um first, the speed camera installation on Pearl Street. Uh if you've driven by there, you'll see that the camera's up. Um we're at the point now we're waiting for Delm Marva to install a meter. Um then the camera will go live. The camera will be live during the summer. Um although uh kids are out of school, there are still school functions happening like summer school and uh other uh events in the school system in the school building. So those

cameras will be live during that process. Um you also see that the speed trailers will be floating around different locations in town. Uh the speed cameras are to re-educate the the public on uh the uh speed limits throughout the town. Uh it helps reduce those uh you know events that may occur as a result of speeding accidents uh and things like that. Um it's an overall attempt to re-educate the public into uh having some courtesy for pedestrians and other drivers throughout town and reducing their speed. Second uh third thing I have to cover um we have seen an increase in autothefts in our community. Um, if you watch any nightly news throughout the country, you'll see that the uh the problems that Kia and Hyundai have with the uh theft protection has spilled over into our community. We've had five within a month. Um, and of those, we are aware who has been involved. We're gathering evidence and hoping to prosecute some soon. Um, However, we still need the assistance of the public. If you see something, say something. Um, if you're out during the overnight and you see something that looks odd to you, don't hold it until the morning. Pick up the phone and call. And, uh, that way we may catch someone in the act of doing a crime. Call 911. Yes. Call 911. The police number. 911. Yes. 911. If you leave a message, it's not going to be retrieved until the next morning. If you send me a Facebook message, it's not going to be retrieved until the next morning. If you send an email, it may be retrieved when I return to work. That's not good enough. We do need you to pick up the phone and call.

Okay? All those forms of communication are great if it's a very it's a non-emergency, but this is something that's important and will help your community. So, pick up the phone and call 911 for us, please. Um, I'm going to touch on also the applicant process that Calvin spoke of earlier. Due to many events, policing has become very competitive with the uh the uh hiring pool. Um, many agencies have upped their salary. They've upped all kinds of benefits. Um, but at the end of the day, you still have to pass the same standards throughout the state. Maryland's policing standards have been set by our legislature. It's overseen by the Maryland Police Training Commission and uh that doesn't change. So, no agency is going to overlook a poor decision you made earlier in life that won't allow you to be a police officer. No, no agency is going to overlook your drug use. Um things like that. It it doesn't happen. We're not accepting applications from those people that aren't of good character, moral character. Um, and people have questioned the fact that we're only looking for, and I can't say only, we're looking for people that have a high school education. Here's the thing. Um, you can go to a trade school out of high school and become very proficient at what you do. You can go to college out of high school and get a degree. You can go to a police academy at the age of 21 and get a degree. Also, you're going to walk away from mosties with a AA degree. That's not the end of it. Most agencies do provide tuition reimbursement to help

you get to your masters or any other schooling as long as it's relevant to what the uh field you're in. So yes, we take high school diplomas. We take the best candidates that are physically fit. And we will teach you how to become a good law enforcement officer. We will teach you to the same standard as any and every law enforcement agency in the state. So um if you're out there and you want to apply, we've got plenty of applications. Come talk to me. I'll talk to your ear off about it if you like until you submit an application and we can get you started. Uh, and beyond that, that's my report for now, unless there's a question. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, town attorney. Good evening, everybody. It's uh been a busy month trying to line up all your real estate settlements, but the good news is the one that Calvin talked about is going to happen at the end of this month, so about two weeks away. Uh I know that the long awaited uh 16 Main Street court case has moved its health ahead and this Friday we actually have a status conference to find out what the court's plans are and how we're going to move ahead on that. So that's a a very positive step. And then at the end of July we're going to have our first hearing on the board that you just created with the ordinance that you did tonight u on a uh variance application for the flood plane issue. Uh, so it's going to be a busy month preparing for that. So that's what I have unless you have any questions. Thank you, Jay. All right, moving forward into the mayor's report. We had a lot of events uh the end of May and uh beginning of June, uh we uh attended the Plumpton Park Zoo charity event, which was a really successful event. Uh raised a lot of money. Uh the town helped sponsor that event. Uh we love our zoo. We love uh coordinating with them and partnering with them. Um and uh by all accounts it

was a wonderful event raising a lot of money for Plumpin Park Zoo. The chief uh RSPD and myself attended the cops and cones event at Sod Jerk Ice Cream. Was a great event. Chief and I were both stunned at how many people came out. The place was packed. Um wonderful to see people connecting with our police department uh as well as with uh the Cecil County K9 group that joined us. Uh, last but not least, the town also attended, myself, Commissioner Kleiner, the assistant town administrator, and our town administrator attended the 350th anniversary of uh, Cecil County. Uh, this was an event hosted by the Cecil County Chamber. Uh, our good friend, Lieutenant Governor Aruna Miller, attended and one of her spotlights was the hard work of the Department of Information Technology uh, in Cecil County. uh and she spoke uh about the expansion of broadband as well as um the hard work that uh the county IT department continues to do. Um last but not least, Sunfest. Wonderful event. Uh even with the rain, people came out. The sun came out towards the end of the event. Uh but it was still a wonderful uh time hosted uh by the Rising Sun Chamber of Commerce. We thank them, their volunteers and their sponsors for all their hard work as well as the hard work of our public works department, our administration, and uh the police department as well. Um the town is currently selling our uh popsockets. Uh these go on the back of your cell phone. Uh they are going towards uh all the money raised goes towards our community events fund. Um and you can grab one at town hall anytime that you would like. Uh town halls open between 9 and 5. Uh, moving forward into commissioner's reports. Uh, Commissioner Kleiner, I wanted to echo uh accolades and thanks to our town staff and to the Department of Public Works and our police

department for their support on Saturday for Sunfest. Um, thank you so much for all that you do and for, you know, the the less glamorous, um, you know, blocking streets and redirecting traffic and, um, escorting us to parade uh, start sites and, um, everything in between. And we we just are um, very grateful for all your support. And, um, also thanks to the uh, Rising Sun Chamber of Commerce for putting on another great event. Um, it was probably the biggest Sunfest I've ever attended. Um, a lot of vendors. Um, there's always something new with the food trucks. Um, and I like food. Everyone knows. So, I'm always glad to see that. Uh, but it's just really, um, it's heartwarming to see a community come together like this every year. And it doesn't matter what the weather is, you know, they're they're coming out in droves anyway. So, thank you all very much. And I wanted to uh echo um Commissioner Kleiner, thank you for saving my life during the parade. Uh Commissioner Kleiner told me not to eat any of the candy for the kids and I decided to partake and ended up choking uh while we were driving uh towards the end of the event. Uh luckily the driver and Commissioner Kleiner helped me recover. Um, but lesson learned, do not eat the kids candy. Um, so that was Did you punch him to a little funny story? Is that a joke? So, uh, Commissioner Pearson. Oh, first of all, I'd like to say that's that must be a problem of the mayor, not everybody, because other members of this board and the police chief did not have any problems with the the candy. Um, I don't have

much. Just a reminder, school lets out Friday. Kids are going to be out playing during the day. Um, just be careful of what you're doing, checking your speed. That's my report. Thank you, Commissioner Warick. Um, I uh the only thing we have um some maintenance issues at the park we're looking at and we're uh get the parks and wreck um that program's underway. That's due to soon. Yeah. So, I I we don't Yeah. So, we are working um and the chief's been working with uh um uh Director Van Djk at the county parks and wreck. Uh the county is going to be putting on some programs um in the Rising Sun Town Park. And um I apologize for my tardiness. I was actually presenting on broadband to county council prior to this meeting. So, I I uh had to get out of there and get to here quickly. Um to start on July 7th. July 7th. Okay, great. All right. Uh any my report? All right. Thank you. Uh you can see on the agenda the board of zoning appeals and commission schedule as well as town events and upcoming town holidays, our trash, recycling, and yard schedule. Is there anything else come before the board this evening? Hearing none. Could I get a motion to adjurnn? So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? I. Meeting adjourned.