City Council - Regular Meeting

Heat. Heat.

Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat.

Heat up Uh welcome back to day two of the goal setting retreat setting clear direction for the year ahead. Uh we will now be reconvening our meeting. I do not need a motion for us to do that. And uh we will turn it over to Mr. Jeff Emory. Thank you Jeff.

Good morning everyone if you can hear me. Um we have another long not long but a a lot a lot of information today. Let's look at it that way. Not as a long day. Uh a really really um lot of good information on this agenda. So we want to stay on time and uh but at the same time u as I said yesterday at anytime there are questions um please please don't hesitate to to stop and and ask those. I just want to do a a real real quick wrap up yesterday. I I know you're going to be talking about these items more, but I just try to do a really really brief summary. We started the day with an exercise with for council working together as a governing body. and um you wrote down uh some different items and asked some questions about why you wanted to be on the council and some of the strengths you bring and values and that's all all this has been recorded. Then we talked about your CIP planning document. There were a few things questions came up from council members during that that I think got answered, but I just I don't I just want to be sure um that we uh uh um have a record of those. Uh, Council Member Jackson asked about the restrooms at the parks and um, Chris gave a a good update on where that stands and that the money's in the budget and uh, hopefully those are going to uh, be bid out this spring and completed. I think he said late summer, early fall. So, that that's on track to be done. Council member Black uh ask about the the community center and I think because maybe you had to change course somewhat for that project. Uh there's there's a study that's been looked at that again uh because the uh one of the partners

didn't work out, but but that's still uh on track to Jim, do you want to say something about that? Yes, that's part of the midyear budget recommendations that Wade went over. a little over 700,000 total 50,000 is recommended to update the master plan for the pool and community center. So that will be coming back to council for um you to approve a a budget amendment, but we're working closely with the consultant to move forward with that.

Thank you. Uh Mayor Sheffield asked about the Well, I said demo with station three. I think you're looking at other options. Chris reported on that as well, whether to demo the property or renovate the property and uh uh or the building, excuse me, and then just sell the property or do something with the building. But that's also being looked at and in the works as as to the best way to to proceed with with that site. Um I think mayor and I I don't know that I wrote this down but but you also mentioned u a note I made about the um the growth agreements with some other the other mis municipality uh in the area and I think that y'all said Kelly you may have said that'll be coming up at a later date on a council agenda as well. Yeah. But those are being worked on. So, I just want to cover the highlights especially of the some of the things that council members specifically ask about. Had a good report I thought from Freeze and Nicholls. Uh, one of the comments that was made um uh a a study um well, not a study, I guess a procedure to better position yourself uh for future growth. Uh I liked one of the comments Council Member Klutz made. take time to do things right. Uh I think what the uh what the gentleman was talking about uh Mr. Hinkle I believe it was was was more of a processoriented uh way of doing things to uh you know um centralized may have been the word a way to get things done and every no one could really see a negative side to to to doing this uh and look forward to seeing the final study. There was a financial update. As I said yesterday, I thought a lot of great information. I guess the biggest tech takeaway I made

from that. You got about a 17 million uh a healthy fund balance in your general fund. Uh you also got a report on a on your um storm water fund and your utility fund as well. But the general fund was where where the majority of your operations occur. um uh after you take account for everything that you've got planned and uh other liabilities and things it looks like about 17 million which is still very very healthy. So that was that was the high out I took away there and then we talked about the street strategic plan and that I thought that was a great report and I really commend the city for how far you've come on that and the only thing I wrote down there is I love the comment from Dr. Lynn strategy is the road map and the budget is the gas tank and we talked about that yesterday. Uh and um so um and then the mayor I thought your state I called it the state of the city. I forgot how you worded it but I thought that was really really good. A lot of really good information and I I commend I commend the city for all the great work uh you've accomplished in the past year. Uh I'm there were tons of things talked about I didn't hit as a highlight but that was my real real brief summary of yesterday. Uh is there anything else someone just wants to we're going to have time at the end of the day again today. We call it council members perspective for things that you you know maybe want to bring up that that didn't get addressed yesterday or today. But I just hit some real real major highlights up here today and we'll be doing that again at the end of the day. But anything anyone else uh wants to specifically mention right now before we proceed with our uh first presentation?

Yes. Did council member uh Mclofflin did he's not he had a reflection? I know he was online. Did we ever be able to get his up there also? Um, and I'm going to have to go back and look at my notes to be honest, but what was his item? Do you remember? I can't I I do not remember. And I do remember him speaking. Yeah, we could go back to it. We don't have to go to it now. Uh, I just like to get it.

I I will be certain that we nailed down his comment, sir. That's a good point. Uh, I just don't remember having that recorded, but that may be my fault. Yeah, I I I think what I I saw the text and I think he's on the the call here. U he had asked about the community center and the swimming pool and the design and you I thought and I thought I that's what I meant by that first item. Yes, but maybe I didn't give that enough. Yeah, he he Okay. Yeah, he had asked about that as well. So,

there was there anything else he asked about? Council member Mclofflin, if you can hear us, anything on the summary from yesterday that you'd like to add? Good morning, everyone. No, that what has been summarized already is sufficient. Thank you.

And like I said, we'll we'll expand upon this as we go through the day, but thank you for bringing that up. Well, if if nothing else, we will proceed with the first uh item of street maintenance and paving strategy. Um Chris Tester and assistant director um Michael Hannah. So, I'll let you start, Chris. Yeah. Jim, did you want to say anything at all or

No, thank you. Uh uh appreciate council coming back today. Uh that was a long day yesterday. a lot of good information and going to have some more presentations today and again some time at the end to hear any thing council wants to add if we left something off. Do you want to hear more about an item? So, we look forward to your comments, but at any point the you're going to hear some more technical conversations today on street resurfacing and housing and and uh uh storm water and some other things. So, don't hesitate to interrupt if you have questions and look forward to your feedback at the end of each session. Chris?

Yeah, thank you. Uh, first of all, I want to thank uh Dr. Lynn and and uh Tracy for throwing us a softball yesterday and sort of getting us all prepared for for this presentation. But, uh, council, today we have Withers Ravvenel, our pavement management consultant. They conducted the 2025 pavement conditioning survey using nationally recognized standards and developed a life cycle modeling tool to guide us in strategic planning. Their work helps us apply the right treatment at the right time, whether that's resurfacing or cost-effective alternatives like preservation methods to extend the pavement life and maximize our investment. They'll share the survey revol results, explain pavement conditioning trends, and outline full range of treatment options available. Joining us today, key members of the team. First of all, I want to recognize uh Carter Thompson, our public works senior engineer. Carter supported this pavement conditioning survey and will lead the implementation of the resurfacing plan and strategy that will be developed through the 5-year capital improvement program. Carter's role will ensure that the recommendations that we receive will become real improvements in the city streets. Next, we have Zach Ward. Zach is the uh with the field manager with Withers Ravenel. He specializes in asphalt and field construction. He brings hands-on experience and pavement surveys and resurfacing projects, making sure that the work in the field matches the plan. And Vlad, I'm sorry, but I'm not even going to attempt your last name. I'll let you say it when you come up here. Uh but Vlad's with us today also. He's a senior tech uh technical consultant. Um he offers a deep experience in pavement design and an analyst analyzation. His background includes advanced testing methods and life cycle cost evaluations helping us to choose solutions that are um both durable and cost-effective. So,

hey,

Chris, I'm sorry. Before you turn over the mic, um, so I I know council member Mclofflin and the mayor are familiar with some of this discussion in the past, but for um the the other council members, maybe you can just share. I'm sure from time to time you get a question about paving a road, and my street hasn't been paved in forever. Um, and I really compliment Chris and the team for the way they evaluate uh the pavement schedule and and work with consultants and others. So, there is a science to it. You're going to hear more about it today. Some of it does get very technical, but uh this is to to share with council and and let you know it's it's not just us saying do this one, do that. there there is a a system and a process to that and before you turn it over will you just kind of share how you focused on that over the past

I will but it'll kind of steal our thunder uh it's it's the presentation I'm sorry but but yeah u absolutely that's that's a really big part of the process is um if you about 2021 um we did our first pavement rating since 2007 um generally most municipalities ities. It's recommended that you do it every 3 to four years. We like to be on the three-ear cycle. 5 years is pushing it. Um we try to shoot for that 3 to four year type time cycle, which is why we're back to that now. But again, um from 2007 till 2021, we had not had one. Um so introducing that into um into our strategy and our toolbox was was the first implementation. And this is just a continued cycle of what we're working on, which they'll get into uh in depth of of what a pavement rating actually is, how how you use that to evaluate the streets holistically and and using scientific methods and strategic planning on on how and and different methods of how we'll approach to that. Um so this is the second cycle of that. We've we've been on a um this is our fourth year of our capital improvement plan on our pavement. Um, and and to to this point that Mr. Green spoke about, we get the same. Why is my street my streets worse than history? It's it's funny. We put these RFQS out. I always joke about it. I I wish uh all the citizens would submit because apparently they know way more about street evaluation than I do, but but it's it's always it's always good to be able to go back and use this information to justify, you know, these these this is how all the streets rank. We have 175 miles of street. That's equates to about 350 lane miles of street. Um, and each one of those are mapped by these guys. They they ride and visually inspect. They have a pair that goes out there and

does this. Um, so it's it's not this isn't AI. This is visual inspection with professionals been doing this for years. AI is becoming a part of it and and can be integrated into a part of it to help bridge that gap between. with the the boots on the ground is very important that you don't just eliminate that. You use that AI as a as a um subsidy to to the years that you're not doing inspections. But they'll they'll evaluate the streets and then essentially they'll sit down and look at that list after they've driven that mile and compare their results. And if they have different results, they're going to back the truck up and they're going to do it again and and see what one saw that the other one wants. So they come up with a consensus of what that rating is. But I'll give them an opportunity to speak on all that. Um, and then we'll follow back up if you have any questions after that. But that's just a intro into into the science of of asphalt.

Thank you. Welcome.

There it should be. Okay. Uh, good morning everybody. Um, it's been a pleasure working with Chris and Carter on this project and today we'll talk about the 2025 pavement condition survey and some payment management strategies like he just summarized there. Um, so I'm Zach Ward engineer with Wither Ravenell. I've been doing pavement for about six years now. Started out with the DOT doing resurfacing inspection work some on the 540 project and then the last three years I've been with Withers Ravenell doing municipal pavement management. And I have Vlad Mitch here with me today. uh he's been doing pavement design, pavement management for 25 plus years with the DOT and through municipal clients as well. And then there's some of our other team members here that helped out with our experience. We got experienced construction managers and experienced GIS specialists on our team as well. And so yeah, like we're saying, we're the pavement management group here at Woods Avenue. Our goal is to help multiple clients all the way through the cycle of pavement management, starting with, you know, developing a plan. What what's the vision for the roadway network for the city? Um, first step of that plan like we did for this project, a condition assessment. Uh, you know, seeing where we're at, getting good data, uh, taking that data, running through life cycle analysis, you know, seeing the budget scenarios we need, seeing the work plans we need for the future to achieve those goals. Um, taking a look at the full maintenance toolbox and most most towns, they're used to doing just milling and filling. You go take the asphalt up, bring it back. But we really like to treat the roads at all, um, stages of life, you know, the right treatment, right plan, uh, right place as Chris said. Um, and then you know, we work through the construction project, making bid documents to do that construction, help with construction inspection, keeping track of that construction history, and then always making sure our pavement teams are coordinating with the other assets such as water and sewer. That way, we're not going in and uh, you know, paving a road that has to get a water line replaced in a couple years. So, that's kind of a big overview of what we do here with the Ravenell and our pavement management team. And kind of most of these we touch in on the project there. I'm just going to add something here because Zach is going really quick.

Everything starts with the funding and the funding is what you do the town council besides the funding. But then uh all this circle we call circle of success is dependent on the funding and the planning and all these activities are not going to be possible.

Thank you. Just got a quick map here. This is uh some of the towns, municipalities we worked with around North Carolina doing all this same work, you know, all through this uh circle of success there. Um so now start first phase of the project was the PCS. What is a PCS? So like as Chris was saying, we go we ride every street segment you have all 175 miles of it. I recommend doing that every two to three years or even four years. Um you know make things are constantly changing in the roadway. Um and so it gives you an unbiased perspective. You know I don't live in Salsbury. I'm not trying to get one road paid over another. And then all this gives us data to do the life cycle analysis and plan future projects.

We can move you here. Not too bad. I like the town.

All right. So, a little bit the methodology. So, like we're saying about 174 miles of asphalt streets. We did this back in September. Um, and we're looking for these seven common pavement distresses as defined by LTPP, which is long-term payment performance uh program. And so mostly distresses like fatigue cracking, uh, patching of potholes and running roughness. Those are kind of structural defects that we're looking for. And then you got some environmental distresses like transverse cracking, block cracking, surface defects, and reflective cracking. And so essentially at the numbers you see in the parenthesis, we're looking for the severity of that distress and then the extent of that distress on the roadway network is that second number there. Um, and so to do this, like Chris was saying, we did a windshield survey. Uh we had two person crew in a truck. We drove every segment of your roadway. And when I say segment, we're talking kind of intersection. Intersection is your typical uh for a road. That's a segment. And so as we drive that segment, we have uh this application here you see in on a laptop. So we're entering those distresses we see and we're getting that real-time PCI score as we enter those. So like he was saying, you know, if the two parties in the in the car don't agree on that score, we'll turn around, drive it again until we both kind of agree on that score. And then you can see under that PCI score is the the rehabilitation. So we're just kind of using what treatment we would do on that segment as a gut check for that PCI score. And we'll talk about how that uh factors in next couple slides. There we go. So um yeah, so we drive every segment. Each segment gets a score and then that score gets uh filtered into our condition state starting with very good, good, fair, poor and very poor. So we take all those scores and we come up with overall network PCI and that came out to a 69.4. And what that is is a weighted average by lane miles for each segment to give our overall network PCI. And so we see here uh about

a third of our streets are in the poor condition, a third of the streets in the good, a quarter in a fair, and then a little bit at the top and bottom end of that condition range. So just a graph here kind of showing how that stacks up with other municipalities we worked with. Uh, so right there at about 69 PCI, you know, right there with the pack, we see a lot of these towns around the area between that 65 and 70 PCI range and kind of right short of what we consider our optimal payment management zone. You know, that's kind of the mid70s up until 80. Um, that's kind of where we really want to be ideally. Um, but at the end of the day, that's, you know, the score you want to be at, kind of what complaint level you want to manage at. Um, and we got some towns, you know, that want to be a little bit higher than that, and that's okay.

Yeah, go for it. Just to make sure y'all, um, PCI is pavement condition index. So, um, I'm not sure if we hit that on slide or not, but I I know he keeps we keep using that acronym. Make sure y'all know what that is. That's the pavement condition index, which is a national standard of how how you score streets. I was thinking about the same. You'll have to step up when you talk

payment condition index from 0 to 100 with the zero being of course the worst and 100 being the best and that payment occation index is derived uh from this seven distresses in a combination equations etc. But at the end of the day this number if it falls within this range if you go back exact one slide it gives you the condition state which is uh basically five condition states very good good fair poor very poor and the number on the right is the PCI range that defines this condition state. So it's basically at the end of the day a whole bunch of numbers collected datadriven uh kind of outcome that tells you in simple terms it's very good good fair poor very poor

I think it's interesting that Morrisville and carries such a high score because they got more money they know what to do with some likely that they would score that that's a great observation that That is a great observation. Um, but they also have a lot newer streets, too. Uh, I mean, as as um um as they're expanding and growing, Zach and I talked about that same thing uh when we're doing this study is is um particularly Kerry there. There's a lot of money to throw at it, and they have a lot newer streets, too. They sit around trying to think up ways to spend their money. Yeah, absolutely.

And over here, we do not have FA Vina and Holy Springs. They're even more than carry right now because they adding 20 miles a year. But this could be a double-edged sword because once you keep adding and you have a kind of a illusion that your payation index of conditions are very high but once time passes this deteriorate. So they know that and that's why they're using this preservation treatments to keep the initial and in this high end.

Yeah. Yeah. So PCI just just like a test scores we all did growing up. Um so now taking that PCI score we make network level treatment recommendations for every segment. So our bottom ranges here uh just strictly kind of PCI. So for the 0 to 26 those those trees are in very poor condition. they probably need reconstruction completely from the base all the way up to the surface. Um, in the PCI range 26 65, you know, this is what most people are used to seeing kind of the milling fields. You come in, you take the asphalt out and you put it back. Um, and then for our 65 to 81, those get filtered into the preservation correct range. And so these are kind of thin lift preservation treatments that we'll talk about more coming up here. Um, but they're really good treatments, you know, to to keep those roads in that fair, even take them back up to good, but prevent them from getting into those uh bottom ranges. And then in the top range there, the 81 to 100, we got three treatments here. Um, for the top end, we got the preservation prevent, which we call our rejuvenators. Um, those are for like really brand new streets, very little distresses. Um, and then the bottom half that 81 to 100, we have patch seal and cracking. Um, excuse me, patching and crack sealing. uh and so you know depending on the distresses we see we recommend those two treatments uh take care and we'll talk about a little bit more in depth on that in the next couple slides but uh too

yeah uh so just to give you kind of an example too which which we'll get into more examples of the streets but we also have the same examples on a parking lot the parking lot that you just walked through this morning um we put a treatment on it this year it was at a level of probably in that 65 to 81 type range and and we put a surface coating on it retreat it So that it's basically like putting a sunscreen essentially on it and and and reviving that that um that coating so that you're not getting water underneath it. That's that's the ultimate um what what'll degragate your pavement the worst is is the sub losing the subgrade getting water underneath it. Um give you a great example of a zero to 26 in a parking lot. Fire station number one back back lot. It's it's beyond it's beyond a go in there and patch it type repair. We've we've done that for years, but now we're at the point of it needs to all be tore out. This upgrade needs to be rebuilt and it needs to be poured fresh like we just did at Fire Station 3. So, those are examples in the parking lot standpoint and which we do have to manage also and Zach will get more into the streets as we go through this.

Thank you. Uh and one last thing I want to put on the side so you can see our unit costs here. Um, so starting the top, the preservation, prevent the rejuvenator, it's about a$120 per square yard. And so as you go down that curve, the treatments get more and more expensive. So the idea behind that is we want to use these less expensive treatments to really keep these good roads good before we have to go down and do the more expensive treatments uh later on in the life cycle of the pavement. Uh, so just a little bit more on the preservation treatments because I think these are the ones most people are less familiar with. Um, so like the asphalt rejuvenation, uh, it's just chemical treatment. You spray it down the road. It revitalizes a lot of the chemical components that are lost when you do the production and then just kind of from the natural agent cycle, uh, at the beginning when you're putting down pavement, it gets heated up. A lot of that kind of the maltines and asphalt get essentially the glue kind of gets lost in a little bit when you're putting it down and then just from like the sun beating down on it, lose a little bit of glue. So this treatment penetrates the top half of that surface and uh really restores those chemical components keeping that road very good for you know four to five years longer than it would have if you didn't use that treatment. And then for the preservation correct uh kind of microservicing or other thin lift treatments. There's there's new thin lift treatments every day that we're looking into. Um but essentially you come in, you do your patching and crack sealing and you put down that brand new uh thin lift uh surface. And so that helps protect the asphalt that's there, keep that water from getting in the base like Chris said and really extends that life of that pavement about six to 10 years. And both of these treatments we can do, we kind of recommend doing you can do it up to two times. So the asphalt rejuvenator about four or five years later, you can do another and then with the preservation correct, once that first thin lift treatment wears off, you can come in and put another one down and really help, you know, save off doing those expensive rehab and reconstruction treatments. Uh so now we'll just go through a couple examples. So, got these pictures from Carter, uh, very good photographer for

me. Uh, so this road more on the park road, 94 PCI, you know, this probably reaved in the last couple years. Um, so showing very little signs of distress, a little bit of wear. This would be a perfect candidate for that asphalt rejuvenator. You come in, you put it down, revitalize those chemical components, and then, you know, keep that road in that condition for longer than you would if you didn't use the rejuvenators. And one thing I I want to mention, which I'm sure you probably hear too, which we get a lot of, was why are you doing something to this street? You just paved it two years ago. You just paved it three years ago. You haven't touched my street in ever since I've lived here for 25 years. And this this is that this is that new plan, that new um that we're doing. We're we're not putting all our eggs in one basket essentially. We're not going to the all mail and field um like like we used to do. um because it's just a it's just basically you're chasing your tail and you're you're never going to catch up and and it's not going to be successful at keeping that PCI rating um consistent. Um what we're doing is we're to keep the roads in good condition. We're putting a little bit of money towards towards those reconditioning while we still probably put the majority of our money towards reconstruction, rebuilding, repaving, etc. putting a little bit towards these these items like you see with the is it's much more cost effective than letting this one fall off the off the curve while we're chasing these low ones and now we have to go back and reconstruct this one when we could have done it you know every four years at at that $1.70 now we're into the $15 per square. So that's that's the uh the method to the madness. I just want to make sure. Um I know that y'all probably hear those questions a lot of of why are you doing this street again? Um and and it's it's it's obviously or it's completely because of what we're trying to do is is keep those streets at a good level.

Thank you. Very well said. All right. Now we'll look at a good condition. So we got Cedar Street here, 83 PCI. Um, you look at this, you know, you're starting to see more more cracking on it. Um, so this right here, this one right here would be a good candidate for crack sealing. You come in, you seal up some of these cracks that are environmental cracks there, and you keep them from spreading and making the street worse. Um, and vice versa, if you had another street in the same condition that was showing more like potholes or bad patches or fatigue cracking, you come in and patch it, prevent those distresses from getting worse. So, just good preventative maintenance here in this area. Uh so now I got a road here, Pinewood Avenue, uh 72 PCI. It's in the fair condition. So this right here, this would be a good candidate for uh a preservation correct type thin lift treatment. You come in, for instance, this uh alligator cracking you see here at the beginning. You patch that. You seal up the other cracks you can see along the road and then put down that thin lift treatment. Uh give you a new riding surface and protect that asphalt that's there. Keep that water from getting down into the asphalt and into the base. Now got this street here, South Railroad Street, 40 PCI. This is in the poor condition. You can see majority of the road has some sort of cracking on it. Uh it's mainly environmental cracking, a little bit of fatigue cracking here and there. But this this road right here, that asphalt needs to come up and needs to do some spot base repair and then you put down a new layer of asphalt um and rehab that road there. And then as we get into the lower PCI range of 026, Torrent Street here is a 20 PCI. And you can see that majority of this road has severe uh structural defects on it. It's pretty much the whole street has that severe alligator cracking on it. So this really indicates that that subgrade is really starting to fail. So the treatment I recommended here is called FTR or full depth reclamation. Basically, you come in, you pulverize this asphalt, mix it into the subgrade with cement and water, let that set up, you got a brand new subgrade that you come and pave a brand new layer

of asphalt on, and that road is completely repaired back up to 100 PCI and should last a long time. And then once you repave roads, then we kind of like to start this cycle of you can do the two pres asphalt rejuvenators. Then after that, a couple years later, you can start the cycle of doing two preservation corrects, those thin lift treatments, and you really, you know, you can extend that life. And if you had, you would have to repave it in 17 years versus if you do the preservation, you can repave that road in 40 years, for instance. And so this table here, uh, this is just a summary. So we made a network recommendation for every streetman in the town. Um, and so one thing I want to point out here is if you see preservation correct and the rehab, those are kind of our most prevalent uh distresses. So we got about 40 miles of the correct and 51 miles of the rehab. So I mean pretty close mileage wise, but if you look at the cost there, that preservation corrects only about $4 million whereas the rehabilitation for pretty similar amount of road is nearly quadruple of that. So just you know help reinforce that fact of treating roads at the uh top of the curve is a little bit more cost effective than treating them at the end of life. And so that's kind of everything with the PCS. So we've gone through we've given that zero to 100 PCI for every segment. We've taken that PCI we made a network level recommendation and now we're taking that data and we're going to put it into a life cycle model analysis. And so there's our current state again the 69.4 for PCI and we kind of give that a network value of $92.5 million. So I mean most people see that and they're like wow that that's a lot of money to value our roadway network at and most time it's probably one of the most valuable assets the town has. So how do we calculate that?

Yeah and that's that's one thing I wanted to really speak on that I loved about their presentation when I went through it was um was showing the value of what we have out there. It it the asphalt is an asset and right now our value of that asset is is close to $100 million to for for those 175 miles that we have. That's that's around a hundred million, you know, $100 million value that that we have out um out there in those streets. And just to clarify, the way this is calculated is this 170 miles if you have to replace them right now. Oh, Zach's going to talk about right now.

Yes. uh just kind of briefly how that uh asset value is calculated. So like we said, I got about 174 miles of roadway, about 350 lane miles. That comes out to 2.5 million square yards of pavement. So say we had to reconstruct that entire network. So we take our $60 per square yard, multiply it by that amount of square yards. So if everything was replaced, we'd have an asset value of $148 million. So if everything was brand new, that's kind of our maximum asset value. And so we're never going to do that. you're never going to replace everything. So, we'd like to come up with our unlimited funding PCI. So, if we did every network level treatment we recommend, we did all that backlog of work, we would get up to a 90 PCI. It's not everything's going to go to 100 based on the treatments. Um, but if we did all the work, we could get to a 90 PCI and then so basically we calculate an asset value for that. Uh, 90 over 100 times our replacement value that gets us to 133 million. So if we did all the work, got everything done, backlog cleared, we'd be have a $133 million asset. U and then so just to calculate current condition, uh just take the PCI current PCI 69.4 over 100 and multiply it by that unlimited funding asset value. And that's how we calculate our remaining asset value. And that's how you'll that's how it's calculated for the upcoming slides you'll see here. So we had our starting point. We got the data from the PCS um and that's where we started. And then we ran five budget scenarios over 20 years to see what happens uh as it changes. And so basically the model we have all the same parameters for the treatments built into it. And then it picks treatments based on like a benefit to cost ratio. It'll pick the segments that give you the best benefit to cost until it fills out that budget for each year. And it repeats that cycle for 20 years. Um so the first budget is we ran our current budget 1 million $1.1 million per year. We ran that for 20 years. That's the budget for

every year. Um and the next two scenarios, you know, hypothetical increases in the budget. First one, a little less aggressive, increasing the budget by 100,000 each year for the whole 20 years. So you end up about $3 million at the end of that. Um, and then the third one, a little bit more aggressive increase in the budget, about half a million dollars per year to get up to $3 million per year uh in year five. And then so scenario four, $3 million per year. This is kind of what we kind of recommended budget uh to help maintain the PCI as you'll see in the next couple slides. But essentially, uh, you know, through our years of experience, we found it takes about 15,000 to $20,000 per centerline mile per year to maintain a network. And so $3 million over 75 that comes up right in the middle of that about 17,000 per centerline mile per year and that's how we got to that uh budget for recommendation. Um and then just to show the importance of the preservation treatments I ran that same $3 million per year using only re like our typical rehab and reconstruction treatments that you would normally do. And so now we'll just dive into those a little bit more. Um, so this graph here, you know, shows the PCI throughout the years for each of those scenarios. So you can see with the current budget, the $1.1 million per year, we're on a steady decline of overall PCI throughout the entire 20 years. Um, and then for the $3 million kind of recommended budget, you see you get a little boost and then it maintains uh right there at the bottom of that optimal payment zone we talked about uh for the 20 years. Um, and then with the two increased budget scenarios, you know, the 100k, it kind of follows the same trend as the current, but after it starts really building that budget up, it starts flattening out that PCI drop. And then with the little bit u more aggressive increase in the budget funding or drop a little bit, but then once you get to that 3 million, it really maintains that PCI throughout the life of the uh model. So just get a little bit more in depth.

So all these are kind of our screenshots from our software. uh model. Um and so these really break down the budget. So the first scenario there, I got the current budget, $1.1 million a year. So you see at the end of the 20 years, the PCI drops to 43.77 and the network value drops all the way down to 58.4 million. So you're investing $22 million into it and then every year of this you're losing about $1.7 million in asset value over the 20 years versus if you look at our kind of recommended of $3 million per year. Uh with that you get up to a 74 PCI and you lose the network value or you actually gain network value up to $98.7 million. So yeah, really kind of getting a little bit better than what you are and then kind of keeping it there is what that budget does for you. And you gain about $300,000 asset value every year over the 20 years.

Yeah. And and just to get away from the numbers, even though I like numbers, if you look at the graph on the right, uh the dark red is the very poor. So you see how uh large it becomes in the pie chart and how it increases for the 20- year period. That's the worst road that we showed you. I forgot the name. That's what you're looking at at the end of 20 years with this scenario.

And that being 50% of your roads essentially is what he's saying. If you're looking at that graph, 50% of your roads will be in the poorest condition that you that that would that it can be. Again, as you can see, the with the $3 million, you end up with over half your networks in that good condition or we can really do preventative maintenance and keep it there. And now, you know, to take a look at the importance of those preservation treatments. Uh, so we have the $3 million top one here uses all those preservation treatments, every treatment we talked about in the toolbox. So, you know, get this the 74 PCI with the really good uh spread of conditions versus if you did that same $3 million only repaving your roads at when they got to the worst condition, uh your PCI is going to be about 10 points worth at a 64 and the network value is going to drop a little bit from what it is currently. Um dropping about $370,000 per year for life. So, you know, you can really see using those preservation treatments, you're able to keep a lot of those roads that drop into the yellow and red with just the rehab, you're able to keep them up in that good while you chip away at those really bad streets. And then just here quick look at the two increased budget scenarios. So, um you know, with the little bit less aggressive treatment, you know, excuse me.

Yeah. Okay. The 100,000 on top. So, we lose a little bit of asset value. uh losing about 700k per year uh from what we are currently at and then your network rating drops down to a 58 at that point and then with a little bit more aggressive you know we pretty much stay right where we're at now at today's u condition at the end of the 20 years. Uh so you know our basic recommendations that come out of studying this data and you know our years of experience doing pavement management um you know so we we recommend increasing annual roadway funding you know so we don't uh end up with half our roads in that really poor condition. Um I recommend continue the regular PCS every three years. That's that's a good cycle is things are constantly changing and we also want to keep getting new data so we can better refine these models. So as we do PCS's we can better refine the degradation curve of the city to get it more specific to the city because you know as you go across North Carolina there's different souls there's different environments and different cities degrade a little bit different than others. So as we get more and more PCS's we can really refine that data and make these uh models better. Um utilizing the full maintenance toolbox as we show you know really want to use those preservation treatments keep the good roads good while we chip away at those uh very poor streets. uh keeping good track of construction history. You know, you know, 10 years down the road when somebody else is in Chris's seat and they're looking to see roads, I mean, they want to go and uh you know, repeat things that already been done and they kind of want to make sure they know what's happened so they can better plan for the future. Um and then utilize the uh life cycle software results. So, you know, as you talk today and you come up with like, okay, what do we want to do budget scenarios for our town, I can take that budget scenario, make a new scenario, and then that can be a tool for Chris and Carter to come in and plan future

projects uh throughout the years. And like we'll do at the end of this project can make the five-year CIP kind of based on that results. One thing I want to go back and reiterate on um and and a a big tool and asset with Withers is they're also working with um um our Salsbury Row and Utilities in replacement for water and sewer. So both of these models correlate together. So that if if Jason's planning to replace a water line in street A in two years and I'm planning to pave that in one year, those those the red flag will pop up. Hey, let's let's wait to pave this street until after that water line's replaced. I always joke about it and Jason knows it is a joke. I hope he knows it's a joke, but I think SRU likes to cut into our streets while they're still hot because they're easy to cut. But uh but that's what we're trying to avoid. We're trying to avoid those those those issues of where um because and he'll attest to it a lot of times when we resurface the street sometimes water lines problems will will come to the surface literally um you know just the compaction of those streets etc vibrate some things that that cause those issues and unfortunately we have to go back and and make those replacements in brand new asphalt and then you've already started degregation curve the day after you've put the asphalt down. So what we're trying to do is avoid those as much as possible. Work with a life cycle model on on water and sewer, but that's underground and under these streets and and only replace these or or as we can make sure that we're correlating those replacements in the asphalt at the same or you know after these underground utilities need need replacing. So

ties in perfectly to my last recommendation there. Integrate with other assets. So you know we can avoid like we've had these situations here. We've came in, we paved a new road. A couple days later, we're seeing this water come up through the asphalt and then we find out, oh, that water line's 50 years old and it needs to be replaced. So, like you said, they have to come in, cut our new asphalt, take it out. So, yeah, really integrating with, you know, the model we have for them. Uh, and kind of for the pavement, we kind of want to follow their plan, you know, let let them see what water lines, sewer lines they need to replace, and we can come in and find the right treatment. If they do have to come in and cut into a new road, we don't necessarily have to come and co repave it, but we can come in maybe with one of our thin lift treatments and put it down and, you know, protect that patch that they had to do with uh with the water and sewer. And then, you know, building off this next phases, which we also did as a part of this project, uh, you know, we always recommend you having the best contract documents possible when you bid out for contractors. Um, you know, there's no confusion. I mean, most time people just give them a list or say, "Hey, pave these roads." and they come out there and they're not going they don't do everything you really wanted done. So really like to make these map books as we did for this upcoming resurfacing work. Uh you know lay out everything the boundaries all water valves ramps anything that needs to be replaced you know lay that out so it's nice and clear for the contractors. Um and then building off that you can go.

Yeah I I'd like to speak on that too. Um and I I know Carter will attest because we we utilize this for this for the first time this year in our in our bid documents. Um, we have historically been been that city. We we bid out a list of of streets and we expect the contractor to go out there and I I guess know what we're thinking, know what know what everything and then when you get into the discussion part, well, we didn't know these manholes were here or we thought you were ending here instead of here. So, this clearly is is like a plan like you would submit a construction plan. It it's it's a plan of you're going to start here, you're going to end here, here's the patches you have to do, here's every manhole, here's every valve, here's everything in here that you're going to encounter. So, um, fortunately, we do have some good contractors that will go out and look at that. Sometimes we don't and and as you know we generally are required to take low bid on things and a lot of times that low bid contractor is the one that didn't go out and look at all those things and and they're they're also the one that's going to basically change order us to death on on as we work through. So this makes our our bids way more solid. um we can refer back to them during that construction phase if there are questions and we can reduce those change orders and those extra costs and and align up better with with that bid and and with um with what we're expecting so that I'm not having to go ask Wade to open the drawer at the end of the project where we're where we we get those things lined up and and taken care of before we even put um put asphalt paper on the ground. And then these bid docks, they also, you know, become part of that construction history. You keep copies of these maps. You know exactly what was done on that project. Um, and then we always recommend having a construction inspection. Uh, you know, for the preservation treatments, you know, it's not quite as important, but it's nice to have at least part-time out there. Uh, you know, make sure they're doing the right roads and everything. And then as we get into the rehabs and reconstruction, it's it's pretty vital to have full-time construction

inspection out there. make sure the contractor is doing things by plans, buy the spec book, not trying to cut any corners there. Um, and so have just having somebody out there the full time is just so valuable to save you headaches in the future. Like if the contractor didn't go past a bad spot and they just paid right over it and then you got somebody say, "Oh, hey, you didn't you didn't do it by plan." Or that the asphalt they're putting down cold asphalt, you got inspector out there checking temperatures, you know, making sure all the asphalt's put down per spec and you don't have any issues in the future there.

Yeah. and and historically Carter and his team have been serving serving that purpose for us um over the last few years, doing a great job with it. But having the again back to what I just said, having these documents that they can point to um versus Carter's opinion versus the contractor's opinion, etc. Um they'll they'll actually have items that they can refer to of um to to help back that construction inspection and and and get what we're expecting to get out of the final product. So that that concludes my presentation today. So we're here for any questions, comments, anything we need to discuss about the payment.

I guess I want to know where's Chris going in 10 years. First of all, just an example, right? So on the inspection piece that you you guys do that as a company as a contracted out or is it one of our people that does that or uh we do assist with towns but uh uh Carter and his team do that for y'all. Okay.

Yeah. And and there may be a mix of that too. Uh I mean that's that's part of what we're exploring also as we're developing this. Like I said we we we go back to 2021. We really had not looked at how we resurface streets from at least 2007 to 2021 other than here's the budget, here's a some streets we're having problems with and we go just try to fix and and and we essentially were chasing our tails just fixing what we could fix. Um we we started putting these preservation methods um into practice. Uh we haven't used the full toolbox yet. Um which we will that'll be part of the plan moving forward. Um but yes, as far as as far as the inspections, um I feel like from a meal and feel our typical meal and feel and that type of stuff, I I've have the utmost confidence in in Carter and his team to um I've seen over the years, they know what they're looking for. They know what asphalt temperatures to look for. They know what to look for and how it's being placed down, how it's being measured. make sure that we're not putting an extra quarter of an inch because an extra quarter of an inch over a mile will come back and bite us a lot when it comes to cost. So, making sure everything's going down. They're doing a great job at that as we move into these preservation methods. They're new to me, they're new to Carter, they're new they're they're new to the industry as a whole. So, yes, we probably will rely on um rely on consultants like like Zach and and Withers and uh to to help us with making sure that we've set up the proper procedures, the proper checklist um at, you know, maybe the maybe the first time or the first couple times we we utilize our service so that we can learn what we need to look for as we're doing those inspections. We've learned over the years what we need to do for mill and fill. We need to learn the same for um for these other preservation methods. Uh, one that we've been doing is thin left and um, the first year I won't say it it didn't go quite like we

expected, but we've learned a lot from that over the years and how that's placed down. Um, and that's that's helped us with um, with doing those inspections in house. But but yes, we will have to rely some on consultants as we move in new preservation methods. One great example is um, I'm partnering this year with NC DOT. Um, you you mentioned it yesterday in your in your presentation. We're partnering with them to do our A streets, asphalt treatment, asphalt surface treatment. Our A streets were a part of that plan, but we that we developed five years ago, but we haven't been able to implement that because of the small increments that we were trying to implement it into the bid numbers we were getting back. We could have resurfaced for the same price and it didn't make sense to do a treatment for at that high level price. You want to be in those price points that they were talking about. So to get into that price point, we lumped them all together. We coordinated with NC DOT as they're doing the same thing over the entire county and we're getting the same bid number as we're part of their bid package this year. So we're the same number that they're getting for their street, we're getting for our street. Plus the backside of it that a lot of people don't realize is is just what you said. They're they're they're the experts in that. They they do that just like Carter's team's done the um you know, our inspections. They've done those inspections for years and years. They have a solid background in that as that'll allow Carter and his team to go out there when they're doing those streets and follow those inspectors around those NC ncdot specters and learn what that looks like and and if we do bring that in house at some point and and do our own a streets, we'll have the knowledge to know what to look for. So, it's kind of a combination. Um I think I think what I'm getting at is that we'll utilize those services to help train us to look for what we need to look for. But we do I do feel like we do a very very good job in house of doing those inspections. Also,

does the uh subsurface play a role in in assessing uh the recommendations? For instance, the street I live on is so old originally has granite curving. Um does that play a role in how you determine your recommendations?

Yeah. So when we're doing the PCS, it's it's mainly surface level. Uh like we're looking at the surface of the road and looking at the cracks, but some of those distresses like like I said, the fatigue cracking. That's a big indicator that there's some kind of structural problem. When you see those that high or medium fatigue, that indicates to us that there is a subsurface issue, but the the majority of the PCS is looking at the surface of the road. But those distresses do lead us to uh understand like what's going on in the subsurface there.

Yeah, absolutely. What and essentially what I was saying is is you know you can only see what's on the outside. It's a lot of times like with the utilities, but I mean we don't know a water line's fixing to fail till it fails. But that said, the one thing about asphalt is is that when you do get to those very low ones particularly you the indication of what that surface level that you're seeing is that it is a subgrade issue. It's it's you've went beyond it being an asphalt issue and now you you've gotten to a subgrade issue. when you start seeing those alligator tracking and those potholes start forming and those types of things, you know that that water has got in there that it's pumping that you have subgrade issues and you have to do more than just go in there and just patch that back. You have to dig that out. That's why a lot of times when you see us do potholes, sometimes they are just patching because we're just trying to get to them. But we do have a list that we'll come back and we're going to cut that area out because that subgrade is going to have to be repaired under it. It may be taken care of in the interim. so it's not, you know, not a danger to traveling down the road. But we've got that list collected so that we're going to come back and hit those areas when time allows, when the plants are operating properly. Uh because generally plants aren't operating in the winter. So a lot of times in the winter, we're just we're we're putting we're just trying to bandaid it through until we get to the plant operation times. But yes, there there are indicators of of subgrade failure, but we're not actually doing an analysis of that subgrade in particular. But to your point, we do have a lot of old streets. I mean, the city's very old. And that that goes back to what we were talking about with the carries and the you know, if you're gaining 20 miles of street a year, you know, that's a big percentage of of your infrastructure and and that's going to that's going to throw that PCI way up because they're starting at 100. And if if you know, if you're 20% of your streets are increasing every year at 100, obviously your PCI rating is going to be extremely high. But if you're not putting these pavement treatings in there, that's going to fall off the cliff at some point. And and we're we're in a good

spot. I I know, you know, you look at you look at 69, we're, you know, sitting right there at 70. You know, Z's get degrees type thing. I mean, we're we're not we're not in a bad spot. It's it's it's not like it's a doom and gloom type thing. What we're saying is though, we need to stay there. We need to at least stay at that point. We're getting to the point where we're going to start falling off of that. We're we're at that bottom of optimum level. We want to get back into just at least be in that optimum level and keep those streets on a maintained at that level. Um but um you it's the the big thing to me with their report was I've never seen streets put into an asset like they showed a value to it and how putting this much money into it each year, you're going to actually increase that that value of that that pavement. Um whereas if you're just you're not increasing that budget, you're you're going to start falling off and your your asset level is falling even more than it would have if you would would have increased that. So if you're losing $2 million a year in street value, it makes sense to put that $2 million into that street and at least hold that value instead of losing that value. So um that's that's one thing I really liked about the presentation early on. But any other question you may have?

Thank you. Is there any um I mean I guess what's the history on the um the rejuvenating from what I understood sounds like it's sounds new or maybe it's just new to us that kind of treatment. What what's kind of the history on that and are there like environmental concerns and things like that?

So not with this particular one that we recommend. Uh the history of it is uh about 20 years. It's called Requomite. Uh it came out from Florida and it's been used now in the entire southeast plus Midwest. I would say in 20 to 30 states maybe. Uh so one thing about that one is there is no envir environmental issues with it and it has more uh efficient or more uh impact on the payment uh compared to others because of what Zach said u getting deeper into the payments uh and replacing this mines part of the assort uh component but uh it is very common. The only thing about this and I think Chris probably knows about it. It's a proprietary only one firm does it. So, uh but they serve uh pretty much as I said about 20 states and everyone's using them.

Gotcha. Thank you.

Yeah. Again, and like like you mentioned, uh you know, from the environmental standpoint, if you you can preserve it and you're not you're not taking that inch and a half off and then what what do you do with it? Now, fortunately, a lot of a lot of um asphalt companies are now kind of using that to they're recycling that, they're building that back into product. Um, but it's not it's not a it's not a perfect tradeoff. Um, so basically what I'm saying is there's certain grades that NC DOT requires you to have when that asphalt comes out of that plant. And you can't just take asphalt off the top, run it through the plant, and it's all back to that grade and that level. So they can't integrate that recycled product in at at 100% because it's it's it's so it's it's it's actually a very small percentage that that asphalt has been able to be integrated back into there so that you don't hit those those guidelines that do says you have to be between here and here um with with all your emulsifiers and all that trying to get to the science of it but you can't hit that with 100% recycling. It's it's not possible because a lot of that stuff's just been degraded by the asphalt. the asphalt is essentially degrading when it when the first day it goes down. The sun the sun the weather's affecting it right then. Um a lot of stuff's you know evaporating out of it etc. So you're never going to get that back to 100%. But again, if you're rejuvenating that and and instead of taking that layer off every 17, 20 years and putting a new layer back on and you're extending that to to to 40 years, that's less oils, that's less um you know, to generate all that product. So, it is a more sustainable practice to do the preservation um than it is to do resurfacing over and over.

Gotcha. You may have covered this and I missed it, but does a street like a Jake Alexander have some different considerations versus a neighborhood street?

Definitely Jake because Jake's not one of our streets. It's a DOT street. But um to your point, we do look at traffic volume and and that does integrate into the model. Um and it integrates in multiple ways. One, take for example um Arlington Street. Arlington Street is a city street. Um it's it's one of our very heavily traveled city streets and that traffic impacts and and and degrades that asphalt even quicker. So So two ways. One, we integrate that into the model of knowing that street's going to need treatments quicker than a city street that's or you know a a a back street that's maybe getting just those families in a pizza delivery a day type thing. Whereas that street's getting constant traffic over and over. That that street gets looked at in a in the model to be hit these hit these checkpoints a little bit quicker in in multiple ways. One in the model, but also the degregation is going to happen way quicker than it will on on in a neighborhood street also. So yes, it it does get looked at differently than um than a neighborhood street does.

Yeah. And particularly like when we get to a project level and we're kind of selecting, okay, how deep we're going to mill this road. Those those higher volume streets, they're going to be there's going to be more asphalt there. It's going to be more expensive to resurface it or even if you know if there's eight inches of asphalt there, it it's going to be very hard to come in and get all eight inches of that. We can kind of look at other treatments where oh, we come and mill off like say two inches and then put down some kind of inter layer between that and put that back on. And yeah, there's a lot of like project level decisions that come in when it's high volume versus low volume.

Yeah. And in this regard, uh kind of to uh underline what Chris said previously about maintaining the model with new data. Traffic is part of this. The model is a living organism. It's not one and done. traffic changes uh condition changes change of the pavement because of that be plus because of different weather conditions freezes etc. Plus, we have uh uh treatments that some may more than we want um than we think, but some may was less that gets integrated in the model and updated every every single year and then it gets you a newer newer curve, a newer newer result that you adjust the budget from. So that's how it works.

Thank you. Yeah. Any other questions?

Mayor, members of council, if I could just close us out with a couple points and then maybe get some feedback from you all. First, just uh uh a thank you to Chris and Carter and Michael and the public works team and the partnership with the Withers. I mentioned this is technical and you can see there is a science behind it. We hear a lot. Yeah, just throw some asphalt out there. There is a science behind it and I appreciate what they're talking about is looking at preservation and different methods and and some of these are new technology is changing in street reservicing just like it is in all areas. So, um, a treatment that, uh, will fit one street. One size doesn't fit all. It's a different treatment, uh, on another street. So, I appreciate they're evaluating those different techniques and their focus on preservation and longevity. Uh the other thing you heard was about the investment over a hundred million dollars in our street assets. And we talk about infrastructure, you all have and we talked about yesterday um a strategic plan priority about investing in our infrastructure. And a lot of times we think of SRU or storm water, but our street infrastructure critical for the public, for all of us getting around, critical for public safety to do their jobs, for folks to be able to to to get around town. So, we need to continue to evaluate and invest in our street resurfacing. The the final thing I I would say is, you know, you

heard our budget is about $1.1 million. You heard some comments really to get at that next level, probably around $3 million. And so, one of the things we continue to do is look for opportunities to invest in our street infrastructure. Yesterday, Weey talked about that $700,000 that is available and about half of that I'm recommending to go to street resurfacing. So, that list included $300,000 to add to our street resurfacing. Now, that doesn't help us add a whole lot of streets. What that does, we're seeing price increases. So materials are are getting more expensive. So you heard Chris talking about we're looking ways to try to get bigger bang for the buck and look to join other bids, but we're still seeing cost increases. So we we want to do more of these preservation and treatment techniques that we heard about, but we also just have inflation. And this gets back to Weight's presentation and the uncertainty and the challenges. So feedback from council, this has been a priority. We've looked to slowly increase our street resurfacing budget. We look for opportunities and I bring those recommendations to you at midyear. A lot of work is going into this. We'd like to continue to work with Withers and Chris and his team and with finance to look for opportunities in the budget. Uh but it's going to take some time to to get those increases up, but some council feedback. I assume this our road

conditions, street resurfacing will continue to be a priority and you would like us to look for some additional funding wherever we can find it. Yeah, quick bullets on that. Um like like Mr. Green mentioned, um again, we're we're looking at the the $300 increase for for paving this year. Um 300,000,

excuse me, 300,000. And that's not um that's not to increase any streets. That's to keep up that that's that's what our bids come in and that's so we don't have to cut streets off of this year's bid list. So it's not to gain anything. It's so that we can continue on that that fiveyear CIP plan that we had developed which is again another reason why that at least in that 3 to four year time frame that re-evaluation of that is is also so important because those prices are changing over that time frame. And we found that even as we're getting into that fourth year of that five-year plan, we're 300,000 short on meeting that plan. So, we need to evaluate that. And that's what these guys will be doing is is setting next year's paving plan according to what our budget um ends up being for next year. And also what we kind of set as our our goal to achieve for the following years. But again, once we get to that three to four year time, we're we're probably you know, looking at, you know, is is is the cost went up, as the cost went down, generally it doesn't go down. Generally, it does go up. And we try to predict those things, but that's not something that's completely predictable. We try to build those in, but you will have those if if you don't if you don't re-evaluate it on that three to four year cycle, you're going to that that 300's next year probably going to turn into 500 and the following year is going to turn into your whole budget. And um so those those are things that we have to look into. Jim, I would I would expect that um when it when we do our budget retreat. I would expect that we see I'm expecting that you're probably going to add that in the some of the conversations and the request. I mean, just not just to keep up, but how do we get ahead of that curve? So, that slow gradual increase, it'll take a while, but um I mean, that's part of our healthy and safe neighborhood goal. I think it falls

right there. Um, so I mean again, I know there's going to be a bazillion things you're going to want to look at and look at to increase because you're right, inflation's really going to take a hit. So I think we got to do more than just maintain. I think we got to do we got to have that conversation when we talk about budget.

Absolutely. And and that's why we're having this conversation today. It is a budget item. You saw that list and you know again great financial uh position with $17 million in fund balance but there's a long list of projects for that. There's other service needs. We're getting ready to go into housing and I expect Hannah's going to share some opportunities as well. So, uh a lot of good things going on and the we talked about yesterday what are council's priorities. So,

so do I understand just so I'm sure you need 300,000 basically to to maintain where you are now with with the increased prices with the bids we I mean is it does and I know there's no final decision but is is there pretty much a general consensus among council that you think that's the direction to go to at least spend that to stay where you are or is it too early to do that or do you think right now that's something you you would want to commit to or

I I think that's something mayor to your point we look at during the budget you're you're hearing a lot of things yesterday more things today uh these are all great things for us to work on and so let us bring back that but this year absolutely we we were able to use that midyear savings and put the majority or about half excuse me to um street reservicing just to keep us up where we wanted to be. Okay.

I think this has been very helpful for for two reasons. One is for budget u decisions that I think we we're going to have to wait and hear it all before we you know make a final decision on it. But um it certainly sounds like something that we need to at least stay where we are if not do better. But the other is in I think this has been very helpful to me as a council member in dealing with um how you react to the public that um that street paving and street repair. There's a science to this. It's not political and you know there's nothing that we we will do as council members um to show any favoritism. Um, so I always like to have rules to to go by and this is very very helpful to see exactly what you're doing and and the science for it. So, thank you.

Absolutely. It it really helps answer those questions of of um when you can back it up with with the data that's there. Yeah. I was sitting here thinking I mean I was one of those managers that Chris said, you know, we'd come up with a list and let's say this is what we're going to pay this year. This system is brilliant. I mean, just what a what a great really scientific, fair, non-political way to look at your street paving. So, I I think this is fantastic. Any more questions before we move on?

Have one quick thing, mayor. Go back to your original question of 10 years. I I do not have any plans, but but I do not have any plans to be departed from the city at that point. More more like 18, I think, is what?

Not that you're counting. That said, um I want to thank Michael, my my assistant director. Um you you are in good hands whether I'm here to help with these paving it or not. Um we've with the help of Michael, we've developed a great team. Um Carter's got this. I have the utmost confidence in him and implementing this and implementing this moving forward. Um it's been a great help with him being on the team. It's something I can kind of hand off now to to the next generation and he has a lot more time here to to implement this 20 year plan. Thanks, Chris. That was good. I know when we did that,

we're right on time. Um, so 9:45. Uh, the next presentation, addressing housing needs and opportunities, planning and neighborhoods director Hannah Jacobson. Jim, did you want to say anything before Hannah comes up?

No, just appreciate the work Hannah and the team done. Uh, well, I guess well, um, this this goes back uh to your strategic plan as well, looking at uh housing housing opportunities uh at all levels uh for uh the city. um you know about several projects we're working on that Hannah's going to talk about like Kesler Mill, but uh Hannah has been involved with the CDC and other groups. Uh we talked about a housing strategy uh and it's it's broadened over the past year as we've been involved with other organizations and other projects through the school of government. So Hannah's going to kind of recap that, but uh talk about some opportunities too moving forward. How can we continue to focus not just on housing supply, but uh housing affordability and uh safe housing uh quality housing for uh residents here in Salsbury. So thank you, Hannah. I'll turn it over to you and your team.

Thank you, Mr. Green. Good morning, mayor, members of council. It's good to be here. Thank you for the invitation to come and speak with you all about housing. Um, as we uh focused on yesterday, your strategic plan, um, adequate affordable housing is crucial. It's fundamental to healthy, safe, and engaged neighborhoods. And uh before diving into the presentation, as as Jim alluded to, um I've had the great opportunity over the last year to work with a number of different groups related to housing um that have really helped me learn um and grow when it comes to housing and my thought process around it. So, a lot of the ideas um a lot of the work that's been done over the last year are their ideas and their work. And I just wanted to mention several um groups. Uh Bliss Green is here representing our housing advocacy commission. Um this group is your advisory board related to housing uh policy and advocacy. Um, and I'm really proud of the this over the last year. About a year ago, we had a a little retreat to refocus our efforts with that housing advocacy commission. And from that retreat, um, our rental health initiatives emerged. And so, this group has been, I think, has done a lot over the last year and has their eye on a lot more to come in the in the future. We'll talk about that. Um, another group that I've had just a privilege to be a part of, um, is the roofs over Rowan group. Uh, also about a year ago, uh, a group of folks from Rowan County, um, put together an application to be a part of this Carolina Across 100 initiative that's based out of UNC Chapel Hill where we uh, study challenging issues and housing is certainly among those challenging issues. So over the last

year, we've been able to go to Chapel Hill a number of times um to learn from their faculty and staff, other practitioners that they bring in, other teams from across the state, and really from each other. And we have um a part of the team, several members are here today. I see Bobby Honeyut with F&M Bank. Um I see Chanica Yatawara and Kyle Harris here from the Salsbury CDC. Uh Peter Frances is here from the town of Spencer and his son is also here. Hi. Um not with us today. Um but a part of the team is uh Ben Fischer from Carol Fischer Construction. So this team has been really interesting. Um some of my fa favorite times of the last year have been spent discussing some of these issues with them than this cross uh collaborative way. Um and then finally I also want to um shout out Thomas P. Miller and Associates. For those that have been on council for a little bit longer, you'll remember that we brought in Thomas P. uh Miller and Associates to help us with that housing strategy, do some community engagement around housing, um develop a lot of the the data and the needs assessment, which you'll see be seeing a lot of today, and start to brainstorm some of these strategies. So, I want to thank them also for the work that they've put in. Now, this slide is probably uh my most deceiving because it makes it seem that this presentation is going to be short. Um I have a lot to say about housing. Um and it's been somewhat of a challenge to condense it all down. Um but generally speaking, what I hope to do today is walk through some of the housing market data and indicators, share a little bit about what we're currently doing as it relates to housing because it's actually kind of a lot and it's fun to see it all together. and then there's always more that we

could do. So, um we'll talk about some potential strategies for the future. So, as I alluded to, housing of course is a very complex issue. Um and people can find themselves in an unstable housing situation for a lot of different reasons. And so, I've listed just some of them on the screen here. uh mental health and substance abuse abuse issues. As we saw last year very vividly in western North Carolina, the impacts of uh storms and natural disasters like Hurricane Helen can cause enormous housing instability. Despite having fair housing laws, discrimination is certainly still a major cause of housing instability. And then there's of course economic issues, economic downturns, low wages. A lot of people who are in the housing market these days will realize there's just very little limited availability of housing and then there's the high cost of housing and all of that can contribute to uh instability for folks in the housing market. But a lot of that comes down to affordability and and I always like to remind people that affordability there's two sides of the same coin. There's income and then there's the cost of housing and both are important factors. And when it comes to income, and this is spec looking specifically at Salsbury and Rowan County, we're seeing some really positive trends. It's always good to see that line go up when you're thinking about median household income. And in fact, between 2018 and 2024, we saw a 22% increase in our median household income. the folks over at the Rowan EDC are working very hard to bring not only new jobs to the county, but well-paying jobs to the county. And so you can see that

the average wage now um for the new jobs that they brought in is is close to $26 an hour. And that's a big increase over the last several years. However, um the cost it is not keeping pace with the rising cost of housing. Um this is looking at the for sale market. Um in that same kind of five-year period, um the median home sale price is double what it was just five years ago. In 20 in 2019, you could have bought a house in Salsbury for $130,000. Uh, fast forward to 2024, kind of at the peak of the market, we were looking at $260,000 for the median asking price. I've heard since then that those prices have stabilized. We're not seeing as dramatic of increases, and that is because of increased inventory that is on the market that's helping to stabilize that. Of course, at that same time, um, interest rates for everything went up. And the same thing is true for mortgage rates. So you can see that the cost of money, the cost of borrowing also increased to in 2024 mortgage interest rates were around 6.9%. On the four rent side, so that was looking at purchasing home ownership. If you're looking on the four sales side, prices went up even more dramatically. So during that that time period between 2017 and 2023 that uh average asking rent increased by more than 40% and that's across all different housing whether you're looking at onebedroom, two-bedroom, threebedroom and so vacancy rates at that same time also also fell and that of course impacts the availability and drives up the prices. So why what why all of these uh sudden

what feels like very sudden increases happen? Um the economist simple answer is supply and demand. Uh researchers from the Brooking Institute um estimate that nationwide we have a shortage in this country of 4.9 million housing units. I've seen other estimates that are higher than that, 5.5, etc. And you have to go back in time. This is a really interesting chart from the New York Times that shows that per capita we are still building less housing than we were before the 2008 recession. So we have a supply and demand issue. And while uh of course that's I I mentioned 4.9 5.5 million units nationwide. This is a nationwide issue. But it's also very much an issue here in in Salsbury. And uh our analysis when we project the need for housing in the next uh 10 years, we're looking upwards of uh five uh uh five uh five uh 5,500 uh units in the next 10 years. I think that one of the most interesting studies that I've seen recently actually came out of the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce. Um they did a housing gap analysis for across the state, but it broke it down county by county looking at housing demand in the next five years and it showed very much the same thing. They're saying that in Rowan County, we're going to need an additional six uh 6,000 housing units by 2029. And what I found very interesting is they actually broke that down even further by price point. So what the chart will show you is that we have a high demand for rental units that are at the very very low

income levels, but we also have a really high demand here in the blue for moderate income ownership opportunities. And I think what is a really surprising amount of de demand for new housing at that highest price point level. Um these are what might be called e executive homes. So this is this is I think a really really helpful um tool that we can use when uh looking at where we should be focusing some of our efforts. So again, what are those factors that are causing these dramatic increases and and this constrained supply? Um, you have to go back many many years all the way back to the before the great recession or during the great recession when the home building industry um you know our local builders went bankrupt and um it has taken a really long time to build back that home building industry. That's why we're not seeing the production levels the way the where we were previously. Um, but what's been happening is that these all there's been a lot of consolidation in the home building industry. So now we're seeing a lot of national builders, track builders who come in, build fast and and get out. And we see that in Salsbury and in the quality of the neighborhoods that um that are being developed. At the same time, um the cost of land has also increased nationwide. We're seeing it's up 250% since 2015. And I don't intend for this to be a presentation about zoning reform. Um but zoning does restrict the supply of housing. If you look at only having low density housing and single family development, that's going to drive up that's going to limit your supply.

that's constraining your your amount. And so all I will say about this is that land use planning and zoning reform is very important to support density where density makes sense. And that is also my shameless plug to talk about the South Main area plan. Um we have a draft available online right now for people to review and we have a community meeting that's going to be right here in this room on Thursday night. Um, so that's one of those opportunities that I think we see um to add density, increase the housing supply. It's not going to solve the affordability crisis, but it's an important it's an important step to thinking about supporting density where density makes sense. other factors that drive up the cost of housing. Um, also during that same time, really since 2015, labor and materials are up a tremendous amount. Tariffs contribute to that, but are not the only factor. One of the stories that I think is really under reported is the cost of insurance for multif family development has also skyrocketed. And so owners, managers of those properties are passing along a lot of those increased insurance costs to to the renters. What we also see is that there's there frankly is a mismatch of our population and our the trends in our demographic growth and the housing stock that we have. So, our housing stock today in Salsbury, 60% of the units are larger homes, threebedrooms or more. But you compare that to the makeup of our population, and this is something that I think is really astonishing to me and and to a lot of other folks. The largest percentage of our population in Salsbury

and across the country is comprised of single single people living alone. That is the most common household type and that's followed up by couples. So we have larger homes, smaller households. So there's a mismatch there between the housing that we're building, the housing that we have, and the population and their needs. And that is what um uh some folks uh Opticose uh has has really spearheaded this. that there's a movement for what's called missing middle housing. Everything between that kind of standard single family house and the, you know, the mid-rise apartment building, that garden style apartments. There might be different types of housing from, you know, tiny homes, accessory dwelling, units, cottage courts, town homes that actually fit the needs of our population better than what um we have traditionally built in the past. So what's the result? The result of this mismatch of supply and demand is that people are costbururdened. Um cost burden is a is a term that um HUD defines and HUD as the housing and urban development defines as when people spend between 30 and 50% of their income on housing related expenses. And that goes beyond rent. It goes beyond mortgage. It includes utilities and insurance etc. So when people spend that much their their cost burden and in Salsbury 14% of our households fit into that category. But there's another category and that's called severely costburdened and that is when that household spends more than half of their income on housing related

expenses. And that's 18% of our households spend more than half of their income on housing related expenses. So you total those together and that means that more than a third of Salsbury households are spending more than is recommended on housing. And I think that while this number is kind of astonishing, I'm worried that this is low. This data comes from 2018 to 2022 census data and as we saw earlier the more dramatic increases in housing related expenses happened kind of after that time period. So I'm while this is high I'm concerned that the number is even higher than this.

Hannah what all is considered housing expenses or the mortgage right. Yeah. So, uh, on the home ownership side, we're looking at if there's any insurance costs, utility costs, um, and then your mortgage. And the rent side, you know, we're looking at utilities and rent, um, and any fees if there are some associated with with the rental unit. Thank you.

Yeah. So, this is breaking down the data just just a little bit further. Um, and what I really should say is just lowincome households are the most likely to be costbururdened. You can see this cluster of of um of bars over here, the the high ones. And and the way that you look at this chart is to say that if you are a very low income homeowner, this light green um bar here, you have a 90% chance that you are cost burdened. If you're a renter, you have about a 75% chance that you are cost burdened. So the more money that you earn, your household earns, the less likely you are to be costbururden a little bit further into these numbers. Who are the people who are costburden? And I think the answer is undeniably people that we rely on. And so what I've done on this chart is looked at the median hourly wage for some of the most common jobs in Salsbury. We're looking at registered nurses, teachers, cooks, and that shows the hourly median wage. And I compare it to um what's called the housing wage. And the housing wage is the hourly wage that is required to afford a modest apartment in Ro in Rowan County. Um so this is uh the dashed line here shows what it would what it would what you would have to earn to afford a onebedroom and a two-bedroom and a three-bedroom. And so all the professions that fall below that line are likely to be costbururdened. You'll note here at the very very bottom is our uh minimum federal minimum wage of $725.

And so my question for anybody who wants to answer it, how many hours per week would it take someone who earned the minimum wage to afford a one-bedroom apartment at fair market rent in Rowan County? Any guesses? 80. I heard 120. Yeah, it's 131 hours a week. That's more than three full-time jobs. It's quite striking. Gosh.

And so, we all know this, but but when your housing costs burden, it can lead to some very impossible choices to make. Do you pay for your housing? Do you pay for health care? Do you pay for your housing bills? Or do you pay for food? housing or transportation, housing or education and child care. And we see um and I forgot to mention my team is here. Um thank you all for being here. Um we see this, you know, every every day. Um the choices that people make to avoid homelessness in many instances. Um lots of folks will do what you call drive to qualify. Um that means that oftentimes the most expensive housing is near the amenities, near the job centers, near the social networks. And so um you make that trade-off. Maybe I'll drive a little further um to to be able to afford less to be able to get less rent, qualify for an apartment. Of course, the trade-off there is that you're just trading housing expenses for transportation expenses, and you're also moving out of your communities. that would give you support. Um, another thing that we see, uh, is a lot of folks move in with family and friends and that can sometimes be an untenable situation, um, and lead to some health related concerns. Um, and what what particular Mike Catilla, code enforcement uh, manager sees is that people accept substandard housing conditions. Fortunately, um we do have some good tools and some programs to help to counteract some of those poor housing conditions. Um the Salsbury CDC um does many rehab programs. I've listed them here. The owner occupied rehab urgent repair programs. Um the neighborhood revitalization program

which is funded through the general fund. Um I'll throw in block work. There is another great program that helps to address some housing conditions. Um it's a lot but it's also not enough at the same time. Um we also have a of course our wonderful code enforcement team that uh inspects and enforces minimum standards of fitness. Um, I think though that as as much as they can do, there's not as much tenant awareness out there as to the issues that can uh be resolved through engaging with code enforcement. But there's also a real fear of retaliation um that you know they report something to code enforcement and it will trigger um perhaps an eviction or something um or rent to increase for example. And so to respond to that, our housing advocacy commission um that's really where the the efforts were born from for our rental health um initiatives or tenant awareness initiatives. Uh last year I want to lift up last year in March was our very first expo that we had where we brought uh folks together from uh the state and the sheriff's department and code enforcement to do some education around fair housing and minimum housing. Uh we did two sessions, one um in March and then another one over the summer in the West End neighborhood. Uh the West End neighborhood organization invited us to come and present there. Um, and that was a really exciting initiative. We have brochures to help to um, also provide a little bit more education. And in the coming year, there's a lot more planned. Um, our second annual rental health uh, expo is going to be on March

26th. We're looking forward to doing that over at the City Park Community Center. Um, we've also been able to get some grants to help to support some more activities. Looking forward to a video series on renting 101, a video series on minimum housing. And this group is also exploring a voluntary rental inspection certification program. So, these are all things that uh we hope to accomplish within the next year. And this is really really important work because I think for me one of the biggest indicators that we have of housing instability in Salsbury is the eviction rate. This is a not uncommon site unfortunately and it is a hallmark that there has been an eviction that's occurred and Rowan County ranks uh 20th 20th in evictions uh statewide um in North Carolina. This is just a snapshot, but it's not any different than it is uh today likely that 12% of renter households had an eviction filed against them in one year. And that makes a big difference because when you have an eviction filed against you, it goes on your record. And it makes it harder and harder to find another place to live. um and you get stuck in this cycle of um maybe a landlord who's not as willing to work with you over and over again. So, um the eviction rate is something we really do need to keep an eye on and take some steps to um help to bring that number uh way down. Hannah, do you think some of that was triggered during COVID when people weren't allowed

to collect and you can see I mean I don't know the word I'm looking for there but yeah some of this

there was a moratorum on on evictions uh during the co 19 pandemic and you can see that over time there is a dip here um and and then it goes right back up so and and over time this 12% 13 14% It's been steady over time. That's not an anomaly. So, I know that my presentation has not been good news. It's not been sunshine and rainbows here, but I do have hope. Um, and that is my primary hope is that some of the uncertainty that we see at the federal level, at the state level becomes some local resolve. And I'm also starting to see that here. I'm starting to see housing being rebranded um, and silos being broken. housing as a public health issue, housing as an economic development issue, housing as an educational issue and as a faith-based issue. I've had uh invitations to come and speak to more groups this year than I have in my entire time in Salsbury. Um so I just want to um highlight certain uh groups again roofs over rowan it is a cross sector collaboration and I think that that is the way that it's going to we're going to make some movement on this issue. Healthy Rowan um which is a part of the Rowan County Health Department and they have identified housing for the first time as one of their key focus areas for their community health needs assessment. And then of course as I mentioned at the beginning uh city of Salsbury has been doing a tremendous amount of work. So, I'd want to spend some time talking about some of the projects that um that

have been ongoing here. Elephant in the room, of course, is the Kesler Mill project um which is a public private partnership to redevelop a 13 acre site into approximately 150 units. This gives us an opportunity to develop senior housing, family housing, forale housing and in a neighborhood um that needs some revitalization. Other projects that we are uh engaged with is we've provided some grant funding to help Rowan helping ministries with the first Horizon's neighborhood. That's permanent supportive housing. Um we were able to do this with our home home ARP. So, American Rescue Plan dollars, that project is now under construction. Um, we've been able to support with CDBG funds, the Ford City Motor Lofts Project, and projects that the Salsbury CDC helps us to um helps us to administer. Uh, new construction has happened over on North Shaver Street. some lovely new affordable homes at uh 1270 and 1280 North Shaver Street. I believe still for sale. Okay, I'm saying they're still on the market. Um and the city from our general fund has also helped to support for many years now. I think about six years in a row now, uh, a neighborhood revitalization grant program and that is for exterior rehabilitation work um to help to improve the appearance and the condition of housing in neighborhoods and the we've been in the uh West End neighborhood, Park Avenue neighborhood, Eman Park, and now this year for the first time in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood. So, that's been some wonderful support that the city of

Salsbury has helped to provide. Um, it can sometimes feel like a scattershot. There's so many different needs and you know, I just listed five different projects that we're working on. Um, but I like to think of this in terms of a housing continuum from homelessness services all the way to home ownership. And so I want to help provide this as kind of a map and a tool to think about what we're doing um in different areas. So when we look at homelessness services and emergency shelters and permanent and uh transitional housing, Rowan Helping Ministries in this community is really leading the charge. They are an amazing organization and a great partner. And um but the city has helped them in a number of different ways that you may or may not be aware of. Um, we support through our CDBG funds, uh, case management for, uh, the to help people get back on their feet. Um, I mentioned before the our home ARP funds are going to help to support that First Horizon's uh, project. We gave a downtown revitalization grant for that Eagle's Nest project for transitional housing. And then of course there's the ongoing partnerships with our homeless liaison, the police department, code enforcement, uh public works, uh for outreach to the street outreach. Moving along the housing continuum, we're looking at community and social housing. And this is really the role that's filled by the housing authorities. Um we have three housing authorities here in our area. There's the Salsbury Housing Authority, the Rowan County Housing Authority, and the East Spencer Housing Authority. Um, despite their names, they we have uh

very little participation and very little role in the activities of the housing authority. And so I just I noted here we have a limited role, but this is a major opportunity for for collaboration in the future. So moving up next to uh below market rental uh rental and ownership and this is really the area for uh the private sector market rate to start to start playing a role. These are your affordable housing developers and uh we work with them um as we have with the Ford Motor City project um as we hope to do with the Kesler mill site on public private partnerships. So, I mentioned the Kesler Mill redevelopment and then those loans and grants to support long-term affordable um rental housing. So, now we start to move into uh the private rental market. Again, our our role in this this is largely done by the private sector. Um but our role in this we're we've identified code enforcement and housing advocacy commission uh for education campaigns and again enforcement of those minimum housing standards and then home ownership opportunities. Um this is oftentimes done of course by the private sector and then our housing nonprofits like the Salsbury CDC and Habitat for Humanity in in Salsbury Rowan. And the ways that the city has helped to support that is through our own occupied rehabilitation programs, new construction work and down payment assistance. So if you look at the entire housing continuum, we are touching nearly every aspect of it. And there are areas for more work, less work. And it's something that, you know, as you all think about your directions and your priorities, helping us

understand where kind of on this housing continuum you see a need and you want us to focus our work is is important as well. So, I'm going to pause here for just a moment to see if you all have any questions or comments before um I go into some of the future strategies or recommendations that we have. But I know I've said an awful lot. So

I have a question. Um it was my understanding that when you mentioned that we are not involved with the Salsbury Housing Authority that the mayor was a part of that board. At least I was when I was mayor and um so I was just interested in the fact that is that no longer the case. I attended board meetings and mayor you can correct me if I'm wrong. I think we have an appointment. We have a liaison. We have a mine. Yeah. Did I sign you to that one? Not the housing authority. The Salsbury Housing Authority. The mayor makes appointments to their board. You sign the appointments. They send them to But that's really the only But like none of us are a liaison or anything.

I'm just surprised to hear that because I attended the meetings and when Briner Crossing was being planned and uh all the good things that happened there. Um I'm I'm just surprised that we're not. We'll we'll look into it. Yeah. Because I'm very curious also um why is that? I mean we had a gentleman speak last council meeting about burning crossing and the things that was going on there and

yeah cuz it little part but it affects us uh heavy. Um, so I'm very curious and interested in where we stand with that cuz we talking about the partnership I when I wasn't even around or even with NACP. We talked about how the partnership was with Brenn Cross and all the good things that happened there uh Adam Livingstone and now to see the things that's happening there. Specifically, I talk about Brennan Cross and um it's a little ridiculous and I think we should see why,

right? And I'm just very surprised after being a part of it and its creation and the dreams for it um that what happened. I would just be curious to know because I feel like we need to be a part of it. Clearly it affects.

Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm very surprised. Any other questions, comments? I know it's been a lot and I've talked fast. Okay. Well, let's talk about some future strategies, what we can do, I think, to help to respond to some of the the biggest challenges that we have, but also also do um what's within our means. Um, so the first strategy I'm going to double down um and say we need to continue to support the public private redevelopment of the former Kesler Mill site for mixed income senior housing. And this is important because um it addresses the high demand for quality rental housing that we are really seeing in that 40 to 80% of area median income. It supports a variety of different housing types from the town home units to the for sale to senior to senior housing. Um it supports home ownership opportunities in the Park Avenue neighbor neighborhood and it creates this catalytic development also for that for that neighborhood. So we've been working on this project for many many years and um council as as you know we're going to be working on it for for many many more. Um but we do have an exciting milestone coming up. Um at the February 17th meeting, city council staff plans to bring forward our recommendation for the private sector development partner uh for us to work with on this project. So um very excited, looking forward to that. A lot more details will come into focus when we have that partner on board. Um the second strategy is to reallocate some existing funding that we we currently have. So um council every year we bring forward what's called our

annual action plan. This is from our and that's the plan for our community development block grant funds. And historically we have put that funding towards a program called owner occupied rehabilitation. And we've been doing that program for many many decades. Um, and over time, and it's a it's a wonderful program, but what's happened is that over time, the cost of each of those rehabilitations has gone up up up. That's what this chart is showing here, is that a a rehabilitation used to cost on average 35 $40,000. Um, more recently we've been seeing those bids come in closer to $135,000, $140,000. Um, so I think it is it is time to say, are we using that funding to the greatest extent possible? Are we supporting the how can we help more households with that funding? Um so the proposal is to reallocate that funding towards an urgent repair program. Um this would help those those very lowincome homeowners that are disproportionately costbururdened. It would help as somebody would say we're we're an old city with old streets. We also have old housing stock. So that housing stock needs some TLC when it comes to replacement of roofs and windows and things of that nature. Um, oftentimes urgent repair programs help uh elderly populations on fixed incomes uh to to stay in their homes longer and stay in their communities longer. So that will be a proposal that will be coming forth as part of our annual action plan uh coming up in the ne next several months to again reallocate those CDBG funds

from the owner occupied program to a new urgent repair program. That urgent repair program luckily we already have a really good model for that. Um, we have funding well the CDC gets funding from the state of North Carolina and and we're looking to model the this program after that one. I would also propose I mentioned that we have those two homes that are for sale um on North Shaver Street. We've done that as a neighborhood stabilization program where um we go into a neighborhood, build a build a home, it creates a nice comp for the neighborhood. Um, that's been a program that's been ongoing for several years. We take the proceeds of the sale of that house and put it back into the construction of the next house is kind of a revolving fund, although it's never been set up like that. Um, and so I looking at that program, I think that the private sector is doing that now. And so we could take the proceeds from the sale of 1270 North Shaver and put it towards urgent repair across the city. And if we were to do that, that would fund approximately 30 urgent repairs. So that would be another part of the proposal. My third uh recommendation for a strategy is to build upon our rental health initiatives. Um, as we were saying before, the Housing Advocacy Commission has um some their sights set on more, especially when it comes to educational campaigns, learning about the importance of having a lease and having a rental agreement and knowing what's in that rental agreement. Um, understanding about housing conditions and maintenance. Uh, our inspection program is completely voluntary by state law. It has to be a voluntary inspection for minimum housing

concerns. But I think building a more robust inspection program would be um another step in the direction to again help that help to reduce that eviction rate that is so problematic. Um Rowan Helping Ministries does have some emergency rent and utility assistance. That funding is a little volatile. So looking a little further into the future and keeping close contact with with our partners at Rowan Helping Ministries, we may need to look to help to support that emergency rent and utility assistance. And then also in the future thinking about how we can go about dispute resolution in eviction diversion through some mediation services. There are very few uh attorneys in this area that will do proono work when it comes to representing tenants in in small claims court for which is where the evictions happen. So looking at the future th those are some things I think we could do to help to again drive down that eviction rate. The fourth idea is to activate a smallcale developer network. Um, we were talking earlier about the need to increase the supply of housing, the choice, the different types of housing styles. We also need to focus on quality and durability of housing. And what we see is that small-scale local developers are more invested in the community. And so we need to look to them and rely on them and their expertise to help us solve some of the challenges that we face especially when it comes to um looking at our zoning ordinance. How can we remove some of the obstacles that they're seeing and that's towards zoning reform. And I know that Philip and his team have a group of developers that are

local and trusted and they can bounce ideas off of but I think that it can be taken to another level. So excited to be thinking about that with our roofs over Rowan group. Um we also have an opportunity to uh you know look to that group if established to help to market some of our surplus city properties and I'm going to throw in the Salsbury CDC properties into that as well uh to help to accelerate the the rate that we can produce more affordable residential development. Uh the fifth strategy um going back to my one of my very first slides about the two sides of the coin, we need to continue to advocate for housing wage jobs. Um council, I think when you revised your economic uh development incentive policy that it was a really positive step in the direction that you focused not just on the number of jobs that were coming, but trying to incentivize higher median wages. Um, so that's that was a great first step. Um, I think there's more work to be done with our downtown and economic development department, the EDC, workforce development board, and I'll say also with the housing authority too to help to bolster some of the self-sufficiency programs that they have in place. And then finally, um I believe that we need to take some steps to formalize a dedicated housing fund. Um I'll use the word uncertainty. Um there is a certain amount there is a lot of uncertainty around continued federal and state support for housing. We heard um you know earlier that the home program may be on the chopping block. CDBG is is um underfunded. What I found really interesting is I

went back and I looked at our allocation of federal housing dollars over a period of time. So we are getting less in housing funding. That number is way too small, but I think in 2004 we're getting fewer dollars than we were from the federal government in 2004. But if you factor in inflation and just the, you know, the cost of doing business, what it essentially means is that the purchasing power of $24 would be $925,000 today. So really, we're getting about a third of what we used to get. So it looks like it's a relatively flat line, but it is it's not. It the funding is not going as far as it used to. On the state side, um there are programs that have been funded in the past that have not made it into recent budgets. A big one is the workforce housing loan program, and that's a a big source to help to fill the gaps that exist in developing affordable housing. So there's just this area of uncertainty and by creating a local dedicated housing fund, we'd have some local control to address the priorities with some flexibility. We could use that to help to leverage some outside funding. Not all of it needs to come from the city of Salsbury area ourselves. Um and we'd be clearly accountable for that fund. So this is a a busy slide. Um, but what it shows is just how a housing fund may work. A dedicated housing fund. This is just a generic model. Um, so there's a number of different sources. Those are shown kind of in the the yellow. could be from the sale of property, could be from a geo bond, it could be from, you know, a percent dedicated percentage of

property taxes, but it also could come from um partnerships with banks, could could come from employer contributions, it could come from uh philanthropy, and all of that would go into a fund that would create a process for applying for for funding. And I call it gap gap funding because in in uh h in affordable housing, there's always a gap. Um and whether that goes to support the development of new housing or the preservation of existing affordable or direct subsidies in in terms of down payment assistance. All of those options are on the table and there's a lot of different places a across both near and far in North Carolina and AC and across the the country that have done this before. So, we can learn from a lot of places. Some places when it comes to how these housing funds are are governed um and managed, some places have they're they're focused in either the city or the county. Um there's advisory boards that review and provide recommendations to city council. Uh city of Asheville has one. Um it's been in existence for quite some time. Uh town of Carro, which is not a large city. Most of most of the time these are in large cities, but town of Carro is not large. And then Chattam County is another county that has has uh established a a dedicated housing fund. I think a really interesting model for us to look at is we build Concord just down the road. It is a a nonprofit board, but has strong representation from the city and the county. Um, and they are kind of I wouldn't call them kind of a traditional housing fund. they are a community land trust that also

functions as kind of this uh this housing fund that will help to provide that gap financing. So there there are other models and then there's also models for multi-jurisdictional none in the state of North Carolina that I could find. Um but if we wanted to pull in partners like from the town of Spencer, Rowan County, other count other municipalities within um within Rowan County, there's there's models for that that we could learn from, just not as as local here. So that wraps up my six main recommendations or six things that I I think that we could take we could really make some progress on. Um but I wanted to share this model. I think this is also really helpful in thinking about tradeoffs and priorities. We want it all. There's limited resources to do everything. And so as we're thinking about funding and where the priorities um should lie, this is something that the development finance initiative put together. It's kind of a trade-off between um wealth building and ongoing affordability and a trade-off between housing production, so new development versus preserving affordability in places that are already affordable. And so that can determine kind of what types of programs we want to initiate. So for instance, if you're focused on ongoing long-term affordability, um you're going to want to put funding towards usually towards more rental units. If you're looking at wealth building for individuals and h of households, you're looking at more homeownership opportunities. So just a just to think an interesting framework for you all to think about and reflect on. Um nothing I'm going to ask you

about necessarily today. Um but just think about it as as we move forward on this journey. And um I should have said this at the very beginning. I think the bluff we're not asking for anything specific today. Um we are only asking for uh feedback. And so I know that there's been a lot that we've discussed today. Um and need some feedback on directions. If you think we're on target with these different these six different initiatives, um if you think that there's a strategy that we've listed that's a little less pressing and we don't need to work on um or if you think there's something that was missing altogether that you would rather see us focus on. Um and so that's that's the end for me. um happy to answer questions but also would really love to hear your feedback.

Thanks Hannah. I I mean I get an opportunity this past year to go to a lot of meetings with a lot of other municipal leaders and we we all have the same challenge right now and there's just seems like a a million ideas out there. Some are big and encompassing, some are small. And I feel like right now we're all just throwing whatever against the wall to see what sticks and what works. And um I feel like you you you've taken all of that kind of in consideration and you've kind of come down with I feel like more kind of what fits with us. You know, is it um rosecolored glasses to say, "Yeah, let's do all six." I think we know we can't probably tackle that at this point in time. Um I don't know. uh Jim's magic wand. He just said no. Um but I'm just saying um I think we have to realize that where we housing's become a local problem where before that was more tackled at a federal state level from a support perspective. And I think we have to plan the fact that that's not ever going to happen again. And so now it becomes a local a bigger local issue uh to tackle. And um I just don't know where we go some days. And like I said, some places some things work. I know I discussed with you and Jim both about, you know, Durham has a fund and and you know, but that might work for Durham. And it doesn't mean it works for here. And uh we're handcuffed by I think I said it yesterday. We have big city problems, but we don't have a big city tax base. We're kind of caught in between. So we have to look at something we have too many people needing us to look at something. So,

one thing that I I failed to mention is that um this initiative, this exploring a dedicated housing fund is one of the top priorities for the roofs over Rowan Group and we would take time to study essentially the feasibility of that here locally. How would what would the sources be? what would the priorities for how it would what it would fund? Who would the partners be? Um all of those questions still exist, but what we have identified as the need for it. And so what I'm trying to accomplish here today is planting the seed with you all. This is not something that we're going to have up and running in a year. um this is this is wondering whether or not this is a direction you would like us to pursue and I think we've got a group that's well situated to look into it. My opinion is it's critically important and um it's only I don't know that it can get any better um without our help and that we definitely need to be um looking at this and discussing it during our budget workshop how much we can do but I don't think there's any question that we need to be doing it.

I second that. So, it's very important. It's critical. We see it. Um, yeah, the sustainability of our community relies on this. So, I I think it's a great direction. I'm curious to learn more. Mayor, members of council, I would just add, you know, to to Hannah's point, I think these are great strategies. Uh, and again getting back to your strategic plan, you had a strate strategic plan item to to look at housing opportunities and so staff took that, worked with partners and came back with this list. So, uh, now's the time to get that feedback. I think what we're hearing is yes, move forward. Some of these require funding, some of these don't. She talked about uh uh putting a team together to look at housing opportunities with some developers and partners uh setting that up initially. Uh may need some funding over time, but I I think her point I'd like to emphasize um these strategies are going to take some time to implement. And mayor, to your point, even if we had the funding today, we're not ready to throw money at this. There's there's more work that's needed. Thanks to Hannah, thanks to the team, thanks to the partners. This is uh a great list of of strategies and some real opportunities. Um we're like every other city. This is a problem here. Council's identified as a priority. So, um, Hannah's goal in bringing this again was to get that

feedback. Are we on the right track? Is there anything missing on those strategies? We're trying to hit some of those different issues, the the the safe housing, the affordability issue, even talking, you know, both sides of the income plus the cost of housing, um, working in code enforcement and other things. So, this is this is a uh big problem and it's going to take a lot of different um strategies to address the issues. So, um if council's supportive, we'll continue to work and keep you updated. you heard too some opportunities to um look at things that we're funding now and maybe move that to to other areas and wanting to make sure you're okay with that. And so again, thanks to Hannah and the team, we're continuing to work with partners, continuing to work with uh school of government and and other groups to learn and um you know, she mentioned Concord and I think Steve Fischer is very involved with that and so how's opportunities for us to to learn through Steve and and Concord. So, uh, we want to continue to work on this and continue to update you and get your direction. But thank you. I thought it was a great presentation. A lot of work has gone into it. In my job, we do a lot of strategic planning. Uh, and and housing is an issue everywhere. I think I think it was the mayor or someone said, you know, we we did used to think of housing more as

a state and federal problem and it is a local issue now. There's no question. And Hannah, that's one of the best presentations I've heard anywhere from housing and your strategies were great. So, good job. Wonderful. Um, and as said, it won't be solved overnight. Uh but um I hear the board acknowledge it's something you're going to be talking about and have to address. Um the agenda now has us taking a 15minute break. We're about 15 minutes ahead of schedule. So if we want to take that 15 minute break and maybe try to get started back about right at 11 or a couple minutes after, then we'll get into the next presentation. So let's let's take about a 15 minute break.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Hey, hey, hey.

Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey, hey, hey. our seats and proceed. um this se uh session titled preparedness, community safety, uh emergency operations battalion chief Adrien Gant and Fire Chief Parnell. And I'm going to turn it over to y'all. Jim, I didn't know if you wanted to say anything or let's let them begin.

The chiefs. Thank you. Well, good morning. Good morning. I'm going to be a little mobile. D may not be as mobile. I don't know. We'll try to make sure we meet Jason's needs to be recorded here. We are honored to be before you technology. There we go. There you go.

We are honored to be before you again and to be able to talk about some of the things that are important to our community in regards to public safety. Our very first uh strategic plan um uh mention of course is the public safety key focus area which um we have the the definition written out here but it's has to do with networking and and relationship building with our neighborhoods, our businesses, Rowan County and nonprofit organizations to provide innovative, efficient, equitable uh and responsive crossep departmental public safety services and as we have uh experienced growth within our community and um added responsibilities, these responsibilities have have uh increased substantially. So why we're here today is to simply and it's really not simple. There's five bullet points that kind of get uh uh in involved, but uh to communicate the needs associated with emergency management and emergency preparedness right here for our city to review the all hazards plan. We're not going to review it in detail, but we have an all hazards plan we're going to talk to you about. And then the uh continuing continuing uh continuence of operations plan that we don't have. We'd like to talk to you uh about that and our needs with that. Identify specific components of the continuity of operation plan. Formulate the emergency management team of stakeholders. That's a goal of ours. And then commit to annual exercises that deal with emergency planning, emergency preparedness of our city. So that's what we're here for. That's what we hope to uh be able to communicate with you. Let's s first talk to you a little bit about or or share with you our history for and and you know we we joke about it. I've been the fire chief for over 20

years. Uh for 20 years or before that, um the responsibilities of emergency management have been placed at the fire chief. And while it's I will shamelessly say we've done okay with it for 20 years, but the growth and the expansion that Hannah alluded to before and Chris have alluded to before in previous presentations show that our city is growing. the um e the expectations of our community is growing and so we've experienced a local increase in a number of events, the festivals, right? The great festivals that we have downtown, the gatherings, the parades. Think about uh our parades and and how we've had to move them around and how we've had to organize them for the safety of the participants, for the safety of our community. We can quickly look over at Raleigh not too long ago there was a tragic tragedy in a parade. We know now about that kind of tragedy and we need to be able to address it and try to prevent it. If we ignore it then it's subject to happen again and we don't want that certainly. So with all those responsibilities increasing and our level of knowledge increasing and uh the growth happening like it is, we needed to do have a better focus on emergency management and event safety here in our city. I don't think anybody argues with that. We know we know that that's a that was a thing. So uh an important thing. So, uh, we initiated some improvements within our community a couple years ago at the, uh, at the encouragement of our then new city manager, Mr. Green. The, uh, uh, permitting for in, uh, um, events was streamlin, well, not streamlined, but more pointed, more more um, um, uh, responsible and and then we

formulated a single point of contact. So there was permitting at different offices and that needed to be streamlined and and put into a singular point of contact for our city. I also want to mention I think you've probably seen it. I know the folks from uh the uh management team have seen we've had an all hazards emergency operations plan for a number of years. One of the first things I did when I made chief and was appointed the emergency management director was to develop our city's all hazards plan. all has or or emergency management, emergency preparedness and emergencies, disasters are a collaborative response for a community our size. It can't best be the fire department or the police department or the public works department or any particular one department. Has to be collaboratively done. And that all hazards plan was built and designed and updated over years many times to make sure that we knew if there was a 3 to five to seven inch snowstorm what all of our responsibilities would be or if there was an ice storm going to hit our city at record level like maybe last weekend. Right? We needed to know everybody's responsibility and that all hazards plan dictated that and it has annexes in it. Uh that uh one was the proclamation of a state of emergency. Uh the emergency communications plan the c we call it crisis communications plan uh is is an annex of that plan. So we have that plan but honestly it needs updating again. and it needs constant update updating and so we need to um uh visit that often which is not not terribly arduous but it has to be done and so we've had that

plan and so with the refocus of event safety emergency management and our continued responsibilities as our community grows and our responsibilities grow some of the things that we know we've got to do is communicate the needs associated with emergency management and preparedness in our salt in in our city. Review the current allhazards plan. Identify the components that are within a continuity of operations plan and um formulate an internal stakeholders team. The beginning of growth I lost my notes here. I'll get them. Um the beginning of growth occurred at t at the turn of the 2025 year and we went step by step. First we noted we noted that we needed a point of contact and we were blessed with the talents of Adrien Gant. You all know her. You all know that she's high energy and well organized and when she gets a mission in her mind, there's no stopping her until it's finished. And that's all I'm I'm saying this all out of respect and uh uh gratitude actually. So early uh in 2025 actually in early June uh Gant was promoted to battalion chief in charge of emergency management and event safety. And I can tell you that that tornado took off and it's and she's doing great with that particular aspect and doing great with everything she does. We also knew by step by step that we had to have a place a point of contact. Uh and fire station 3 being under construction and under design and again at the encouragement of city manager. Uh we identified the front room as the

emergency operations center and that was opened as mayor you mentioned yesterday in your uh state of uh annual report that that was opened up in October of 2025. A lot of other things went on in 2025 and actually a little bit before the the turn of 2025. The management um tabletop exercise we did in October of 2024. Do you remember that at management team uh Adrian and Terry read off a a a weather emergency and we exercised the plan? See, some of you don't remember that, but we did that. And that was a 2024 drill. You probably don't. You were working you're working somewhere else, Jared. But um so that was an exercise of the emergency operations plan. And uh what we did there was wet the appetite, right? We we we we uh dusted off the emergency action plan, the all hazards plan and assigned different uh aspects of what to do or what you would do in that particular emergency. Excellent exercise. It was good to to review and see the plan. Uh and then Adrian, you can jump in here anytime you want to, but we had increased coordination with the county emergency management office. Uh Adrian has developed an excellent uh relationship with Rowan County's emergency management office. It's not that we didn't have one before. Just when Adrian goes after it, it goes it goes well. And so her and uh Allison Summit, who is the emergency preparedness planner at Rowan County, uh work weekly uh in developing and and exercising and uh preparing for events in and outside of our city and how they impact us. Um,

one of the most pointed things that we did this year was invite our friends over from Asheville. Many of you in the room were in that in that particular session. and Ashel shared with us a dayong worth of uh uh uh lessons and uh experiences that they gained when hella hurricane Helen came through and flooded out their community in in a big way, impacted their their community in a big way. What we didn't know that we know now is they were just a few years ahead of us in regards to developing a continuity of operations plan and uh re revising their emergency action plan. And in the throws of that, they had a water emergency prior to the uh hurricane hitting their community and they exercised their plan. And because they exercised their plan then when the hel when the uh hurricane came through they were yet even better prepared to use that as a plan and as a roadmap for mitigation response and recovery. So, those are those are the things that uh we were very proud of in regards to building an emergency management plan, emergency management um uh division, if you will, of the fire department in regards to preparing our community for event safety and uh disaster response. Were you about to say something? Okay, she stepped up, but you don't get in her way, right? And then um uh Gant and um SRU worked together, Chief Ganton, SRU worked together to do a a safe assessment of SRU's facilities in December of this year. I I would also um

remind council that in May of 25, we adopted the uh Irdale Rowan hazard mitigation plan that was developed by the state of North Carolina, a vendor for the state of North Carolina. So, and that that hazard mitigation plan was Mayor, I remember you and I talking back and forth. I said, I didn't print it because it's like 525 pages. and you said thank you for not giving us 525 pages to read. So uh but it is a very extensive plan has a lot of history of uh of uh disasters in our community in and around our communities in and around our region. It gives us a prediction of what we might expect floods seven it even goes out to 700year floods. So if if you're going to be around then you would be able to use that chart and determine what what happen within the next 700 years. So uh it was it was an excellent it is an excellent resource. So we use that for our emergency management planning. We also use Rowan County's emergency management plan which is an umbrella plan. Uh so it gives us a lot of resources. We have a lot of resources as we prepare for um our community as as we prepare to uh uh make our community as safe as possible and to be able to res mitigate respond and recover from disasters that we might encounter. The next one, please.

I did. Ah, I did. Thank you.

Yes. So, over the last I would say we're kind of a year into developing this program if if that's fair. I think we're that's where we're at. And um um Mr. Green has really committed to um developing this program and I feel like we've done that over the last the last year. Um and in discussions with um Asheville when they were here, I think most of you all remember they talked about it took them six six years. It was a journey. Um and so I think we're at the beginning of our journey. Um we kind of joked this weekend. Um you know, we the last two weeks we've kind of exercised things quite a bit. We had the um the peace walk um which was an extremely important collaboration with different communities um you know our neighbors from China Grove to Spencer and then um I even was able to connect we connected with the EM um members in Davidson. So it was a huge point of collaboration um that was very important. So I think that was an important step. Another important step that happened recently is um I was able with the county to make some connections with the NC heart team and really dig into what that it looks like and they are in our community, right? They they fly out of our airport um so making those connections and those are um you know that is a response team for emergencies um and extreme emergency management. So that was a huge a second huge hurdle to overcome. And then um the third one, you know, we we joked sitting in the EOC the other day that opening the EOC it was kind of a soft opening um this past weekend and that's that's kind of what we you know we alluded to that that was our soft opening. Well, guess what? We're getting ready to have a second one um this weekend with the storm. So I think we learned some lessons this week this past weekend of what we liked, what we didn't liked. Um as we go on this journey, I feel like there's going to be many more things that we learn. we learn what works and learn what doesn't work and um taking in those things from our other communities.

Um one of the next steps for me that is going to be very important in um the process of this program is um and I just heard back this morning as a matter of fact I'm headed up to Asheville um real soon and I'm going to go spend some time up there with those gentlemen and those folks and learn what their process was like. I know they came and talked to us but I want to go live it, feel it, experience it and get that hands-on. Um, so hopefully we can bring it back to our community to make a, you know, a more important and solid difference here.

Having a solid plan, pre-planning for emergencies is tremendously important for the success of our community. We all know, right, if if there's a water emergency, Jason knows what to do with his department. If there's a snowfall, nobody knows better than Chris Tester and his staff what to do and how to deploy. If there's a civil unrest, nobody knows better than the police department and the police chief on how to handle and what to do. But how do we support them? The planning and pre-planning and uh uh developing of uh action plans is what's important for the total success. I we I think Chris alluded to it. I I I listened to him this morning. They have a great plan for repaving the the uh community's streets, but if if the folks that live on other streets don't know it, there's there's conversation. That's because of compartmentation. So if there's a utility outage, it's compartmentalized right now. If there's a snow problem, it's compartmentized. If there's civil unrest, it's compartmentized. We need to tear down those silos and make it collaborative in regards to response to help with success.

Yeah, most certainly. And you know, we the other day when we were briefing prior to the storm, one of the things that I said is, you know, everybody in this room is subject matter experts in in their particular fields. I am most certainly not. Um, so that's where, you know, it's going to be important and very important for us to collaborate and pull all that together and pull all that information and lean into each other um to create create one solid um coupe plan um so to speak going forward. So So how do how do you think uh so where's this picture from? Everybody where Asheville, right?

Asheville you it's it's recent in our minds. How pl how how how how much advanced notice did they had did they have that this was going to happen in their community? Not much. Not much. Right.

Right. That m maybe a few hours. We're not talking days. We're not talking weeks. We're not talking months. But because they planned up front, had a modernization of their emergency action plan. They've had emergency action plans for a long time, but they're just like ours now. Had to do with the fire department, had to do with the police department, had to do with the various individual departments. And they went through just a few years earlier, the com combination of the planning. So when this happened, everybody knew what the every department in the city knew what their role was. What does transit do? What what does management do? How about a state of emergency? How do we deal with that? What does the attorney do? And in in the national framework of incident management, Grant may not know this may, but there's there is an attorney function. There is a function for what attorneys would community attorneys are.

Yeah. Governmental attorney uh would would do to help move forward. I know, right? This weekend, Saturday and Sunday, the EOC, you're welcome to join. Well, he he actually did, right? you you were quite busy Friday and Saturday. So he was that's for sure.

So we see this we see this and we we're f this this particular events fresh in our mind just what 16 months old or so and we know and how tragic it was and they're still recovering. We see still reports a year out 12 12 month 14 months out of what recovery is for them. One of the things that we talk about a lot especially in emergency services and um in the police department we have this conversation a lot is not if it's when. Um so we need to prepare as much as we can. And then you know the other piece of that in this planning process is you know there's plan A, there's plan B and then there's another plan A and another plan B. Um and then you go to a third plan A. Right? So those plans constantly evolve and adapt. Um and that's part of the any instance will create that. Um, and so we have to be able to evolve, but if we can create that foundation, we have that foundation to build off of. Um, and so that's, you know, what we're here asking is to cons the consideration of that foundation. So, does anybody know where this picture's from?

Sorry, Chief. You should know where that's from. County Statesville Boulevard. Stoulevard. No, I thought so. I thought so, too. I had to look. I thought it's Staceville Boulevard as well, but it's it's not. But it is. But you're not far, right? It It's a It's a local It's in a street. It's Yeah, it's East Andis out towards Granite Corey. Out towards the city limits of Granite Cororey. But yeah. So, the reason I throw this up there is this is something that is, you know, in our history. And, you know, it seems so long ago, but it I mean, it was in 1989. This is Hugo. Um, this is some pictures from Hugo. And I'm not sure

that was long. I just I distinctly remember it. But um you know I don't know the facts of this are we had 89 mile per mile per hour winds and we had 40,000 homes in the area without power um for a long time. For a yeah I mean I specifically remember at my parents house we were out of power for two and a half weeks. um now they're they're off the road and they're you know so there are some extenduating circumstances there but um two and a half weeks without power. Um so those are some things to think about and there's $21.5 million in damage

$89, right? Not not $2,26. So can it happen here? Should we be prepared? Should we have a plan?

And how you know I wasn't here then. How prepared were we then? Was it reactionary? Um I would like to think that you know moving forward and as we're growing it, you know, I heard it the statement made earlier that we were big but small and and we often say this you know that we're too big to be small and too small to be big. Um so I think the development the consideration of the development of the plan will help us build that foundation to be able to handle these situations um going forward.

So we have identified two or three specific needs. Right. Hannah called them strategies. Excellent excellent point. We need the coupe the continuity the continuence of operation plan for for our city. What is a coupe? What does a coupe do? Coupe gives us a roadmap to continue governmental activities and operations even if we're displaced from our place of business or our area. Asheville brought up an excellent point, Wade. How are we going to pay our employees on payday if we can't get into city hall and can't run the the government? Now, they now they were they were very fortunate. They they walked into a very fortunate situation. One of their financial folks was actually out of the region that was impacted by the uh hurricane, the uh the winds and floods. So, they were able to count on her working remote to be able to force payroll through. But we c we can't expect our employees not to expect paychecks at le maybe a day or two but we really can't expect them to miss paycheck. So those are important functions. Other functions of course the the the uh citizenry needs communication, right? They they're going to turn to the government. They're going to turn to our city on what to do if power is out for two weeks. If power if if they need um they're going to turn to y'all, right? They're going to turn to their elected officials. What do I do? How do I deal with this? My my family needs this particular issue. My family needs that this continuence of operations plan or continuity of operations plan gives us the roadmap as to how to deal with um situations or or

our government uh act activities, responsibilities even if we're displaced. Think of if the F3 tornado goes down Main Street, right, from south to north. How many city facilities does it take out? And his face didn't like that comment,

right? That's not it's not a good thought, but it could take out access to city hall and COB and uh the county government buildings and that kind of thing. Let's hope it never happens, but shouldn't we be prepared if something like that happens? So um so we we know that we need to develop or have developed a coupe. We also know that we need to intertwine our emergency action plan. We call it a all hazards plan. Now we know we need to they need to agree. They need to look alike. They need to say the same thing. They need to give us the same direction or similar direction so they complement each other. We have an we have a freestanding um all hazards plan, but we need to pull it all together. And then what was the third one? Gant. Oh, update the EOC manual. That's your

Yeah. So, just creating the EOC manual and what that looks like. Um you know, we have we have the place now. Um we've started this journey. Um and now we got need to take the next step forward and um develop a develop a manual of how that how that place operates and and when it opens and when it doesn't open. Um you know we decided we sat and talked through some things this weekend while we were all there. Um you know on the different levels of opening you know you've got we decided on level one through four um you know to to bring forward and present once we put it all on paper what that looks like. one being we're we're in remote communication and then the next step and then the next step and um what those looks like. So kind of that piece of it and then um this part the bottom part updating the all hazard plan that has already started. Um Jason Brewer and I met um through November and December and kind of worked through some adjustments and updating that. Um now the next step is taking it um taking it forward um to management having you all look at it and and finalize you know that piece of it. So we can have that in place um for 2026. So that is the next step of that

and we have started the steps just so u everybody's aware we've started the steps for finding a vendor or a consultant to help us with coupe planning. We've needed a coupe for some time but a coupe undertaking developing a coupe is in a city of our size is tremendous. The coupe would address each department. The police department currently has a coupe. They had to have it for accreditation. Kala accreditation. Uh, and kudos to the police chief. I don't know of any other department that has a coupe. Right. What what happens? Right. If if the traffic lights go out, Jared knows what to do, but is is there right? Maybe. But is Oh, we we trust him. Right. Right. So, we have we have components of it, but we need a compilation of it. So, we are in the throws working with finance Mark Tracy and I were talking a little bit this morning. She has some great resources for developing a um RF RFP for uh searching for a consultant to help develop the coupe for us fiscal uh investment. Sir,

yeah, I can hit that when you're done. Or are you you and Chief Gan?

We are we are just about done. It's a good time to talk about that. So, mayor, members of council, if this is a priority, and it is a priority recommendation from staff, um we we'll let the chiefs talk a little bit more about uh the investment numbers as they start talking to some companies that do this type of work. As the chief said, it's very involved. It takes a lot of time. And what we heard from Asheville was that a plan like this to do it right uh may be about $250,000. So it's it's not cheap, but I think it is uh a critical priority for us uh consistent with our public safety and strategic plan as you heard from the chiefs kind of the next step. So we've got the person with Chief Gant to lead us. We've got uh the communication starting and we got the location. Now it's the planning and the training and that's exactly what we heard from the city of Asheville. So, uh the next steps the chief could you go back one please where you had the I'm sorry, one more those three uh right there. Thank you. Uh the U continuous operation plan. We heard other examples from Nashville. Uh when they talked about just fueling and they had all the technology for um uh equipment to be fueled, but all of that went out. So they had to basically go to paper which department, which truck, how much fuel. Uh you have to have all all that documentation. It was mentioned the engagement and

communication. We saw pictures of uh the mayor on a bullhorn out at I think it was a fire station chief.

Yes. They were they were quick to tell us that the community identifies fire stations as a point of communication. So the community gathered at their fire stations and with as Mr. Green mentioned with bullhorns is how and sandwich board signs is how they communicated. So helping to identify those critical operations and when our phones go down and the radios go down and the the pumps go out, how are we going to continue to operate? You've got a a plan A BC uh and going down to the sandwich boards and pieces of paper. So, uh, looking at to develop a coupe plan, updating our EOCC manual, and the chief mentioned our hazard mitigation plan, having someone take a look at that. We've changed, we got new management team members with Phillip and and Jared and Kesha and others. So, getting their input. So, there's a lot of work to do. Um, and uh, but this is a priority. we we need to plan and prepare. So, looking at possibly 250, whatever that um somewhere in that range. Uh I think council knows we were very fortunate a couple years ago to get a $10 million state grant for public safety. It focused on uh providing some funding for fire station 3. Uh it uh provided funding for fire station 2 and the decontamination facilities. Uh it provided funding for some of the ballistic vest for police and fire that we've already purchased. Uh it provided for the fire line, the

water line for downtown uh Salsbury. Um but with that we've been able to invest that money and uh we have some uh funds over the initial $10 million. And so if this is a priority for council and again it's our recommendation for a a priority uh looking if we need about 250,000 or somewhere in uh there there's some some savings some additional revenue as part of that 10 million that we would recommend using to fund these plans. uh we we have to use those uh additional revenues that investment income for public safety and so we think this is a good fit for it. I would simply say also that we would be looking for the scope of work from the consultant, not just to write a plan, but to visit with each department, develop a a specific plan for that department, have a cooperative combined compiled coupe for our city and also to receive input from the community. Right? there would be community members uh community meetings associated with that uh and so that we meet the needs of the stated needs of the community and then also um to help us get started with familiarization within and setting a a drill or an exercise schedule as we move forward for familiarization of that coupe plan. So it's all-encompassing. It's not just write a plan and turn it over to us. It would be a communitydriven master coupe plan with familiarization aspects to it.

And we would ask them not like you said familiarization piece of it. That's going to be an important component of it. Not just write the plan and leave it. Um we definitely need to work through um what those exercises and stuff look look like going forward to develop it to you know make sure that we are prepared when it you know if it if it should ever happen. We all are prepared. all of us. Any questions?

I I I've been able to hear twice about the response from Asheville and um I'll just say to council, we we got to have we got to have it because you don't know and it could be more than just a natural disaster. There's a lot going on in this big wonderful world that we live in and it it this covers all of that. But I I I think to your point, it's it's not something that's been shelved. I mean, how many times do we know what to do with a chemical something in a warehouse? You go find the MSD book and you're like, you know, it's just sitting there. You don't know how to do this. Is something that has to be actively ready to rot because you didn't have it a second. I mean, they were going to get rain,

right? Yeah. Nobody. You didn't. Yeah. They knew it was coming, but not that. See, and that's what you don't know. And that I think the active part on getting this and getting everybody, it affected everybody. It affected public partners. So like fortunately, I I remember the mayor talking about how there was a local radio station that could still get stuff out. So they were putting flyers everywhere to ask people to turn into that radio station. Yeah.

So that they could communicate with citizens. So, it it's just so much and it involves every department and I I think it is a a very big priority um because you just don't know and I uh I appreciate you all tackling it. I know there's we've already started in a process, but I think continuing down this road is is a a good decision for our citizens. Then I know it's a competing space when we look at the budget. You know, how do you get whatever? But something goes down, we have to be ready. Invaluable once it's on when it's made. It's yeah, it's worth more than what you had to pay more worth more than the investment. I would agree. So the investment, that's my two cents on that.

My opinion on the investment part and the piece of it, and this is something I think you all know by now that I'm very passionate about it, is it it's not just the investment of that plan and that object, but it's the investment that we're all going to make in working together. Um it it's definitely a team effort and it it takes all of us as well as like you stated the outside community partners. You know, they ma they matter, right? It's not just we're not in silos. Um so that's going to be the very it's going to be the import the important piece of it is we are all going to be committing to this. It's not just you know for for one department or one individual. It is going to be a commitment of everybody.

Any other questions or or thoughts? And is council okay with us looking at that grant? So this is good news. This is not fund balance. some of the other things we've been talking about looking at fund balance. This is using some additional interest income and some savings perhaps in that $10 million grant to allocate it to this public safety need. Okay, very good. Thank you for your time.

Thank you both. Uh, Chief Camp, before you leave, maybe just share. I know it's four days out, but you alluded to what we may get this weekend. And if you don't mind what you're sharing, I can tell everybody's everybody's excited, but um I just sent an email a while ago um when I was sitting back there beside um Tracy um and I got some nasty grams back. Um, so from Hannah, yes, it is looking like we are going to be getting something this this weekend. Oh,

it is it is evolving. It is ever evolving. Um, so the last report was we're looking at 4 inish. Um, and snow. Um, so let's keep our fingers crossed that it is snow and not the ice that we experienced last weekend. The ice is what causes the problems. So hopefully we're we're looking at snow. Um, but we will I will do a full report tomorrow morning. It's looking on it's going to come in light kind of Saturday midm morning. Um, but then pick up later Saturday into the evening Sunday night. Um, I mean Saturday night, but it looks like it's going to be done and out by Sunday. Um, so kind of that it Saturday, Sunday impact is what we're looking at. Um, and then we'll see how much. Um, the problem with it is it's it likely and I'm sure Tester can allude to this because of the temperatures we've had. um it might stick around for a little bit. Um but if it's truly just snow, it'll be a a little bit easier to clear the streets. Is that a fair statement?

Fair. Fair. Fair. So, we will see. I will do a full report um again tomorrow morning and then um depending on what tomorrow morning says, I'll pull together a a meeting tomorrow afternoon um to address it going into this weekend. Yeah, I agree. Uh, I don't foresee the lingering ice and snow that we have right now or ice and sleep that we still have being gone before this other one comes back. Um, some of it may decrease a little bit, but um, the temperatures that we're going to have, it's it's going to stick around for this week and next week and this will just be a addition to that. So, um, yeah,

snow will be easier to deal with if that's what we get. So, I always say don't use the sword. But I think this time I'm saying use the sword so that that's what we get.

And snow like you know and in the city the streets are are pretty good. I mean they're they're good I would say. Yesterday I took a trip out into the county um for a big hazmat that we had and it was not safe in the county. Um matter of fact, one of the neighboring Woodleaf Fire Department's truck was going to the call and um they were very slow in approaching it, but it was on a bin and they slid their truck into the ditch um because it was kind of sloped on the high end and um it was lots of money going down the drain. It was a propane truck that was on its side. Um so that was very unfortunate because a lot of people would have paid a lot of money for that. But um yeah, the county roads around us are are not in good shape yet. Um, and so this added on top of it is going to be supposed to be a little bit challenging. So, we'll see.

I do have a husky if anybody needs to be pulled through the snow. I'm not saying he's he's kind of pretty. Can he pull like a plow? Maybe he he thinks he can. I'll defer to Connie on this one.

Mayor, council, just final thing. I I'd like to thank fire chief and and chief Gan. A lot of progress. you heard over the past year, year and a half uh on our emergency management and it is a priority part of your strategic plan and I I thank them. Chief Gant may be uh second-guessing her decision to accept the promotion. The past two, three weeks have been uh a lot on her and we appreciate her leadership. She's doing a fantastic job and we're going to have her kick off the next council meeting Tuesday to talk a little bit about the events uh whether it's the storm or the peace walk or some other things but also opportunity just to recognize and say thanks. I don't think she's slept much has she chief over the the past couple weeks. So u thank you Adrian, thank you chief. Appreciate the leadership. You're talking about Asheville. That's my home. Well, actually Weaverville. But as we read more and more about about Helen and the stories, as bad as it was, I I think Asheville's response overall was extremely good and and having that plan no doubt contributed to that. And I and I think as as we get past the storm, there's going to be a lot of case studies and there'll even be more information that will demonstrate just how well the city of Asheville responded to that whole thing. And there's no question that, you know, the planning and what y'all were talking about played a huge part in that. So, just wanted to point that out. Um, we are about 30 minutes ahead of

schedule. Kelly tells me lunch is not quite ready. I don't think we really have enough time though to try to start anything new. So, I don't know if we people will just take a little bit of time to check their email or do some things they need to do. And uh u and when it is ready, we can let you begin. And it should be ready in about 15 minutes. So, maybe we'll just try to uh plan to start lunch at 12. We had 45 minutes scheduled and we might can still start back about a quarter till which will give us a little put us a little bit ahead of schedule. Uh try to get out here on time. So is that okay Jim just to

I'm good. Mayor council take a I guess a break and then lunch will be here in the next 15 20 minutes. Be ready. Hopefully lunch will be ready at noon. So if you just want to take a 15-minute break to do some things we'll go with that plan. Mayor, is that okay? I'm about to stand up. I'm so okay. Thank you.

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Well, thank you. I think most you're the only listener in here. Heard you, Jeff. Thank you. Maybe about five minutes. Thanks.

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chief. Very very good. Um so we are getting back on schedule. This session is storm water planning and resiliency public works assistant director Michael Hannah and storm storm water manager Elise Tles. So are y'all ready? I'm gonna call you on up.

So ready. Hold this make it a little bit easier to hear us. Uh so thank you all. First of all, thank you all for having us here today. Uh, mayor and council, hope you like your hats. Hat looks good on you. I love it. Yeah, fits.

There is a smaller one over there somewhere. Uh, but we knew that with the camping theme with our bucket hats we had, it was a perfect perfect fit. So, we wanted to uh share those with you as well to kind of advertise and talk about storm water. Uh, but we thank you all for the opportunity to be here before you today to talk about our storm water program. Um, and so kind of just to kick us off as we get into it. So, we just completed our first or our most recent audit a couple months ago. Um, this is probably our third audit we've had uh by NCDEQ. And so, now we're getting ready to start a new permit cycle. So, before we do that, we kind of want to get before y'all to give y'all kind of the state of our storm water program. Uh, be more of a planning planning discussion as we get through this as you'll see. Um, but we're going to talk about how storm water it has evolved over time. Um, we're being real transparent about our program. We're looking at what's working well. Uh, where the workload is increasing, uh, where we're starting to see capacity pressures that make it harder to do um, everything as efficiently as we'd like. Uh, then we're looking at our natural growing pains with uh, increased regula, uh, regulatory expectations, capital activity. Um, and then the system complexity is increasing as well on our program. Um, so again, we just want to open up uh a time that we can have just kind of a good discussion about it, provide some information and tell you the state of our storm water. So it aligns with our strategic plan. Sorry, I'm flip my notes over. Uh, it aligns directly with our our strategic goal, sustainable infra infrastructure. I mean, this could hit a bunch of different areas and our strategic plan. Uh, but this is the main one that it highlights. So kind of our road map for the day, our trail map, if you will, for the day. Uh we'll briefly today we'll briefly cover uh our kind of what is storm water. We'll look at the new uh changing world of storm water with new regulations. We'll then go into our current storm water operations, our storm water sustainability and working together, how we meet some of those needs uh through interdivisional work. Uh we'll look at our benchmarking data as we've reached

out to other cities. And then we'll also talk about our capacity considerations. So, we like to always give a um when we're in front of everybody, we like to give a kind of what is storm water? Not everybody knows it, and we always use that as educational opportunity. So, storm water is anytime it rains from the sky, it hits the ground and then it rolls into our creeks and streams. Uh that can form rain or it could be snow like we just have. If you go look in our parking lot, water is running off our parking lots right now from the big old giant snow piles and it's going straight to our creeks and streams. The biggest thing is it is un is untreated. It does not get treated. It goes whatever's on our parking lots, whatever it gets caught in that that water will go into our creeks and streams eventually High Rock Lake um Yaken River all the way down to Georgetown, South Carolina. Um so again, anytime water falls on a hard surface, whether that's asphalt, concrete, buildings, um hard packed gravel, um all different types of stuff when it lands on that, that's what storm water is. So part of what storm water is, the federal government also says we should do some stuff uh with it as well and we should we should help treat it. So we are a phase 2 uh MS4 program, municipal um separate storm water system. Um and so because of that, the federal government says we have to do so much to make sure our creeks and waterways are are clear. Um and part of that permit that we're under with the state, it's a 5-year permit. Um and then that it gets renewed and that's what we just had that audit done and we're getting ready to enter a new phase of it. So part of that we have to do so much to comply with their um with their requirements. We have a public education aspect, public involvement and participation, elicit discharge, illegal discharge and erosion, post construction runoff and pollution prevention and good housekeeping. Uh so all these different areas they said you have to do all this stuff to make sure our waters are clean, protected our waterways, but we're not going to tell you how to fund it. And so that's why on your water bill you have a storm water fee that's built onto it that helps fund this program. Um, again, federal requirement said do this, but we're not going to tell you how to fund

it. We're not going to give you funding for it. So, that's why the storm water utility fee was set up. So, why does this matter? One thing I want us to see, a lot of times people see storm water as a liability, but I want us to see it as an asset. That's always our our goal as a program is to see it as an asset that it is. Um, without storm water, it helps uh polluted waterways, right? It prevents that waterways from getting polluted. Um and um it reduces flood risk which you see uh in the street there. We try to prevent flood risk, prevents infrastructure damage, ensures regulatory compliance. Um and when our systems fall behind, neighbors feel it, businesses feel it, and our residents feel it as well. Costs go up and there's a huge environmental impact if we're not meeting those requirements. All right. So, to put things into context, a few things are changing. As Michael already alluded to, um, we had an audit this last year. So, we're actually in year five of a 5-year permit. So, we're about to go into a renewal process. I do want to share that when we went through our audit this last year that we did learn that there are going to be some permit requirements that are increased in addition to the permit renewal process is going to look differently moving forward. However, they didn't share a lot of details about what it's going to look like quite yet. So, we're still waiting on some of that. I will share that we did receive a notice of deficiency. So, that's not a violation. Um, it just meant that we were deficient in a few areas. Most of those were tied towards storm water control measure inspections. Um, those have a different process that they're they're sharing now. And so, we've already remedied those and made a plan for that. But it does mean that moving forward we can expect um a higher demand for inspections and documentation and compliance tracking. Um especially given the development growth that means more storm water control measures are being implemented.

All right. I want to paint a nice picture, a realistic picture of what our current storm water workload and projects look like right now. So let's start off with our major active capital projects. We have a number at different phases currently. Um Jackson area and Long Branch are two that are closest to construction. We actually feel like we'll be ready to go to bid for Jackson area at the end of this fiscal year and likely into construction in next fall. Um Long Street, that one will probably be ready for next fiscal year, like at the end of this fiscal year. Um will be close to getting ready for construction. Um, Sunset Drive, that's at around 60% in planning and design phase. Even Park is the new one that we just started. So, you might actually see some surveyors out this month, or maybe you've already seen them. Um, but that's the area that's kind of right behind Salsbury High School and extends to Milford Hills. In addition, they're looking at a kind of multi-prong approach there for um updating infrastructure in addition to doing stream restoration as there's a stream that goes right through that project area. And then there's Mahaley branch which currently is sitting at 60%. That is the project that we have applied for hazard um mitigation grant funding. So we worked very aggressively to get construction ready for the grant timeline in order to be eligible to apply. We have currently gone through multiple different checkpoints which I would say is a a good thing. Um we haven't been told no or anything yet. There have been a number of different requests for information but that is a $15 million grant that we're in the running for. And so hopefully we'll get some good news soon. I think at this point their internal reviewers have done their peer review and then it's about to get passed off to FEMA. Um in addition to that, we have some systemwide work that is kind of your your day-to-day stuff, ongoing maintenance, flood response and repairs, inspections and documentation, um public education, and then storm water control measure increase with development. Um, but

before we move on, I want to circle back to our capital projects because I feel like there's a couple of other good details here to help us zoom out and see the whole picture. Um, I do have a couple of updated cost estimates with these, but I think it's important to point out that originally when the 15-year storm water capital plan was adopted and approved by council back in 2022, there were a lot of different um numbers we were working with at the time. So, currently Jackson Street, that one, that's the one that's closest for construction. We have around a $2.5 million construction cost estimate for that, and that's pretty up to date with some contingencies in there. Um, however, back when the plan was being developed, it was originally assumed to be around $916,000 for construction. So, that's a pretty drastic difference and one that we're noticing is a trend as we continue along with these projects. So, um, this one will be the first storm water capital project that we go into construction with. Um, so I just feel like it's a a good enough reason for for us as a department and as a city and for council to pause on and think about like how are we going to re-evaluate the kind of CIP schedule with those cost differences. That's one thing our staff um has already begun, but I think it's just worth like painting the whole picture. In addition, Long Street is coming in at around 2.1. I will say that it was originally projected for 2.2 million for construction. However, with a much larger project area, as we've gone down that path with the firm Withers Revenel, they've said, you know, we needed to phase it out and do small sections at a time. So, um, one thing that I think is a really great opportunity that we have due to a grant we received through the Lassie program, which stands for local assistance for storm water infrastructure investment. Um, it was around $400,000 that allowed us to work with the firm in order to select a

pretty considerably large drainage area in the city and do some nice assessment level surveying. So, it's given us access to data that we've never been able to have before so that we can better prioritize repairs, make improvements, and tackle things before there are failures. Um, I know this map is really small to see up here, but um you can see on there there's a bunch of different areas highlighted, whether it's in black or in purple. So, that kind of highlights the different outcomes that we've received from this grant at this time, which by the way, we're still in the thick of it. We haven't wrapped up the project yet, but um they surveyed this whole area and everything that's highlighted was an area that they deemed as a concern, a potential area of concern. Due to the grant restrictions and funding, we were only able to move forward with five of them um to develop concepts and with that actual cost projections. And so that's kind of where we're at. We have an updated like we can say it's going to cost this much to fix all of the five areas in purple. Um which is great. And it gives us a unique opportunity to go ahead and integrate that into our capital improvement plan because some of that planning has already been done. So we're not starting like right at the start line. We're we've already made some progress and we're working with real costs that we have this year versus costs that were assumed back in 2021. Um in addition to that, we still have the data for all those other areas that are highlighted in around the black lines. And so it gives us a a good position for our internal team to look at like what is viable for us to tackle inhouse to help lower capital costs moving forward. We can and already our storm water construction crew has started to look at this and they feel that there are some good candidates but they're still in the process of evaluating it. And this is a great example to highlight for how we could expand on Lassie um by looking at a realworld example that was

pretty recent. Robin Road. I'm sure some of you all probably drove by the sign and saw the construction as it was in process. Um, this is a great example that showcases the skills and experience of our crew where they were able to look at an aging culvert and create a pretty streamlined design that allow them to um have a solution with low construction costs and keeping in mind low maintenance costs moving forward too. It's around an estimated $422,000 of savings in this project for what it would have cost for us to contract the workout versus us handling it in house. And it would be great to be able to replicate this again by looking at those other areas of concern from the Lassie data and how can we kind of break that down break that down into smaller projects for them to tackle. So looking at those um we've one of the biggest things we wanted to do is so with the rising cost of our capital projects how can we offset some of that cost? how can we help lower those numbers down a little bit and looking at through staff and allowing using Robin Road as an example of how we can replicate that and to help lower those costs of those larger projects. So, example, uh the Long Street project, if we had, um, you know, 10 culvert crossing, there's not, but say we had 10 culvert crossings, could our staff do two of those culvert crossings and help co cut, I don't know, 10% of the cost or 20% of the cost off by replicating that in-house. Um, so that Robin Woods, Robin Road's a great example of that that um, Ely talked about there. Our staff, it's unreal the skills they have to be able to do this type of work uh, and the equipment they have to be able to put this put these in place. Um, so kind of our current staffing reality of uh what's happening with our staff itself. Um, hold on, I went to the wrong page. Sorry. Uh, so we again we and we've already hit on we we manage a wide range of stuff of

projects. We have um this team manages our permit coordination uh ensuring we're compliant with all regulatory um requirements, construction, oversight and maintenance of all these not just larger scale projects like Robin Road, but smaller scale projects are rebuilding catch basins and small sink holes uh pulling ditches for proper flow. Um compliance inspections, documentations, like we talked about storm water control measures are the numbers are going up and we have to inspect those every single year. Plus our larger outfalls, we have to inspect those as well to make ensure there's no elicit discharges going on. uh planning and delivering uh public education outreach. A big portion of what it is getting in front of people talking about our stormwater program. Uh getting into our school systems, getting into community organizations, neighborhood groups, and talking about our stormwater program. Um grant management, uh as Elise talked about a lot of our stuff, uh we're trying to apply for more grants and hopefully receiving more grants just like our Lassie program was $400,000 for that. Um plus the 13 or 15 million what it is for the Mahaly branch uh to try to leverage that. but also we have an external or internal grant where we we give grant money uh to applicants who need storm water work on private property. It's a way to help use um some of our our public funds on private but through the grant process. So they apply for it. We then can fund it up to up to 50% up to a certain up to $25,000. Uh but they go through the application process but we have a staff member that manages that program as well. Uh plus supporting project planning and implementation. Uh so again it just we we're trying to show the complexity of our stormwater program uh and and what it is and how we have to carefully prioritize um in order to stay above regulations in the state and meet those requirements. So a part of this study that we're doing looking at our program is we identified function functionality gaps. Where are we struggling at? Where are we missing at? Um and some of those things we're looking at is oversight of infrastructure uh improvements. We could be doing more. There's a lot more that we could be doing. Um it just takes time and takes people. So managing documentation to meet regulatory standards, capacity to act on these

lassi findings again to help um now that we have kind of the um the game plan where we can attack. All right, how do we how do we attack that now and lower those costs for it? And then balancing daily operations and long-term planning needs. How do we look to the future of storm water? What it's going to look like at not just the end of this permit, but the next permit as well. So doing that, we kind of wanted we wanted to look at other cities like we always do. Let's benchmark this. Let's see what else is out there. Um, so we just want to kind of give you this as a little bit of a context. Um, so on average based off the cities that we've reached out to a similar size across North Carolina, um, they have one full-time employee per 30 uh, 3,100 residents, we're able to do we're able to get the job done right now. Um, with one full-time employee per 4,775. Again, it shows the efficiency of our staff be able to get this job done, get the work done. Um and so we uh but at the same time it kind of raises our cost because we're relying on consultants um to help offset some of these or help offset some of the workload and the capacity. Um and it's kind of push back some of those the maint regular maintenance too because we're doing larger projects as well. Um but in order to bridge this gap we we have to supplement right now with other public works divisions. A part of that is our sustainability program. We're very thankful to have Ally as our sustainability uh program, our coordinator. She does a fantastic job. Um but she's able to help us with our uh providing a public education as she goes to the events. She's able to educate on what storm water is and that can help meet our permit requirements. Um she's supporting it through green infrastructure, rain garden design, um assisting with grant writing. She's a big portion of Mahaley branch plus other projects as well and going after more grants that are out there. Um and then she's also able to coordinate cross departmental initiatives working with education um and public involvement as well. But that also puts a little stress on the sustainability uh program itself. Um

because right now that program it does a lot of stuff. It's does community engagement programs adopted street which we've seen a huge impact of. I mean, I think we're over 40 now adopted streets, which is fantastic to see. Help cut that litter down, help staff with the amount of litter that's on the roads, and that's all due to Ally and her team. She's done a great job with it. Um, keep Salsbury beautiful, which is recently started as well, which is a great addition. Um, implementation of the 2040 plan, sustainability master planning. Uh, they're got a grant to do that as well. Um again supporting storm water education uh required by our permit grant writing uh energy planning and we're getting ready to take on recycling and alley is a big a key portion of all that. Um so again we want to show that how storm water also relies on other other different divisions in order to hit hit our permit requirements.

All right. We wanted to highlight that um this kind of the kind of capacity needed um to support city's uh sustainability work um as it continues to grow and evolve. Um we think that it would be really helpful if uh we could kind of separate out some of that long-term planning along with the the day-to-day that our residents have, you know, become become accustomed to with with all of the programs that Ally runs. In addition, I wanted to spend some time um highlighting some different targeted capacity adjustments that um we think might be feasible, possible um to help us address some of those realities that we discussed earlier, that being the increased permit requirements, the drastic changes in um capital constru construction costs. Um and so we think that as storm water responsibilities continue to expand, the focus on maintaining compliance and um improving efficiency as well as using our resources um responsibly is important. So improving coordination of inspections and documentation, ability to complete routine repairs and small projects internally, improved prioritization and response to Lassie so that we can make data driven decisions and um reduced risk of future permit deficiencies. So all of this um reflects the level of capacity needed to keep us kind of um up with the the work um that we're already responsible for rather than um looking at an expansion of services. In addition, we looked at some different approaches that are more tied to operational efficiency measures. Um some of which could be looking at a rate and revenue study to help us evaluate how the growth trends impact the storm water revenue coming in. Um, we could also look at a reduction in loose leaf collection program and how maybe focusing on our kind of peak months um could could benefit. And then we also

looked at a potential reduction in commercial um cap on the fee. Currently there's a cap of 2600 a month for commercial properties. Um, and this would actually align with other cities in North Carolina and that revenue would allow for continued support of projects at an increased cost. Realistically, this wouldn't impact a large number of commercial properties, but the the ones that it would impact um the revenue from it would would likely be impactful to the budget. And then, um we just wanted kind of to look at funding feasibility and how much wiggle room we had to um consider some of these different paths. As WDE shared yesterday, the storm water fund is pretty healthy. Um, I believe we had around a little over a million dollar gain last year. That led us to uh 6.2 million of the fund balance at the end of last fiscal year. And from speaking with finance, they said that we can likely expect a similar gain this year, probably bringing us to a little over 7 million in the fund balance. Um, and that allows us to have a little bit of flexibility on approaching some of these increased construction costs and uh deferring the debt process. I do want it to be clear that um it was always a part of the 15-year CIP plan that we did go into debt issuance. Um the way it's phased out is that planning and design for projects would be funded for cash that comes from the fee revenue and that construction was going to be funded through debt. We haven't yet gone down that path because we haven't yet had a project ready for construction, but we're quickly approaching one to three projects for construction. So, I think it's important that we have a conversation about how we begin to tackle that. Um, but it does give us the flexibility to potentially defer debt for the first construction project in addition to potentially funding some

capacity adjustments, equipment, operational needs while fully supporting planning and design and construction um this upcoming year while also preserving the necessary unrest or the necessary restricted amount that we would need to keep. And just some parameters that we would keep in mind is that one time and capital needs would be supported through that surplus in the fund balance that's accessible and unrestricted and recurring operational costs would be supported through the ongoing storm water fee. And um because I'm a numbers person, we like we ran through some hypothetical scenarios just to see like in theory this sounds great to have this surplus of fund balance, but how does this actually impact things? So the numbers up here, I want to make it really clear, are not any formal request or a finalized plan. It's just a hypothetical scenario to talk through like could this how how would this actually fizzle out? Um so specifically we looked at whether or not we could look at the existing storm water fund balance and if we set aside I think the amount was like 130,000 for planning and design for the next CIP this upcoming year and then Jackson construction project. So that 2.59 is for Jackson construction and planning and design for another project. And then if we wanted to invest in any capacity adjustments, whatever those may be and look like and consider the unrestricted amount versus the restricted amount and how much would that still leave? So hypothetically, the funds are there to work out a couple of different paths. And then we also wanted to look at um the storm water fee. Um and that's projected based off of the amount of resident accounts and the amount of commercial accounts that we have. And then we wanted to see, okay, let's subtract out our standard operating budget and then set aside some funds for potential capacity

adjustments. How does that fizzle out? And so we end up with a remaining fee revenue there, too. Again, hypothetical. just wanted to show that we were doing our due diligence and wanting to have a really conservative look at the numbers. And just to review some of the paths forward we discussed um is I mean we can always just maintain our current approach um with the existing structure and reliance on consultants and that also means accepting um slower project times as well. Then there's the targeted capacity adjustments where we could look at strengthening program capacity in order to meet these regulatory operational and planning needs and also how to leverage internal teams to tackle some of these like smaller scale projects that we can react on the lassie data. And then there's also the operational efficiency measures which look at the rate and revenue study in addition to the cap reduction from the commercial accounts and then also um looking at reduction leaf collection. Again, all just options that we would love to get council's feedback on. Um and then just kind of to uh summarize everything in closing, um storm water responsibilities have expanded. Regular uh regulatory requirements um are also increasing. Um we have the opportunity to act on lassie data and staff is exploring strategies uh to align workload with this compliance. So, end goal, um, we want to maintain, uh, compliance and quality service, but also be fiscally responsible. Thank you for taking the time. If y'all have any questions or want to talk through anything again or look at another slide, just let us know.

Any questions? Do we have like we have a general fund fund balance percentage recommendation that we try to maintain and there's a legal number. Is there such a thing for the storm water balance? From our discussions with um Mark and Wade, there's not a a policy like there is on the general fund of leaving a certain percentage behind. There is um Wade said some governmental accounting math as far as um differentiating between restricted and unrestricted, but we kept that into account when looking at the hypothetical scenarios.

We would we would follow the same we would follow the same policy as other funds. That way everything's uniform across the board for the city. So that 6.2 million is that healthy? Yes, we're very very fortunate to have a healthy storm water fund. And it's likely that that fund balance isn't healthy because we we haven't gone into construction yet. So that money that we have been planning to use, but projects have been taking longer. Um so that's just been building up. I'd be interested in the city manager's recommendation.

Sure. Um uh great review and and great uh presentation. Uh last year uh you heard from SRU I think we had the fire department present last year looking at internally how can we improve efficiency um and you can hear they're doing that and some of those uh efficiency opportunities impact service levels uh like you heard the leaf collection and so I think it's great staff reviewing that and looking at those opportunities, but we need further review and and conversation with with council. So, I I appreciate Stormwater looking at these things. The discussion on the fund balance is similar to the fund balance discussion yesterday for the general fund that Wade did. I think we're in good shape. Uh obviously uh there's also demand, project demand just like we talked about for the general fund. So it gets to the point of setting priorities. And so we'll look for storm water to continue to evaluate those priorities and and uh recommend uh projects to move forward. um the conversation on positions uh and looking at other operations and fees to pay that. Again, similar to what you've heard today, uh Hannah went over some strategies that are going to impact her department or some staffing needs there. You you know about uh fire department, you've heard about police department, you've heard about. So, we have staffing needs throughout the organization. and

how do we balance that as we look at uh revenues and potential fee increases. So I I think this was an opportunity to share with council there's requirements here and mandates that we have to meet. There's some opportunities for us to look internally how can we uh improve efficiencies and with that improved efficiencies use those funds for expanded services or new projects. Also looking at everything from fees to staffing. How can we continue to improve our service delivery? So um uh we're not making those recommendations. Just letting you know a lot is being looked at similar to the uh road uh paving discussion this morning. Um so some challenges here, but uh I I think we're doing a good job in our storm water program, but some opportunities for us to um uh do even better. One last thing I'll mention is again the the grant opportunities. This department's done a great job identifying some grants and that's helping us implement these projects. Often there's a match and so that just like in the general fund could take some money out of fund balance. So we'll continue to look and evaluate um storm water and bring back some recommendations. But again, I I think we be we need to be careful because of the needs that we have throughout the organization and how do we balance those and make sure we're meeting your priorities and your strategic plan?

Any more questions? No. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was a another very very good presentation. So, thank you.

The next item on the agenda um titled Advancing City Priorities and State and Federal Actions. And who did you want to let? Kelly.

Kelly. to council. We wanted a chance for you to meet your lobbying teams. Um we have partnered with um strategics consulting for our federal lobbying since 2019. We've had very successful partnership with them. Um so much so that the council saw fit that we felt like we needed to do the same thing on the state level. And at that point we partnered with Techmate um in 2022. And so we've worked with both groups. They're both different. We have they similar but different in that a lot of our funds and a lot of these grants that you've heard about do come from federal level. Um and our lobbyists that you'll meet um have have helped us with that. They've been just fantastic help with our um elected officials um getting support letters and calling and writing on our behalf. um they take us when we go to DC and and they um introduce us. We walk around and meet our elected officials, but more importantly, we meet a lot of people in the agencies and you all know that's a lot of times that's where the work gets done. And so those contacts in the agency um have been really beneficial as we've moved forward with things that come down from the federal level. And so they're going to talk a little bit about the federal overview. And then our state lobbyists have been just fantastic as well. At sometimes it feels like we're more reactive and that's because as bills come out of the the the general assembly, you know, they're quick to point out, hey, we need your feedback on this. How is this impact Salsbury? We're going to take this back and we're going to share that. And and you've you've been aware of some of those challenging bills that have come out over the past year. um that every it's all hands on deck trying to push that back and fight back against those things. But they've also been very helpful with grants. Um,

Hampton, I'm not sure if Hampton's he's coming in, but um, when we got the $10 million grant from the state, that was absolutely have to thank uh, Senator Ford and Representative Warren, but really a lot of that was born by Hampton's visits going in to talk to them and sharing the need and and sharing the information as we were working through some of those public safety initiatives. So, I'm excited to to welcome them both here today. You guys ready? Derek. Okay. I want to introduce uh Derek Applehwhite, Kendall Cong Conger, and Hampton Bilips I believe is coming in, but they work with Checkmate, our state lobbyist, and they're going to give you an overview, and then we'll transition over to the federal level.

Second.

Thank you, mayor, members of council, Derek Appawite, and Kendall. And Hampton is running right behind us. We were just actually meeting with one of your state legislators. We had a great conversation. um discussing not only what you have going on here in the city, but some of the updates that we can provide you here in a little bit. Um very briefly, I started with Checkmate just a few months ago. I was with the North Carolina League of Municipalities serving as one of their lobbyists and have transitioned to the Checkmate team and I've been very pleased to join Kendall and um uh Hampton and then other members on our team obviously Nelson Freeman, John Easterling, and then our fearless leader Chess Mcdow. Um, so that rounds out most of our North Carolina team and the work continues. Uh, I think beyond the the things that you're working on locally, obviously the whole state is trying to determine when will we see a state budget. Um, right now uh, as you can imagine, there is a very important primary happening um, for the state senate seat for president pro Tim Phil Berger uh, in Rockingham County and part of Guilford County. for that state senate seat. He's being challenged by his sheriff. Um and that is what all eyes are on across the state. Um so where is the state budget up and all of that? Well, it depends on what happens in March. So right now, while the conversations on where funding can go and where priorities lie are continuing amongst appropriators and amongst rank and file members, all eyes are on that race. Um our work doesn't stop and and it continues throughout this process. as we're continuing to hold calls uh with your staff and and work on the priorities that you have suggested and and that you were advancing here locally. Um and here we are. We have Hampton walking in. We uh are continuing to have those conversations and we look forward to to working with you all over the next several months. I know we can go through in detail uh what's happening across the state, but also happy to take

questions um as you see fit. Uh, I think as we look forward over the next several months beyond watching the politics that's playing out in Raleigh and across the state with primaries and heading toward the November election, um there are a number of items that need to still be addressed um through the state budget. U some of those including how much are we going to cut taxes? Um that conversation has been going on for the past year. Uh also funding for a children's hospital that hospital that should be located in Apex, North Carolina. Um, and that conversation is continuing as well. Uh, some of the the items that we're all paying attention to have yet to be determined when and how they're going to get funded, but we do expect by the end of the year that there will be something of a state budget, whether it is a full package or smaller items that will be passed by the general assembly. Um, it's hardressed for us to believe that they won't go home before November without uh passing a budget for the state. Um, but I guess at this point we can open it up if y'all have specific questions. Um, or I can hand it off to Hampton if there are items, Kelly, that you want us to address.

I was hoping Hampton would talk a little bit or you as well to talk about the House Select Committee on property tax. Sure.

Yeah, we can tag Sam. Yeah, the um property tax is becoming a larger issue uh as counties across the state have conducted revals. Um as you may be seeing here, those values are increasing. The burden for property tax is becoming incredibly politically salient as we head into this election year. Once again, it is informed by the politics of those legislators that are in competitive districts seeking either through their primary nomination or in the general election. um something to run on. Uh the House Select Committee on Property Tax has met twice. Both of those have been uh informational meetings for the most part describing two committee members that have not necessarily sat where you sit or in a county commissioner seat. Uh what the the uh what property tax does, how it's funded, and where those funds going um at the local level. Um in those in the first meeting it was general assembly staff uh that provided insight on all the way back to uh the machinery act and why property taxes are important here in North Carolina. And then most recently at the most recent meeting there was updates from the school of government, the county commissioner association and or uh the county commissioners association and the league um and their experts gave an overview of where those local dollars are going. As many of you know, a lot of that funding is going towards staff, public safety, core and essential services. Uh but that information is still being uh shared with legislators and certainly encouraging all of you as you have conversations with legislators to talk about where that revenue is headed. Um what are going to be the results of that um that interim committee? Uh by May, they're going to deliver recommendations to the general assembly of what to do around property tax. And remind reminder that this is on the house side. Um, so the Senate has not taken a stand or has uh set up any committee to address this issue. Uh, individual senators are

obviously having conversations amongst their colleagues of what it could look like, but by and large this is a House effort. Um, and by May, we expect some recommendations to come forward. Um, depending on who you ask in the on the House side of the general assembly, primarily within the Republican party, uh, there are many different ideas of what can be done. um whether that is uh adding a uh percentage cap for increase in property tax when you go and do your budget each year to uh updating the homestead exclusions um increasing that a little bit. Uh, I think all options are on the table and we're certainly having conversations with legislators and staff at the general assembly uh to share, you know, not only what the what you were doing locally with your uh property tax revenue, but also where it could go moving forward, understanding that these reval cycles um by state statute are required every eight years. Some counties are doing it every six years. um but providing more information and insight because I I do think it is an education gap and happy if Kendor Hampton want to chime in on on your thoughts.

Yeah,

good afternoon everybody. So yeah, Derek provided a fantastic update and I think that this is going to be something that is being talked a lot about on the political sphere as he mentioned uh as of 2026. Uh but there are a lot of people in that caucus inside both the House and Senate Republican caucus that see this as a potential political issue in the future if this if something were to happen because uh as noted by many of them, they would immediately be challenged by someone on their county commission or in their C city councils uh because they would see this as a a a direct move against everything that local governments stand for. Uh and so this is something that I think is going to have a lot of talking around. Uh but I I think we would be very shocked uh to see substantive action taken. However, that doesn't mean that we don't need to continue to educate all of those members that as Derek mentioned don't have the local government experience uh and and don't quite understand the nuts and bolts of what goes on uh inside of these walls every single day. So that's I'll I'll add that on top. And yeah, Jim.

Yeah. Uh just building on that, you all are meeting with legislators every day. What can staff what can mayor and counsel provide you to help get that message across? We've been focused on our strategic plan. Big part of that is public safety. We have our police chief, our fire chief here. Operations, public safety funded by property tax. So, um, what can we do to help you get that message across?

Yeah, I think that truthfully providing us with any of those data points as you mentioned of making sure that we're armed and equipped for conversations that we're able to have. Um, and and that goes kind of across the state. I was on the phone this week with the with Fred Bagot from the Chief's Police Association, making sure that we're staying in tune with them of what how they're communicating across the state um as they're getting asked questions because this is a a public safety issue and that's kind of the the first and foremost place we want the conversation to start of look, you may not like paying the property tax that you're currently paying, but at the same time, you like when the when you call 911 and someone answers and someone shows up. And so we're uh having all of those education points that we can provide members is is crucial. And I'll I don't know if Derrick did this. Did you do a full intro of Checkmate?

Okay. So, sorry for my tardiness. Uh I'm Hampton Bilips. I've worked with you guys for a slew of years now, it feels like. Uh and uh we've we've had a lot of success together. But I we we are members of Checkmate Government Relations. We uh represent you guys at the state level. Our team encompasses eight full-time employees at the state level and then we have a slew of interns that kind of run around and do uh a handful of tasks with us uh around the legislature to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks. Unlike other organizations, we're pretty proud of the fact that we operate as a flat organization. Uh and so where you will see myself the most and you'll also see Derek and Kendall. you uh we have Nelson Freeman who worked for former speaker and now Congressman Tim Moore uh on our team. We have Chess McDow who worked for uh current Senate President Pro Tim Phil Berger. And we also have John Easterling who handles a lot of uh the the the minority party issues as well as the executive branch for us. Uh and we have Lauren Henderson who is a specialist in our healthcare. Uh and we have whitz vaugh who handles he does a lot of the multi-state jurisdictional work for us so that we could can see clearly through all lenses as we uh interact with North Carolina elected officials. Sorry,

mayor, members of council, um Hampton mentioned a slew of years. It's actually been a little over three and a half. And I know that because I had been here about a week and uh we were uh contacted that uh there was a moratorum bill being considered at the state uh putting a moratorum on Salsbury's growth. So, I reached out to some lobbyists that I knew and asked who could help us on this issue and uh Hampton and team were were recommended and so we've been working with them a little over three and a half years. Great communication uh on our team. Kelly leads the um uh or is our liaison with the lobbyists both on state and federal level. We have great communication and I will say um a lot of times they will hear something brewing and it may be a lot of times it involves Philillip and development services and uh they'll call and say how are you handling this or they'll send us something say will you get us a response on this so we work closely with them where they're updating us but we're also providing information on how some things that the House or Senate uh may be considering impacts us. So, I just wanted to thank them for the partnership and communication. Um they've also lobbyed for us for for grants, the $10 million public safety grant. They were very helpful in u making some calls on our behalf and and uh educating some key folks on how that money would be used. So, really appreciate checkmates uh partnership and their assistance. Kelly, anything you want to add?

No, I mean I would agree wholeheartedly. Um I did have a question. So So realistically with the property tax and you said substant substantive um substantial change realistically, what can they do? I mean that's a multi-year study like to really have profound change around property tax and so Do you think it's minimal if something comes out or?

Yeah. So, I'll start and I'll I'll let Derek finish. Uh, so we So, it had a ton of conversations around this obviously and and I think that working around the edges is really where this seems to be going. of finding practical ways to not necessar not necessarily always alleviate but but ways that make uh how property tax is handled more digestible. And by what I mean by that, one of the things that has continually come up is revals. And in North Carolina, the Department of Revenue advises that you do it every four years. And this is controlled by the county. However, the state law allows for eight years. And so you have counties who have very recently approached that four-year mark that they've typically done it at and said, "We really don't want to go through that again right now. Let's punt it for eight years." And when you get to the eight years, the sticker shock on that that your constituents feel is pretty dramatic. And so we've seen incidences across the state and county commissions that there's been temper tempers flare over this. there's been uh constituents that have have been pretty vocal at the legislature over this. And so the really the sticker shock has been probably one of the biggest issues. Whereas if you just did it every two years or every three years or every four years along the way and they just see a gradual increase because property value does go up. We all know this. And so as you see the the gradual increase, it's not the sticker shock of, hey, the last time you did it was 2019 or 2018 and now it's 2026 and I I can't fathom the number that my property is now worth. And so

I don't what I don't understand about that is though if you adjust the rate to reflect the evaluation, no one should have sticker shock. Just adjust the rate accordingly. Correct. That's a local issue. Correct. But that's how you take care of that issue. Correct. Yes, you're absolutely right. And but that is but because that there's localities that haven't that is is being echoed in Raleigh. Okay. Yeah, I got it.

Hon, uh, a lot of it is determined on these legislators are in a district where they didn't go revenue neutral. taxes increased when it's compounded on top of the rise in property values across North Carolina, particularly in the fastest growing areas over the past eight years postcoid. Um, I think it's all happening at once. And then we're entering uh an election cycle where it seems that as of lately, the the name of the year or the word of the year is going to be affordability. Um, so you could see that some members in the Republican party that are in competitive districts are looking for um ways to address that issue. Uh, and property tax seems like a way to do that. Um, and a lot of this is driven by the politics of the day. Uh, and earlier we were talking about where this could go. Um, I I think for some legislators, all options are on the table. Look no further than the state of Florida. Uh, they're making a ton of adjustments to property tax. Uh Ronda Santis has made this a a core mission of his and um as Florida goes, it seems other states go in the south and that is uh something that we're a theme we're seeing here. Um Florida's setup is much different than North Carolina. So I do think any adjustments that could be made in North Carolina will probably be more moderate. Um and that's what our team is working on having conversations with staff and other interest groups that are working on this. Um that are making recommendations to legislators. Uh thankfully for that select committee, the two uh chairs of that committee are the chairs of the finance committee. They have a lot of respect and appreciation for the work that is done at the local level. Uh and I think they're going to be holding that line on keeping things things relatively calm uh from that front. But there are certainly members on that committee that would love to see in some cases property tax to go away uh or just caps on the amount of uh property tax valuation increases.

Derek, I I'll tee the mayor up for one, and I I've talked to you about this when you were with the league. Uh all the revenue that's supposed to come through online betting and uh mayor, you want to share your thoughts? So, why are we not getting any money from online betting sports betting? Yeah, sure. for local governments. Name it for you mean local governments. Is it Yeah. I think like where does it go? Because you know it's getting taxed. So who's getting the tax dollars? Why are we not getting our share? I get the education lottery. It goes to the education system.

Um but where is that going? Who's getting that? We have citizens that are doing it. So where's it going?

So it is so it is set up and forgive me it's been a while since I've refreshed on the tax rate of it. Uh I believe that it's at a 30% tax rate at the moment. Uh and I think 10% of that goes into what's called the major events fund. Uh and so that is a fund that is used by uh North Carolina to attract major events. Pretty on the nose with the name. Uh which would be like a Super Bowl, like a a large NASCAR experience, like the NBA All-Star game, uh and a couple of other things. I think that the World University Games might be tapping into that a little bit as they come in 2029. Um, and so it's it's it's really that is the first kind of divvy of it and then there's an additional percentage that gets dedicated to H.B.CU across the state. Uh, and so really I think it ends up with the state sending 10 to 15% of it to the general fund and that's where it lies. Hampton, one thing I'll add. Um, when I was with the league, there were conversations about, uh, sports betting is, uh, a little different. Uh, but if you start thinking about other forms of gambling, whether it's through video lottery terminals or casinos, other forms that do have more implications on, uh, folks that people or places people would go to gamble. Um, and the implication that has for law enforcement. We did make um uh had conversations with legislators who were working on those bills to make sure there was locally uh dedicated funds. Um I I think sports betting is a little unique in that in some places there are places to go and sports bet, but most of it is being done on your phone. Um so it's less of a hook for local law enforcement where if it is uh video lottery terminals that are at all the sites where there's an ABC permit or a casino, um there would be a hook there for local governments to receive funding. uh because you're using your uh your police and and other first

responders to respond to incidents that may occur at those locations. Uh so those on uh conversations are ongoing um if those other forms of gambling were to move forward in North Carolina and I get that for other states because they have multiple places that you can go. I mean we got what two right in the state of North Carolina

and major events. What big major event is coming here? But yet I got people I mean I'm not fussing at y'all but you see what I'm saying. Like we're not gonna host Super Bowl. I mean I don't know. Where's Adrian? No. But you see what I'm saying? But yet we have people who are paying taxes for that and and we don't get and by we I mean most municipals or counties aren't getting any of that. It's going to keep going to the people who already got a lot of money anyway. seems like from my perspective. I'm just curious why there's never been able to have any input on this. It just happened and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger every year. Um, no doubt about it.

I hear you. I'm just curious.

I hear you. And I think whether it's through that stream of funding or other local revenue streams um are conversations certainly worth having. Uh the pay act was approved uh in Charlotte and Meckllinburgg County last year. Um that was a demonstration by the general assembly that they're willing to see uh local option sales tax for transportation funding in the largest uh municipality and and county in the state. So I I think there are opportunities whether it's uh it may not be through those funds you've talked about uh but through other local options that can generate some revenue um locally that could be beneficial for infrastructure. Um I I can foresee that the general assembly is interested in that moving forward. Um now it just is a matter of what does that look like for y'all? And if there are needs that you can identify certainly we can we can share those and think about how that would work moving forward.

Thank you. And and I would say just for you guys that don't know um like your tenacity but your endurance on the bills that never die and you know what I'm talking about. Um certain developer bills came through the course of this past year and it was very hard to maintain good standards and I think Kelly Baker termed the word u disposable housing. it was definitely going to play into that and it just kept coming back in another bill and another bill and another bill. So, thank you all for keeping us informed on that. I had to keep making those phone calls and reaching out to our state legislators, the Rowan County mayors. um that that alone with your all's help probably made us form our own little coalition of friends and um you know we we made sure our legislators knew and so thank you all for that.

Absolutely. All for one and one for all that that's what it takes to to play whack-a-ole with all of those bills. Yeah. Because it takes a lot of eyeballs everywhere. You may continue to have that opportunity moving forward. Um the bills that never die. It may continue uh to be there. The homebuilders association is a powerful association. Yes. Say that. I have very powerful friends.

Yeah. And that and that is one of the things that we've we've noted I think with you and uh Chapel Hill, we noted the the idea of the fact that many of the homebuilders chief advocates are potentially on their way out. Um you've had two that have announced their retirement and one that is had a very contentious general election. um one that was 1,800 vote split the last time and uh it's midterms and so that anything could happen. And so you really have three of the four home builders main uh bill sponsors that are going to be looking to wheel and deal in 2026 to make sure that they can get some of the things and some of their priorities across the finish line before they make their exit. And so that's I I think going to be an an extremely important facet of what we do for you guys. Obviously we like Sorry. Obviously, we like to play offense as much as we can, but playing defense with for you guys uh can can be equally important.

Council, other questions? These folks there are lifeline to the state and uh any questions you have, I'm sure they're happy to answer. I I have one last one just um a few years ago. Thank you again. Very helpful your team and in securing the the grant, the public safety $10 million. Um, and I know sometimes there seems to be an openness at the state for grant type projects, especially in the public safety area. Um, our council over the past couple days have talked about everything from storm water projects to affordable housing to public safety projects and others. Can you just share your general sense on kind of where state legislature is on some type of earmark or or grant? And if there is you think uh an openness to that is it in what area is it still public safety? Is it housing? Where is it?

Yeah, I think that public safety has always been something that has uh resounded with the the legislature. However, I think of of late there's really been uh a lot of emphasis placed on uh water sewer infrastructure. There's been a lot of emphasis placed on economic development projects. Uh and so being able to marry up some of the requests that you guys may have as a city with, hey, look, that we have an economic development project that's interested. we need to make sure that we can provide xxx for them and and presenting projects in that facet has been uh very successful. Um but then again it is it's it's really been uh ride the wave as as the wave comes um for a lack of a better analogy because of how the legislature has operated and the funding that becomes available that uh they they decide that they want to to go ahead and expel. And so, um, I I think that those are are really the two places to look though for the most part.

Even the Senate President Pro Tim Philberger gave an interview late uh last year, so right before we started 2026, and he focused on water and sewer being a priority related to economic development. Um, but I think water and sewer more broadly is billions of dollars worth of need across the state. Um, so they're going to be looking to dedicate funding toward that knowing that it's not all going to be borne by rateayers. The need is just too great across the state and economic development. Let me sorry, economic development. Let me add to that with your your conversations around affordable housing and housing units as projects are looking to come. I think that that's also something to talk about because there's a ton of jobs coming into this this center region of North Carolina and so there's got to be places for for those people to live and the general assembly loves touting those jobs and it's fantastic. It's kept us uh in the top tiers of businesses across the country and so uh as a state that really wants to be good for business, businesses also need us to be able to house their citizens. And so uh I I think that that is something that is is also equally valued by them.

Thank you.

You guys don't have any more questions. We can transition and thank you guys. Yeah. Thank you guys so much and I will let me close on one point. I will say that we we truly enjoy working with you guys because it is very easy for us to go down and and be in the general assembly every day and build those relationships, but you guys are always ready at a moment's notice. I know I've I've talked to countless uh members uh w within uh the last couple of years on separate projects. And so you guys really make it easy by being able to to put a face to an issue and and bring facts and data and make our arguments sound. And so, thank you all for for all of the time that you dedicate to helping us out.

I appreciate it. Thank you guys. And now I want I'm happy to introduce Leslie Mazingo and Shirley Spidel. They're with our strategics consultant, our federal lobbyist team. And um again, as I said earlier, just been have been fantastic partners with us. Um, truly Leslie kind of taught me a lot of this going into it because I was fairly new to this as as I started becoming the liaison and has just been so patient and and walked us through, but just tremendously tremendously helpful on some of these federal issues. So, with that, I'll turn it over to Leslie and Shirley.

Thank you, Kelly. I appreciate that. Nice to see everybody. Thank you again for having us um today. I'm gonna try not to accidentally hit that before we're ready. and set my notes down real quick. Um, and uh, so again, yes, my name is Lesa Mazingo um, of Strategics Consulting. I'm the owner and CEO. I've been um, in the federal lobbying business for about 35 years, and I've had uh, Strategics for about 13 of those. Um, I have with me uh, my colleague Shirley Spidel, who's also a seasoned lobbyist. And Shirley and I actually worked together many many years ago and and she uh took a break to to be a full-time mom and uh and then came back and um I had an opportunity to have her work with me and couldn't couldn't be happier uh to to have her you know be part of the team. We have two offices um one in North Carolina um and that's where I am mostly and commute to DC and Shirley um runs our DC office and commutes down to North Carolina. So, we kind of cross over back and forth and we have some additional colleagues that work on this u with us, part of our teammates, you'll see their pictures up in a few moments, that um for various reasons had conflicts and could not could not be here with us today. Um we are um a bipartisan firm. Uh it doesn't matter who's in charge. Um your issues are not political issues when it comes to getting um resources back to the city. That is what our focus is on is is getting resources and whether that is through the earmarking process and whether that is through the competitive grants um or policy um you know everyone can support the local government needs and so you know we approach all of those projects um with you know with uh in partnership with you and great success at the federal level regardless of of who's in charge. Um so it you know together basically we're navigating you

know the rather complex um maze of Washington DC. Um it is ever changing as many of you know. In fact I joked earlier when uh when we were having lunch that whatever we say today um I expected Hannah's always on top of things so well that she was going to look at me and say no an hour ago they did this you know and and tell me something different. That is how quickly these things can change in Washington. But we are your eyes and ears uh there in in DC um to make sure that Salsbury's voice is heard um you know at the at the best time in the most appropriate way uh and to the right people. We too have appreciated the role that your staff um and your elected officials um have always played in helping us promote the the agenda um for the city. And a large part of what we're going to talk about today is the process we use is called a federal action plan. And um we developed that in partnership with you and with your management leadership so that when we go to Washington, the congressional offices know that anything they support on this agenda has the backing of of the city council and they can they can support those efforts um you know without without hesitation. And um so Shirley's going to get into that a little bit more in a in a few moments, but hopefully what you'll learn from from us is that um uh we've been doing this a long time. We absolutely love our specialty is local government advocacy. We love what we do. Uh we love doing it for Salsbury. So thank you for that opportunity. We we're excited about 2026 and the opportunity to work with all of you. And uh and again just you know thank you for uh for giving us that that pleasure. Um say I'm going to let Shirley talk first um about a few highlights much like your state team a few highlights of what's going on in Washington and then we'll cover a little

bit of advocacy and then we'll dive into the federal action plan.

Um sorry I'm not used to holding one of these. Um, so we'll start with the appropriations process. You've may have heard a little bit about this on the news. Uh, the House of Representatives has passed all 12 appropriation bills. Um, the Senate has passed six. So, uh, this the House uh, the Senate was out last week and this week the House is out. So, um, the Senate is scheduled or expects to vote on a package of these appropriation bills either today or tomorrow. The big question is how are they going to do that? Right now, they're supposed to v vote on all six, but Homeland Security has become controversial. So, those are the talks that are going on right now. Um it'll be we don't anticipate a large shutdown. There's possibility there'll be a shutdown over the weekend. Um if they don't work out the bills all to pass all six because if there's any variation between the House and the Senate, the House has to vote on it again. So we're just kind of in a holding pattern right now. We don't expect any long-term um shutdowns. We do expect that they will work together and find their way through all this. So, uh any effects will be minor and perhaps even mitigated by the fact that so much federal funding is passed through the state. Uh the next uh item is FEMA reform, which we expect to be a very um pressing issue in the this next session of Congress. uh the president's executive order that created the FEMA review council, they were supposed to release their recommendations in December, that meeting got cancelled and there was a new executive order extending the life

of the FEMA review council until March 25th of 2026. So, we hope that we'll see recommendations by then. Um, in the meantime, Congress has its own legislation from the it was introduced on the House side and has made it through committee and um has lots of recommendations in there that I think a lot of local governments really support. Um, but they're kind of right now waiting to see what happens from the FEMA review council and what those recommendations are. Um, part of the issue, as I understand it, was that the president wanted the review council to provide legislative language and they did not do that. So, they want to have some proposals that they can send to the Hill for incorporation in a bill. Um the other thing I wanted to um address before I get a question on it is um there is a a backlog at FEMA that's um widely acknowledged. Uh that is the pre the secretary personally has to sign off on every grant over $100,000. And if you have any experience with FEMA that's almost all their grants. So um that's creating a little bit of a backlog. I think Congress wants to hear a report from her on that and maybe some other issues as well. And then um I think that loops back to our appropriations piece and the fact that the appropriations bill actually has language in it talking about the um reorganization of FEMA and not letting any funds be used for that um without congressional approval and also protecting the agency saying this agency can't be demolished without congressional approval. So, um, that all ties back to appropriations. And then we have, um, a rare moment

right now on Capitol Hill and in DC, a bipartisan agreement really that affordability and housing is an issue. The Senate passed a bill um, called the Road to Housing Act with a lot of provisions in it. sent it over to the House as part of the National Defense Authorization Act and the House pulled that out because they wanted to put their own spin on it and they um have introduced a bill called Housing for the 21st century that has some of the same provisions, some different provisions and amidst so there's um it's the same similar ideas but not complete agreement on what should be going forward. And then the president um in the last couple weeks issued an executive order that would um prohibit large investors from buying single family homes. Um there are some loopholes in that but there's um he has asked Congress to codify that. How that works its way through the system remains to be seen. And I think that brings us to surface transportation. Um so service transportation is actually a really interesting um um bill this time around. It is it's it only comes along every five years. It is the um authorization bill which sets up the priorities of funding for the department of transportation which still have to go through um appropriations but it gives guidance from the authorizing committee in terms of what the appropriators can do. In the past, um the last time they did a surface transportation bill, it turned into the infrastructure um um infrastructure and investment jobs act and that became the bipartisan infrastructure law. So it was a $1.2 trillion bill. That will not be this bill. That bill was meant to be a

stimulus bill following COVID in order to help the economy bounce back. It included a lot of things like renewable energies, broadband, water infrastructure, any number of things. It will now go back. It was never meant to be long-term as a broader infrastructure bill. It was always meant to be just um a vehicle for that stimulus bill that they needed to do at the time. It will go back to its normal 500 billion over five-year level and it will go back to being strictly a transportation bill. However, we are going to see some things, some potential things um that were popular um and new to the to the BIL that may get again carried over. Um uh Safe Streets for All is an example of of something that we may see continue on. Um the you know, years ago when they did a stimulus bill, that's when the Tiger program came about and um Tiger is still around. They just changed the name depending on who's in charge. So, it was buil um or it was raised under Biden and it's and it's been build both times under Trump. So, it's one of those that it's been around a long time, but it just keeps changing name, but that started back, you know, in a in a similar stimulus bill um back in the Obama years when they when they had the recovery act then. So, in any case, um the um this bill will go back to strictly transportation. One of the other differences, um, historically speaking, sometimes they have allowed us to have projects in the bill like we've done in appropriations work. They've already, um, declared that they're not going to do that, um, uh, this round. So, unfortunately, we won't have that opportunity. It's going to be strictly in the in the policy realm. Uh, the good news is is that your congressman, Congressman McDow, serves on the lead committee in the House. So there is a lot of opportunity for us to weigh in in in terms of transportation policy uh for things that you know either um are good

and need to get better um or that uh provide challenges. Uh it might be regulatory, it might be how long something takes to get approved. There could be any number of things, but we do have a really good outlet there in terms of the congressional office. The senators have roles as well, but Congressman McDow's office, you know, this is going to originate in the House in particular. The White House will have a a draft bill. They uh did some initiation, some initial hearings on it or some initial outreach to stakeholders last at the end of the year. Um and so no doubt um they won't they will have a big input into what this draft looks like. Remember that this is something that in the first Trump administration, he really wanted an infrastructure bill and they weren't able to get it done. And so he's determined to get it done this time. It will become more challenging as they get closer and closer to the midterms because it's going to get more difficult to get anything done um as they get closer to those elections. This bill is due to expire at the end of September. So if they don't pass it, they will have to do an extension much like they do appropriations. Um so they'll have to do an extension um if they don't if they don't pass it. But they are they are very driven right now um by having the trifecta to get this done. Uh the House has been holding hearings on the legislation. The Senate hasn't really said what they're going to do with it yet, but eventually they'll have to come together and um anyway, you're going to be hearing a lot in the news um and from us and in general about about surface transportation. So um moving on from Well, I'm going to pause there before we go into advocacy issues. Um because we've covered a couple of quick things. Are there any issue questions that we've covered that uh are there any questions that y'all have about some of the issues we've covered or any issue that we haven't covered before we go into specifics about advocacy and the federal action plan?

I mean, you guys know intimately the FEMA reform, you know, h how it impacted us more so than so many other places. Um are and I know we we've we've punted that we're working with the state where was what is it shaking every tree Jim but do you all have any insight on you said that March 25th probably would be when maybe they would finish that but do we have any idea what that reform would look like and how would that be something that directly impacts Salsbury

from what I understand the um proposal that the FEMA review council was going going to release in December. It contained 600 pages of recommendations. Um I believe they were very serious recommendations. I think they were somewhat reflective of what we've seen in the House bill. However, um there is not necessarily that is not those are not the uh provisions that perhaps the administration wanted to see. They um so I think they're working on it. I think they're probably revamping it. They've been told to get it down in from like 600 pages. I think the White House wants to see more like 16. Um, and they we don't know exactly what provisions. This is all just rumors on the on the street and on the Hill um is that there's not an agreement um that it's too close to what the House has proposed. So, I don't know what we're going to see exactly out of the FEMA review council. Some folks have suggested that we won't see anything, but that was prior to the president's second executive order on it. I think he would not have created a second executive order if he didn't want to see those review recommendations. So, um I don't have a very clear answer for you at the moment. We're working on it, but um they're very good at keeping things close to the vest when they want to. And I know that um our our state was part of a bunch of states who you know kind of took this to court. There was a judge ruling the

the time frame expired for them to what's the word I'm looking for? Appeal it. Yeah. Thank you. So uh what do we what does that do you all have an idea what that means? Does that mean they're going to pay it? Are they just going to ignore it? Do we I mean do we know I mean

well I believe there's going to be an appeal and um I don't know for sure what I um and I we've asked the congressional offices as well and what we're our strategy on this is to continue to pursue brick while simultaneously pursuing HMGP. So because both are um both programs are in the sites. Um, so we're just going to hope that one of these programs makes it through. Um, ideally it's in the best interest of um our of this project to go with HMGP because there's the time lapse has created an increase in the cost and HMGP would provide more funding for this than um brickwood. But as we told Senator Bud's office, like we'll take the money wherever it comes from,

right? Um, that's kind of the holding pattern for now. Got you. Thank you. I wish I had a better answer.

Me, too. Well, I will say that I've heard more than once from our delegation, you know, in terms of what happened to Salsbury has served as um you know, the story to tell. Not a good story, but I mean, it really got the delegation riled up about I mean, and you know, they're all of this, you know, this I mean, they have to support the president, right? But at the same time, they're like, "Whoa, okay, hold on. this is this is not what we signed up for in terms of evaluating federal spending and so forth. And I do think that the um I think the federal delegation has been very engaged on this issue per the point that you know getting on the phone with Senator Bud's office and I think they're doing everything that they can. I think the fact that you have potentially more than one avenue sounds you know um like that's a good thing based on you know what Shirley's reporting. Um, and um, I, you know, I won't say Salsbury specifically, but just in terms of how all of that went, there is actually, just as an FYI, it's not completely passed yet. They've still got steps to go, but there's a lot of new language in these appropriation bills right now that basically is putting Congress telling u, the administration um, in terms of notices and what they can and can't do in terms of awards and then pulling back awards. So the the the fallout of the government phrase at that time has led to specific legislation uh statutory and and you know bill language that is statutoily enforced and report language which is not but highly recommended when it's coming from the people that give you the money purse. You know you tend to not slap the hand that feeds you and this is you know Republicancontrolled Congress telling a Republican controlled administration no you're not going to to step across those lines. So, it's resulting in some things that hopefully will prevent uh future mishaps um and and additional awards that come through um um you know, not not going through this through the same

um faults that you know that that that really messed this up. But the way that people have talked about this project has been very very interesting because across the board folks felt like Salsbury really was treated unfairly, extremely unfairly in that regard. Um, so I think they're all working hard for a resolution. Um, any other questions I can or we can answer on issues? I got a question. Yes. Uh, the raise grant you mentioned in brick and rays. Uh,

we have a we've been working with the DOT with several smaller projects throughout the city for pedestrian improvements and we've been told that the federal government has been holding it. So, I don't know what that means. I guess I guess we're waiting on a signature. I didn't know if you had any insight on that. I guess it's the same kind of holding pattern I guess with the new administration or new

Yeah, but I I was under the impression that um that the DOT funds previously what are DOT funds were being released maybe. Well, I will take that back. I've been meaning to talk to to to Hannah about reconnecting communities and finding out where all of that is going or if anything has happened. Um, and so to tell you the truth, I'm not 100% sure about the specific programs, but if you will let us know or if Kelly can get some more information to us, uh, give me an opportunity to track that down and do some some inquiries with DOT to find out where they are. We actually have a call with DOT on Monday. They do a monthly call that talks with um with Washington advoc advocacy groups like ours um where they'll give reports on different things and sometimes we can send in questions and we've got some folks um that uh within the IG office and and so forth at DOT so we'd be happy to track that down to just help us get some information if we can get that.

Yes, sir. Leslie, thank you. You're you and your team were very helpful in the safer grant uh for our six firefighters. Chief, they started last week, two weeks ago. Monday. This week. This Monday. 21st. 21st. Okay. Yes. Last week.

So, uh we've already filled all six and uh that that grant was extremely beneficial. Uh looking now on the police side. Chief Smith's here and love to have uh Grant to cover some police officer salaries and just kind of any update on that. I think Kelly reached out but don't hear on the police side as much as we do on the fire safer grant.

No, the HSI being taken up the topic. We haven't heard a whole lot from the BJA and release opportunities releases of BGA PJ or anything like that. So anything the cops hiring purpose in terms of of when it will be released and the opportunity to um I have not heard anything specifically about the timing, have you on cops hiring?

No, I just I've heard overall the grants um they're trying to push it out a little bit closer to the midterms is what I've heard. I every time I talk to any agency, I get the same uh I ask the same question about the grants and the release and they the answer is always the same. soon. So, I I I've not been able to get a definition of soon, but they've been saying soon for a while.

So, that's something we can track down. Um I'll actually in of about four hours be heading out to DC. So, um and we'll see a lot of um agency folks at a conference that's going on up there. say, um, we'll seek that out specifically and we'll get back to you and obviously it'll be on our radar to make sure that as soon as it's released or as soon as we know that it's coming, um, to let you know. In the meantime, um, I'm assuming you're taking the existing, you know, from the previous round, you're taking that and starting to put, uh, the application together based on previous material, right? Okay. All right. So, I was going to say because it's never too soon to start and, um, when it's going to open. Yeah. But you just it's very quick when they want to close

and it's very quick and that's the other thing that they've been doing um in the you know more recently in the in the last year or so is they have really been shortening those turnaround times. Um I believe that that's part of the language. Am I wrong Shirley? That's part of the language in appropriations where they're asking for more notice

in different in different bills. They're reminding people that they uh that they need to follow the CFR, the code that's in place and they're trying to get all the agencies to play by the rules again. Um so yeah, that's definitely in a few of the bills. say we'll continue to um especially, you know, when the mayor uh and and anyone else that comes up to do the advocacy work that we do in the spring um early spring, late winter, but um for the National League of Cities, we'll make sure that's on the talking points to tell them also um to go back and keep pushing for enough time um obviously it's by design, right? They get fewer applications, etc., etc., but it's a huge burden on the local governments. the turnaround time is just too short to be able to pull these together. So, we can add that to our talking points as well. Um but but we'll do some followup on that and get back to you if we can get any kind of intel. If

I could add something um as part of the advocacy um one of the things that and why it is important to start as early as you can. One of the things that strategics has helped us with is reviewing our grant applications. We can give them time to review. They've done it for Hannah. They've done it for fire with safer and we've been successful with those grants. And so when you can get those in early enough that we can get those to strategics to to Leslie and Shirley and Ron, they will review it and give us feedback and let us tweak things that they see before we submit. It's very helpful. We've reached out to an agency that recently got awarded well I won't say recently most recently probably within the last year or two maybe two years with an awarded uh grant such and we've been asked what what did you put in your applications and start gathering that information was a much larger agency and they got like 14 positions out of it

trying to get ahead of what we need to have so when it does open maybe we're somewhat prepared. So, keep a couple of things in mind, too. I call it open and close season, and that's not an official term, but that's the way I refer to it. Um, before a grant is officially published, the federal agencies can talk to you specifically about your application, but once it's open, all they can do is talk to you about the process or the or the materials for in in the NOA. They can just repeat whatever they could tell someone else. So, it's very generic. It's not specific. So, if there is anything at all that you have questions about in terms of your application right now, this is the time that we need to go to the agency and ask those questions and try to get you some answers because they will be able to to comment very specifically. If you've got a pathway you're trying to take or just whatever it might be about what you're putting into your application, we can go and get some specific feedback.

I guess data, the data that they're looking for that they specifically want to on. Mhm. Um, you know, I don't want to spend a whole lot of time gathering data that's unnecessary, but the data that they actually are looking at and taking into account. Okay. That that would be the specific piece. Okay. Well, we'll get you're making notes so we can follow up on this as well because I will tell you the number one reason that grants do not get awarded is lack of proper data. Right.

Data data. That's I mean that's every debriefing I've sent through. That's the number one reason. When they send you back to rewrite it, they'll say you need more data on this. anywhere down on that. So, you're right to be thinking that way and we just need to make sure like you said, you don't want to include a lot that's wasteful and then miss the boat on something that you could have included but you didn't know that's what they were looking for. Um, and so we just we just need to have I think a conversation with them about that and an additional sidebar conversation with you where we can maybe dive into this a little bit more. To Kelly's point, thank you for making that point, Kelly, that yeah, we can kind of comb through that application and help you get some of those questions answered. Fantastic. Thank you.

Okay. Anything else on issues or Okay. And um and I know we're on a on a time frame and I want to um keep you on schedule and maybe even give you some of your time back if possible. So I'll try to whip through this um pretty quickly because you may have some more questions especially when we get into the federal action plan. On screen you're going to see a synopsis of some of the advocacy actions that we take on your behalf. Um, I you know, just to kind of summarize it, it really is everything, you know, from beginning to end. Um, uh, working with all of you to develop, like I said, the federal action plan, um, helping to scope that out, um, to fit whatever the current buzzwords are or the current um, highlights. Okay? So, I'll give you, you know, an example of things like in the previous administration because again, a lot of this is about grants. Now, we work on the on the ear marks and other things as well, but knowing we're looking for resources when it comes to competitive grants. In the previous administration, you would want to talk about historically disadvantaged communities and that was the way that you, you know, you wanted to make sure your projects were in those areas if possible. Now, they're going back to opportunity zones. And so we work very closely to sort of make sure that your federal action plan reflects those key points um as well um that we can make that help you know rise above um and and be more competitive in the process overall. So um also in terms of you know going through um as we've been talking about not just navigating you know Capitol Hill and all the changes that can occur there. can go and um in and politically when they start, you know, kind of having stalemates, but really navigating the federal agencies, some of the things we've talked about here from FEMA, you know, to to the fire grants to um um um Department of Justice and cops hiring and things like that. And so, like we just talked about going through and we do um when we're navigating, you

know, that bureaucracy, that's why we do we don't just do meetings on the hill with and without you. um we're meeting with federal agencies and particularly when your elected leaderships in Washington is making sure that they're talking and building relationships directly with those with those federal agencies. Um, and that really goes into, you know, also like just navigating DC and um, you know, who's who's got the opportunity for the most impact and where. And so, you know, thinking through um honestly when I named the firm Strategics, it was because I, you know, we're always thinking about the best strategy in terms of navigating Washington from the Hill to the administration within the federal agencies and and and making sure that you know that that that um that Salsbury's heard people that you're on the map, that they know who you are, that they know what you're what you're after um and that you come away with successes. I mean, that's at the end of the day what what we're um interested in the most. Um, again, also, we've talked about this sort of uncertainty of Washington. Um, you know, we we have a bi-weekly call with Kelly to walk through what we're working on, which is also about our accountability, okay? So that your team knows what we're working on, what we're doing, um, when we need to pivot our strategy, but also explaining the many changes. Okay? So, just like Shirley was talking about possible shutdowns or how long will a shutdown last and what can we expect and what's that going to do to the flow of dollars. So, we do those regular calls to to go through um all of that part of our regular reporting as well as coming before council um as requested to talk more about okay, what did you do for us this year? You know, what have you done for us lately? And making sure that that success is year. In fact, you're smiling, mayor, because I know you said that exact same thing to me. Um, and and when we were meeting in Washington, um, during one of your trips last year, and she was like, I want to know what you've done for me lately. Um, and so making sure that that return on investment is is always there.

What did that mean? Just

she said it nicely. She smiled and she and she was very gracious and kind. She was very fair and she was firm and that's exactly what you want in your mar. So, um, anyway, so again, knowing that, um, we need to talk about the action plan, just wanted to let you know that there isn't any level of advocacy on the federal level that we're not doing from, you know, initial development of projects um, and your priorities all the way through to quite frankly, when you have a win, we're working with the congressional offices to develop those press releases and getting those quotes from the members of Congress, which by the way is not something I'm just I'll be honest, not everybody does that in our line of work. we started doing it as a way that not only helps the city but quite frankly wins points with the congressional offices because they like the fact that we're helping them get that followup. Um so um but we also always love feedback. So if there's ever anything um that you see that you want us doing differently or that we can do better for you, there's always room for improvement and we're and we're open to hearing all of that. So let me let um Shirley talk about the federal action plan.

Excuse me.

Okay. Hey, I'm just going to you kind of have a overview already of what we do. I'm just going to go in a little bit more detail and walk you through our process, which I guess that's right behind me. So, as I point over there, I guess I should be pointing over here. Um, it says right, you know, we work with the city staff and with um elected leaders to identify what Salsbury's priorities are. Um, and once we have that list, we hone that and um, we frame the goals in a way that's going to gain traction with the current Congress and the current administration. Um, then we move into the next uh, phase where we have your list of priorities. We know what we're working on. So, we look we identify and target the federal funding sources for the programs that you're for the projects that you're seeking. Um, and then we align your projects with the pro with the federal program so that it becomes not just eligible but competitive. Um, we want to attract as much support as possible. Um and we put this all in um a federal strategy that we call the federal action plan. And we develop that and execute that. And as part of gaining, you know, uh more support, we we work with uh allies and stakeholders to all to expand your support so that you have a whole chorus of people singing from the same sheet as opposed to the lone voice of Salsbury. Um then the next uh step we take is of course advocacy to the congressional delegation and to other key decision makers be they at FEMA or DOJ or DOT. Um we we push through there and we take your federal action plan from here in a

conference room in the city council chambers to the halls of Congress and the offices of the federal agencies. And whenever we achieve a success or actually whenever we work with these with our federal partners, we always follow up. We want to make sure, for example, like when you have your meetings on the hill or um in the agencies, we follow up to make sure there's not any unanswered questions. If there are, we provide additional information. If we achieve any milestones or like I said, even if we don't, we always say thank you. um it makes all this followup, all this closing of the loop helps build this relationship. So even if it's not exactly what we wanted, it's still a building stone perhaps on to what we want. Um and it makes Salsbury a preferred federal partner and that's what you want. You want to walk into these offices and have them be happy to see you. That makes your life much easier. It makes your it aligns you for success on down the road. So when I when you look at your federal action plan, it's not just a list. It's really a it's a strategy for Salsbury's federal priorities. And um as you position yourself, as you continue down this path, it's an unending cycle. You're not like, "Oh, I'm done with federal advocacy now." You're not. You're never done. It's um always building on itself. And it it's like a it's like making a snowman and it just gets bigger and it gets better and ultimately it positions Salsbury so that when opportunities arise Salsbury is at the front of the line and ready to deliver for its citizens and that's what we're here to help you do. So, I guess in closing, I'll just say in terms of the federal action plan, um, Kelly, I guess you'll be discussing with

them, you know, the process. Y'all will go um that you'll have internally for developing that. Um, and like I said, we provide advice and then we, you know, we and we get your feedback. Um, it does a couple of things. It's our marching order, so you can gauge how successful we've been on the things you've tasked us with doing. It gives the congressional offices, like I said, the confidence to know that anything they act on on that federal action plan has the backing of the council. We tell them when we introduce it to them that it has been through a vetting and an approval. It actually comes to vote and gets approved by the council. Um, the other thing it does, I'll tell you quite frankly, a true story. I won't name I won't name the the the community where it occurred, but um it also uh really helps from people sort of claiming that the city's on board with something when they're not. I had a situation a number of years ago, the congressional staff that first of all, they love it. The congressional offices love this this format, okay? Because it's it's succinct and it's summarized. But a number of years ago, we actually had someone I had someone call me and they said, "We just had a group come in and they've got this project and they said the city of such and such is going to be putting up the federal match, but it's not on your action plan and we're wondering where where the city stands." And um and so as it turns out, that was not a priority. We had a different priority and the and the group was trying to commit the city to something the city didn't know anything about. The point being it it gave the congressional offices something that alerted them if it's not on this plan I might need to call them and ask them about it. Now it doesn't mean that it's not um fluid enough to adopt things that may occur. And an example of that is a number of years ago in CO we all went to Washington we had our federal action plans. We were on the hill and a week later CO shut everything down. And Kelly will tell you that we immediately had to kind of toss out the federal action plan and spend all our time

talking about, you know, um, uh, recovery and, um, and and those types of, um, um, ARPA funding and things of that nature. So, we ended up changing our strategy because everything was changing with the pandemic. Um, so with that, again, we're happy to answer questions. You'll see on the screen uh the other teammates um Ron Ham and Kyle Leopard that you may hear from or work with or see in emails um both of which had other commitments. Ron's on the hill today. Um Kyle is at um is at city management uh city and county management conference on our behalf. Um but this makes up your team uh that we're specifically for the city. So you hear any of these names. Um Shirley is serving as the lead. Um and so her job is quality control and making sure you're happy with us. And so as we tell everybody, if you have improvements, if you have complaints, if you see something you want done better, that's her job is to make sure that you know everything is running smoothly and on time. And of course, I'm always here as well and right down the road a mere 45 minutes if I ever need to to be here in person. So again, thank you for the opportunity to talk with you today. happy to answer any final questions or give you back your time um as you see fit.

And council, I'll add um we will come back to you with the federal action plan. very typically around January, end of a year, beginning of a new year. We'll update that plan, but um we had purposely held off last year with some just uncertainties in the administration and the new new direction that may go and then getting close to us with an election, we felt like it was wise to hold off until after council elections here, but we will come back with you to update that. Shirley's already given me some language um as they mentioned some some of those buzzwords that we need to change to to better fit what the administration's looking for and um so we'll be coming back with you to that to to recommend some changes and then just to hear from you all and what you're looking for and want to see on that action plan.

Kelly, if I can add real quick too, we actually do this on an annual basis, but we do a much deeper dive whenever there's a major election. So especially if there's turnover in leadership or anything and that means priorities change. Uh so like midterm elections we'll completely evaluate after the elections what things look like if there's any change in Congress and then of course at the next presidential election we really do a deep dive and a lot of times then too we go we come back and we meet you know with department leaders and and and really evaluate everything based on on um you know new priorities. So this is a mid, you know, right here in between the first and second session of Congress. Um, not a lot will change because the leadership and the priorities have not changed, but we want to make sure obviously with the structure of the council and the new members that you have an opportunity for that weigh-in. But just know that this is a this is an annual thing. And as you get more into issues and you learn through your own associations or boards or other things you're involved in, as things come up that have a federal nexus, by all means, still please let Kelly know so that we can go chase things down for you. Um because new things will come up. But um but there there will you will be hearing about the federal action plan annually. I would just like to say um because I've had the opportunity to work with y'all longer than u my peers right now. Um like I I feel like it was when we sat down to do the strategic plan last year. We walk in the door that morning and something happened. It was like a this week a year ago and we're like well do we even proceed forward with our planning? Like we everything just changed so fast but you guys are like on top of letting us know everything. Um, so I've definitely appreciated that and um, how you guys have been able to make sure that we have that access. I mean, we can just use Congress McDow

as an example. He was a new guy. I was a new mayor and you guys made sure that we got that fit right off the bat. His family's visited here now. Things like that h happened and it makes a difference when we're looking for support on things. I mean we don't have to agree on everything but what we have to agree on is what are the things I mean infrastructure is infrastructure so the nonpartisan action that happens um is is appreciated um because I know federally it's a it it it portrayed very combative but yet when you don't have that you guys made sure you know we had that special time with all those leaders when we were Kelly and I were in DC and uh it made it I believe it made a difference and to keep those relationships. You all are the glue that makes that happen. So, I just want to thank thank you on behalf of us, but our citizens and how we're trying to work that out. So, thank you all very much for that.

Thank you. And again, we appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. Thank you. Good job. $22 million.

I tell you again, with so many complex issues, it's great to have folks like this working for you. Um, not to sound political because it's not, but I was thinking about the first presentation, just the fact that there's even talk or a notion of the general assembly talking about messing with local government's ability to set the tax rate or interfere with property valuation. That's scary. That's incredibly scary because that's basically a local government's ability to fund everything we do. So, you know, it it it's good to have help, you know, on those those sensitive issues and hopefully nothing will come out of that. But just just to hear that there's even like I said, that's not a political statement. That's just a that's just reality. I mean, that's the way local governments basically function is through the ability to have property revaluation and set the tax rate. So, anyway, but those were great uh presentations and mayor, I agree with you. You know, having this type of help is just, you know, it's certainly worth it. Uh the agenda says uh we're about five minutes ahead of schedule, 15 minute break before we go back. It's 2:40. Oh, want to start back about 255 or so. Does that work?

Thank y'all. Good, Kelly.

Heat. Heat.

Hey, hey, hey.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. try to get started. And the way I see it, we're about a hopefully uh no more than an hour and a half from the from the finish line. So, but we'll be here as long as um as we need to be. But um

I have good I think you can make it in 45 minutes. I'd love to. Mayor, you got to drive. Yeah, I have the pleasure of driving to to Raleigh, which I was telling somebody earlier today, everybody complains about Charlotte traffic, and I swear I think Raleigh is just as bad or worse.

The great debate. Uh my daughter lives in Raleigh and I swear every time I go I say to my wife this is worse than Charlotte. But anyway, uh we have next on the agenda council perspectives and I think the intent here is you know that there even though there was just wonderful information presented the last couple days. We don't want to leave here and there not be an uh there or not discuss maybe an item or at least get on paper uh an item or a burning issue on the elected officials minds. And it might be an issue that uh can't may not be able to resolve be resolved today. It might be something new that staff obviously will need the opportunity to go back and uh research or get you some background information on, but at least we would want to get on paper something that that you want um Jim and the and the staff to to research. So, it's just an opportunity to for staff to talk to us. And I don't know if there's mayor if there's any particular order you want to go in or we need to go in, but I'll I'll just ask maybe just uh I'm just going to write your name up here and um you you don't have to have an item, but if you have something you'd like to know more about, that's what I want to get down on paper for the next few minutes. So, uh who who would like to start? And and like I said, uh go ahead.

No, I'm trying to get one of them to start. Does anyone want to begin? If you have just if you have anything and like I said, you don't have to, but if you have anything any you would like more information about, now's the time to Well, you can say it any time, but this is this is what this time period's for. A question, but I don't know if this is an appropriate time. Go ahead. have people here that are in charge of it. But um one of the things I'm interested in hearing more about is what the police department homeless officers do. Exa exactly what are they doing? Um what have they done in the last year? I know a little bit about it, but I don't know a lot about it.

They do quite a bit and we keep all the statistics on it. So I can show that and I could have Dennis actually come do a presentation for council. Uh going out and work closely with code enforcement. Uh but they go out and identify, you know, homeless camps, unsheltered population. First thing I try to do is offer them a resource to see why they are unsheltered. Um it's surprisingly what we've found there are several people that you know come in that use for example they come in they get treatment at the VA once the VA discharges them they have no transportation back and that's just one example um but a we've um getting IDs so they can get jobs they just don't have transportation or means to go get IDs so they take them to get IDs they take them uh and re reunite item with their family. They may be out of state. So, we've bought bus tickets, train tickets, uh, and so forth and re reunified them with family from out of state. Some of the cases being from the VA or Novant or any other hospital because Novant does have, uh, facilities where it's, you know, longer term treatment and those kind of things. And then some are, um, they identify that they have resources available to them that they did not even know they had. available to them. And really going back, not to go back in time where we saw the big boom was in 2020 when everything shut down. So a lot of resources were cut off. Uh so just trying to pay catch up from that as well. So we also they also work closely with a lot of service providers in Row and Health Ministries and they they keep it they get a census a population of how many um what numbers of unchel we have in Salsbury how many of them are I guess you say full-time res or residents of the streets of Salsbury and how many of them are just

transient and how many of them are brought from other municipalities here for the services that are offered in Rowan County or in the city of Salsbury. So they stay they stay busy. Most cities don't have this. Or do they? Not many. There's some that do. This is such a you know at one point it was such a visible problem that you know you couldn't ride down East Ind Street without seeing people and and it's not as visible now. But I I just wondered because it's not visible what exactly is happening because something has to be helping a lot. So working through our

Yeah. our our homeless advocates, we're able to identify the actual um the needs in certain areas to where maybe we can adjust ordinances to address and uh you know, we've kept uh Graham busy over the past two or three years adjusting ordinances to address those types of um issues. Just just for example, our um you know where you see the pan handling, we were able to identify the top 10 most dangerous intersections in our city and put those into the ordinance ordinance to make it against the law to panhandle in those intersections. And some of those were already illegal because they were DOT maintained where you know it's it's a state law impeding traffic and you know like innocent Arlington or innocent 85 where there's the uh mediums down the middle that's against the law that's a state law so we can enforce that not without ordinance but with the state but if you look at like innocent freeland that's not a DOT maintain road but it is a dangerous intersection because of all the traffic and the numbers of um traffic crashes that we Uh, so there's a lot that a lot of good that comes out with it. I think other cities that have the type of um I guess where it's not not readily noticed is it's not typically housed with a police department. However, it works good with the police department and what we're trying to accomplish in our city. other municipalities might have it partnered with another nonprofit or another uh another um department in in the within the city.

And is uh having someone Spanish speaking in your department fairly new? No, actually that's um we're fortunate that that has really grown over the past few years and we have we have a um Spanish speaking capabilities on all of our shifts, all of our divisions, night shift, day shift, criminal investigations. Um we've had that for a while. Yes, that that that has steadily grown um over the past six or seven years.

Yeah. Mayor Pro Tim, good questions. If you and council are agreeable, the chief offered to have Dennis come to a council meeting and give you all an update if that's something you want. nice for the public to know that we're doing something, you know, um because I think they they see it in other cities more at every intersection and you know, uh at exits coming off the highway and stuff, but um but our situation seems to have been improved and you know, I think I'm not sure people I I didn't know um except from our previous camp mayor

shared it with me. It was it was kind of one of those things that it got worse for, got better. I think um around Father's Day a couple years ago, we cleaned out a pretty hefty encampment that we had a tremendous rainstorm and that encampment all ended up underneath Interstate 85 as shelter. So, we exposed the problem, but then we were able to follow where other encampments were. Um and and gradually, not to say we displaced, but gradually the people that were um living in those encampments started taking the resources and they got smaller and smaller groups. Now there is a group that choose to be unsheltered

and we've offered several times. They just do not take the services, but that group's smaller than the group that actually wants services.

Pro Tim, one last thing I'll mention. You ask about the funding. So, uh, again, this good work by the police department. Originally, Dennis salary and benefits was covered under a grant. That grant ended and city council approved budgeting to cover his salary and benefits. But, uh, Dennis is much in demand and works very hard. And, uh, I recommended adding a second, um, is it is

homeless liaison is the official t. So, we actually have two. Both are funded through property tax um, from the earlier discussion. Um, and, uh, that was Crystal. Well, you've probably met Crystal. Uh, the bad news is Crystal is no longer a homeless liaison. The good news is she let the chief know she wanted to be a police officer. So, good.

She wanted to be a police officer here. So, that is very good. So, she's right now BL. So that second homeless liaison position is open and I think you've received quite a few resumes of interest. 60 applications so far. 60 applications. 60 60. Yeah. Wow. I think I think it's a great example of getting a grant first to find out if it's a position that we that we need or not and then when you find that we really need it, being able to fund it. Right. Right. You'd be surprised that

if you approach an unsheltered purpose person anywhere in Salsbury, they already know Dennis. Wow. It's great. And your average person driving down, you know, down the road doesn't know that when they when they see one. They don't know there's a relationship. So, that's a good thing. Chief, I would assume because again, I hear this all the time when I go to other cities, you'd be willing to share specifics of the program here with other communities. Absolutely.

I've got I think I know a lot of other chiefs or municipalities would like to know more. So, I may be I will be contacting you if that's okay.

Other items from Councilman Black. Uh for me I'm going go to parks and recre um uh definitely like to hear more and guess my in I thought we would hear from all departments um during the retreat like to hear more like parks and wrecks. I see what they doing but how we really you know we given a lot out of parks and wrecks and how do we really sustain some of that cost? Um what kind of plans that's may be in action to sustain some of the cost that we giving. you throw all our apples in one basket, then we have no apples left. Um, so just more deep dive into what Parks Rex is doing. Uh, how do we cost recovery plan and just move into the future and not maybe something we can't discuss tonight or today. Um, but I would like to hear um all what Parks and Rex got going on and more of a plan on how we're going to get to where we're I know our parks and Rex is going. Um and then for our community engagement team um more so understanding our community engagement team um high level overview uh more deep dive on what what we're doing there how we getting it done and what we continue to do and what we're not going to do anymore. I would love to hear some on on that piece. Um so I see Miss Little and and Miss uh Director Kesha is there to to you don't have to address all that now because that's a it's a lot. Um but I would love to hear some of those things on what our departments is is doing. You

know our community engagement team is fairly not a new team but a new new um outlook on different things.

Yeah. Yeah. Six months uh since uh the engagement department was formed. But uh and I'll let Kesha and Ann add anything they'd like. But uh first of all on the retreat we uh if we were having every department present, we'd need three maybe four days. So we tried to hit some of those priority areas that we've heard from council. Uh last year like you didn't hear from Jason SRU this year. You'll if you were here last year, he presented last year. fire chief did presentation last year. So, uh we try to mix it up, but we also use the budget period. As the mayor says, she likes to budget in bits and pieces. So, we usually have Chris talk about storm water. Some of that you've heard today, but get more specifics on the budget. Jason do it. We we talk about the general fund. So, you'll you'll hear some more about some budget items as we continue. Remember now next step is next week we have the kickoff with departments. So hearing your priority, but what are some of the priorities from departments? But if council would like, we're happy to set up a presentation at a council meeting for engagement to kind of update you, share some things, and for Kesha to update you on parks and wreck if that's something I'm seeing some head shake. And Kesha, anything off the top you want to add?

Yes, for parks and recreation. Um, I really have to give it to staff. We've been seeking grants. Not only that, just building relationships like within RPA um work with our RSS, our recreation resource uh support system. That's how I found out about part of grants for North Carolina Commerce. You know about that. So to compensate for some of our programming needs in our community, that's basically what we've been doing. Um we've spoken a little bit about cost recovery plan. So, we're looking into that and seeing how that's um, you know, would really best suit, you know, our current state, our current state of our community, our families, our households, the um the customers that we serve. You know, I think we have to be uh sensitive to that. Um, and that's something that we're diving into and learning. You know, you know, we do a lot of free events. We have a lot of u inind donations from, you know, different members of the community. So, we're really just focused on those processes. So, That's where we are right now.

I appreciate that. Thank you. Anything to add?

I'll just add, you know, thank you. Our department is six months old. Uh we combined some departments. We have some very clear goals when we started. One of the things that we talked about was not making a lot of changes until we had an opportunity to look at the staffing that we had and assess what the needs of the department were as it related to council's vision and to the overall priorities of the organization. And so, uh, as Jim said, uh, excited to, um, look ahead, uh, and and share more as we go into the budget planning period. um I think is a great opportunity for us to share some of the findings um as we just continue to work on, you know, meeting those goals, you know, telling the story, making sure that everybody in the community um you know, we we are getting information out to the community uh to staff and all of those things. and w will take advantage of this opportunity just to put in a sha not even a shameless plug a prideful plug for the awesome work that that team has done. Uh they're they're behind the scenes a lot. They can be very quiet about what they do, but uh Becky is here. Um, you've seen Michael Brooks, you've seen Quesa Brown, Jason, as I like to call him is, you know, the great and powerful Oz behind the scenes here. But just, um, it's a lot. There are a lot of pieces to it. I've learned a whole lot from staff uh, going through the process as well and just excited about opportunities for service internally and externally. Um and so um look forward to um going through the bud budget process where we'll have some more strategic

information and we have a better assessment of um all the services and all the programming that we we see um is align is aligned with the strategic plan with council's priorities and with with our staff's needs. Thank you. I have one other thing. Yes. I just like to say I've never had a busier January

and I'm just so impressed with all the departments and everything that's been done for the monks visiting at exactly the same time as the Martin Luther King parade as same time as the community resource fair. um the Martin Luther King breakfast and putting this retreat together after the office was closed for a day and in the we still have the ice and the beautiful setup and the food and all these gifts. I mean, it's just um it's just everything that is done by this city staff is top-notch. And I just want to say thank you to everybody. know that so many different departments have been so busy with so many different things and then two council meetings on each, you know, right in the middle of this. So,

thank you. Thank you to everybody. Yeah, I was going to say I'm I'm going to promote that the fire department gets everything they want because he's the only one that gave me a gift this year. I got a mug. So, I'm all about the fire department getting it all. Look, he into his bag to find Uh, uh, council member, I'm sorry. I was just gonna say, Jeff, that our facilitator has done a great job, too. Thank you very much. Uh, council member Jackson, do you have something you want to add to the list? I'll get to the mayor last. Do you have something?

Nothing in particular. I know we talked a little bit about uh housing and um I guess from a selfish perspective, what do we have in place to deal with absentee landlords uh dilapidated unkempt properties?

We working on a uh a list and I mean that comes out of the work that you know I've been a part of before getting on council. um working on the good landlord list. Um it's voluntarily um sorry Hannah but it's voluntarily and and that's one list I think the housing advocacy commission is really pr proud of a lot of research behind it to to look and see make sure we do it right and that it fits Salsbury. Um so that's you can go uh let me take your your thunder.

Um I alluded to it just a very little bit. Yes, absentee landlords are an increasing issue. They have become harder and harder for code enforcement to be able to be in touch with them when we need to be in touch with them. Um I can tell you, you know, working with the block work program, a lot of those um people that live in those blocks are renters and you go and ask them, can we be in touch with your landlord or your property owner? They say, I don't know. I pay I pay my rent online and I have no contact with with the actual landlord themselves. That's that's a real problem, an increasing problem and a really hard one for us to track. So, Council Member Black is right. The um Housing Advocacy Commission has identified this as a as an issue. Um, we are somewhat limited into what we can actually do about absenteeing landlords um or landlords that allow their properties to um go into decline. Um we do have those minimum housing standards. The limitation there is that we need to be invited into properties um in order to inspect them and to make sure that they are of quality. It's a state law that we cannot have mandatory inspection programs. Um that would be, you know, routine inspection programs at some point. That's allowed in other places. In North Carolina, it is not. So, the commission is looking at other models, ways in which we might be able to incentivize landlords to be a part of this inspection program. That's where council member Black was saying it's kind of a good list list of landlords that um are are willing to participate with us and then um to see whether or not you and then we can share that list

with uh tenants, school systems, with other other places that are looking to make sure that they there's adequate housing. So that's one thing um that that we are looking at but it is a very tricky issue. Thank you Anna. Can you also mention the wrap program and that's more on the tenant side but uh sometime it is on the tenant side and opportunities to address that with program you and the police department.

Sure. Yeah. So several years ago I want to say it was 2017 or 2018 um the housing advocacy commission again identified a a program that's called the remedial action plan. It's an ordinance that's adopted by the city. Um, and what it does is it tracks crime in rental properties. And what we found is that with those landlords that live kind of outside of Salsbury, they oftentimes don't know what's going on in their property. So there could be some calls for service. They never hear about that. Um, and so we now have a a program that landlords again can voluntarily sign up for to receive notifications of activities on their properties. And there are certain triggers. Um, so there's that kind of educational piece with landlords and then there are certain triggers that are in the ordinance that would call for us to bring them into the police department for some intervention. Um, so that might be uh looking at crime prevention through environmental design. oftentimes it is encouraging that landlord to initiate an eviction process for that tenant that is causing kind of nuisances in the neighborhood. And so we have a um very experienced part-time employee. She's been with the city now for well over 40 years. She beats Chief Parnell um Karen Barbie. Um and and she she's like she took that as a challenge. but she knows the ins and outs of that program and and does a phenomenal job of of um working it along with the police department

and we utilize it quite often. Thank you. This council member Mlofflin is he is he still on? Do we know? Is he okay? Mayor, um, do you have something you want to add to this other items list I'm calling it?

I think one thing and I think it's as we look out is I am very optimistic that our microtransit program is going to be very successful. It's already proving that it's very beneficial for folks who need transportation safely. So, I guess we have a grant for three years, right? Yes.

What is our I think what we're going to find out is we need to expand it citywide. And then how do we fund that? Because I know that's a um enterprise fund that it it falls short. It doesn't fund itself. It's grants. It's by design. We don't it's by design. We don't make money on transit. It is a service, right? So, but how are we going to tackle the future of this? I I guess as long term, what how do we tackle that after this?

I think it's a a great question, Mayor, and Rodney or Tracy can jump in. Just to let you know, and Tracy, make sure I'm right here. um for our fixed route transit. Um to your point, that falls short of the revenues that we receive to the tune of about $700,000. 678,000. Thank you. 678 I round up 22 cents.

So 678,000. Uh that's a penny and a half on the tax rate. So, we have to subsidize our transit system from the general fund on about a penny and a half. Um, and so with this new service and and Rodney and I were just talking about the numbers, it's already popular. Um, and it's a about a $2.8 million grant. The the idea is about, you know, 900,000 a year. But if council wants to speed up and do two routes or all three routes, we're going to go through that money not in three years, but could be year and a half, two years, depending on when we do it. Uh, obviously it's a new service, only a week and a half. We're we're working out issues. Rodney's working closely. We had some issues pop up with the the VA and Rodney's already worked that out. So, I think it's great we're doing the pilot, but remember too, this system uh provides uh microransit service for Spencer in East Spencer. And right now, we're funding that. And so I've had conversations with the manager about if this is something that our council is interested in for the city of Salsbury. We'll look for them to also engage and participate in those conversations, but also I I would like others outside of Salsbury if the service is provided to participate in the funding of that service as well. So, we're not there yet, but mayor, that's kind of my initial thoughts. And I remember uh council member Post kept asking about the data and where are they going? What

and Rodney's going to have that so we can see how many riders get on in Spencer and East Spencer and then it could be there are other cities in Rowan County interested. So, is this still a city of Salsbury service or is it a transit authority for the county? Is it a countywide service? I I I don't I don't know. Those are a lot of questions there, but I think you're spot on. Rodney, jump in here and share any thoughts you may have.

Now, um the only thing I would like to add is is mayor said it expands citywide. Um microtransit is constantly evolving. Many different models are being introduced. Even last week I was on a call, I think it was Suix Falls, they had a different model. So by the time we get that data um there may be different models to consider. The one last week was integrating the fixed route with the microtransit and get rid of um fixed routes but it expanded public transportation throughout the entire city. So that's another model. That model can potentially um manage costs better um because you have a fixed route system which moves more frequently. you can have 30 minute headway as opposed to now we have an hour and 10 hour and 20 minutes and then the microtransit can connect to that in various different ways. So I say all that to say there's a lot of different models out there. Um the data that we get from downtown can help us determine what type of model to offer. So um yes going citywide microtransit is one but I'd just like to share there's other models. And then like what are is some again a lot of models is there somebody out there like I mean we have Macy's over in our in our county but it is technically in China Grove but that doesn't mean people who everybody who lives in China Grove is not going to work there and everybody that works there doesn't live in China Grove right so is there a potential to where we say okay ex employer we can manage your to and from work stuff. I mean, are there are there potentials for stuff like that to where that's funded by that? Let's say I'll use Macy's as an example here. Macy's says, "Here's X amount of money." Are those options? I mean, I I I think so. Um,

and again, I'll look to Rodney to jump in. I remember uh the city of Wilson, North Carolina before I started with the city and I I watched the video, they came to your city council retreat and talked about microtransit. They were one of the first cities in North Carolina to implement it. And year or two ago, Rodney and I had a conversation with their manager and transit director. And I asked them that and they had already, if I remember right, Rodney, had raised the fee twice and they had council approve a dedicated property tax increase just to pay for microtransit. And their council did, but they did say one of the things that they missed was an opportunity to work with those large employers. And now it's a benefit. someone can say, "Hey, I got to go to work at Macy's. Uh, pick me up at my house." And to fund that though, you know, looking for those public private partnerships to help fund it. And that was one of the things that Rodney and I heard uh look for those opportunities. So, that's another step as this uh um matures. Anything to add?

No, I I agree 100%. um that public private partnership is is a great opportunity. Um you mentioned earlier there grant opportunities where it's 8020 that's where the private partnership can help pay for that 20%. Um those expenses though has to be solely on um the city of Salsbury um as well as the county has a transit system. Um reach out to them again and and and some of these places are in the county to see if they're willing to be our partner as well. And then just two two things that I'd like to see kind of an update on and this president seems like it's been a few years. We keep putting it on the plan and I think it's going to be on the new strategic plan but like our branding strategy kind of get an update on that as we evolve more departments more things kind of what is that cohesive message that we're communicating out there and then just I think it might be a good thing for our community at a council meeting to get um Philip to come maybe and give us a development office update on you triage list of projects and the the myth versus the fact because what we hear is it took 300 days to get my permit but what we didn't hear is the developers sat on it for 200 days. So, who I'm not saying 100 days is cool. I'm making up numbers here, but getting real facts out there. Talk about all the great things Philip that you've done in your office. You've added positions, things like that. That's happened since the last budget. So, can we show what we've been doing to try to let our business partners know that we are working on this and just give a because there's a lot of good things that have happened there. And then what's the status on maybe reloading to the work with the county a little bit on that?

Um I'll jump in and then Philip please add. Um again if council wants that update absolutely um a lot of progress in development services that permit wait time the review time has come down. Philip can provide that data. We still have how many positions trying to fill? Two, three.

Three. Um and uh we had someone for our inspector and that person took another job. So um but we filled our engineer, we filled one of our reviewers. Um we are making progress. So, the other thing we're doing, and you've seen this, um like on our transitional zoning, uh you heard Victoria mentioned we're looking at some things to bring back um with some ordinance updates that uh will help clarify things and help with efficiency. Uh Victoria is is great at that and that's really uh while she was hired to help uh modify and improve our ordinance, she just hasn't had time because she's busy reviewing plans. Now we hired another reviewer, so it's freeing up her time. So there are a lot of improvements. They continue to implement software uh intergov. anytime there's a new software, there's some struggles there, but again, they're trying to address that. But, um, we're happy to update council. Phillip, what did I miss?

Well, no, I think you hit it on on the head, Jim. You know, we we were have been able to make some good hires to the department, which um has freed up a lot of time in in other places. One of the things uh one of the other thing added bonuses that we've had is hiring our development senior development services uh liaison Larry Smith who has helped a lot with the communication with developers making sure that they they're being kept in touch with that they're being kept up to date on on a lot of those things you know so if we have a developer that that calls in and says why are you taking so long Larry is real good to to do that analis and say, "Okay, well, we've held it this long. Your design professionals have held it this long." Just to give a fair accounting. And when we're when we've held it too long, we've held it too long. And we take, you know, we take that. But, uh, most of the time, it's a it it helps the developer to understand why it's taking a particular amount of time to review a set of plans. But, um, helping, uh, being able to hire, uh, um, reviewers. Another thing that's helped a lot is is Jason's been able to hire reviewers and he's got folks that are are able to to review plans and and turn those around and not get backed up like we had been in the past. And so um that's been very successful for us. And um we do have Larry uh started have we start met start having this triage meeting on Mondays. We meet every Monday. We go over all the plans. We say okay this one's behind. Why is it behind? When's it going to you when will we have these reviews taken up? And um and that I think what we've seen at least anecdotally we've seen the the review times go from 60 plus days to less than 30. So that's been a huge help for us. Um and it has freed up Victoria's time to to write ordinances. It's freed up all of our time. We're working on a department strategic plan ourselves and trying to identify goals

where we want to be. One of the things that have come out of that and and um an idea that that Jim and I talked about when when I first started and and we've been able to to have is this um we call it our land development advisory committee. And so it's a a a committee of of local developers, builders that we kind of bounce ideas off of and that's been very helpful for us. Um, one of the things that we we've worked with them to uh to to bring about is and you'll see soon is a text amendment that streamlines our review process. So instead of being having all a lot of steps, we've eliminated some steps and reclassified some of the reviews so that we accomplish the same goals uh of of quality plans and quality developments, but we make that a lot faster review times. And so uh we we went to uh Concord, met with folks in Concord. We went to Huntersville, met with the folks from Huntersville. what are some of the things that we saw that are commonalities there that help them? What could we implement in our department and we're implementing those things and we're and it's we're seeing a lot of progress with that. So

well and I know it was big part of our retreat last year to the point we gave up like we're like I can't do all these steps. So game. Yeah. So um I I think to spread the the the good news out there by getting a recap of presentation on what you have done in it in just the course of one year. I think it's a lot. So I think it's good news to share. Absolutely. So it's all I got you. That was a a good session. Um I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Branding strategy I forgot you mentioned.

Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, mayor, council, that is part of your strategic plan. I did not recommend it in this year's budget because we have a new engagement department that we're going to look to lead that branding study. So, we've always said the strategic plan, a three to five year plan. We're two years into it. My thought is to evaluate that as a budget item. Usually branding studies are or they can get very expensive, but I would say around $100,000 ballpark. So, as we um start uh reviewing department budgets, I expect there to be a budget request from community engagement for a branding study. And those are conversations I look to have with council where we've got all these priorities and what can we afford? But that one is uh is planned for uh budget review this year.

The next item is to um go over setting clear directions for your head. And I I think the way I would like to begin and y'all y'all tell me if you want to go a different direct is just do a real short recap of today's session like I did yesterday's and that may prompt some questions or comments and as I said stop me if you want and I think I'm going to start from the end and go uh go back towards the beginning but just a real real quick update of what I heard from the elected officials. Uh um mayor um mentioned the microransit program uh funding for future expansion uh the branding strategy uh I mentioned Philip's name just uh maybe an update on the development services program and uh and how that process is going. Um, I'll come back to Housing Advocacy Commission because I think that goes with an item on this page. Um, Council Member Jackson, I think, started out talking about some code issues related to housing and then we had a discussion about the housing advocacy commission and their their role in that and and some of the challenges. Um Hannah talked about some of the challenges that uh goes along with that. Um uh council member Black um wants to learn more and he got an update on uh he used the term deep dive into parks and wreck and the community engagement team and he got some some updates uh on on those two areas. Uh, Council Member Klutz mentioned the the PD and uh, particularly as it

relates to the the the homeless officers and what they do and uh, the chief gave a a good report on how that works and some of the success stories that Salsbury has had with that. And then she just also mentioned uh being impressed with um this this retreat and how the uh department heads in Salsbury act in general. So that's just a very very brief summary of what the last 40 minutes have been. Um and then again uh some of the other um presentations. Uh well I'll start in the beginning. You heard a um a street uh resurfacing um street maintenance and paving strategy. Um um I I I guess I wrote 300,000 up there because that's just we and I know that's going to be a budget item that y'all talk about more. Uh but I wrote 30,000. I think that's the number Chris gave just basically to sort of maintain where you are. Jim, you want to say something? Yeah, that's that's the number in the uh midyear request that we will have on your next council. Remember um way showed 700,000 in savings at midyear or additional revenue and so there were several items including the uh master plan for the swimming pool community center. Uh but 300,000 is a part of that that per Chris was needed for inflation and budget issues, higher bids on the current road list. Um a report um our road housing needs and opportunities.

uh excellent report, six strategies that were presented and I know it was talked about, you know, it wouldn't be practical to talk about or take on all that at once, but the city does need to uh to begin. Uh I apologize, Council Member Klutz, for not adding the second T to your name. That's my mistake. I'm sorry. But a an issue came up that seemed pretty important to a couple of members and I assume staff is going to look into that and that's that whole issue about the the city having an appointment to the I guess that's the housing authority and and Briner I hope I spelled Briner right crossing was brought up a couple times. So y'all know a lot more about that than I do but I wanted to note that because that seemed very important.

Thank you. Yeah. So I I didn't want y'all to forget that. Thanks.

I wrote that up there. And then the um uh fire chief um gave a presentation along with the the battalion chief. I just wrote coupe because that's uh there was a lot more to that study. But we talked about that being in the a4 million dollar range, but there may be some interest earned for some grants you got and possibly some leftover money that go towards that. And we learn we learned a lot about how important that type of study was, for example, to the city of Asheville during Helen or the aftermath of Helen. We learned uh the importance of that. Um so my notes are extremely bare up to this point, but those are just some real highlights I heard. I know there's a lot more, but u Jim, do you want to mention anything about the things I just mentioned real quick?

And again, thank you for everybody's patience today, but u I thought the presentations were great. You can tell a lot of work has gone into those. And a lot of these items uh are budget items and we're kind of setting that stage. And council, do we get a headshake and things like road resurfacing? So, How can we look at increasing that? And that's going to be a need to take multiple years to get it up. And so that gives us the management team direction as we go into the uh the budget cycle to look at things like uh road reservicing to work with Hannah. Okay. Are there some things you need out of the gate to help support you? We heard uh Chris's team talk about storm water and they're looking at a lot of things and wanted to continue to look at those things and some are budgetary, some may not, some we may not be able to afford right now. So, a lot of these items, Jeff, we'll work on during the budget and we'll bring back during the budget process some recommendations to council. The one thing I would like to ask on the um coupe process, uh you heard the chief and chief Gant talk about uh doing a a process uh request for proposal and we put it out and and we have uh uh different firms submit and and we review. We we know the firm that did Asheville, but there's others that did it. And so I threw that 250 out. That's what we heard from Asheville. I don't know for us, is it three? Is it 150? But whatever it may be, if council is good and we heard support on this, are you okay with us going

ahead and starting the process, putting the RFP together? We'll work with some folks like Asheville and others. We'll work internally. The chief's already reached out to Tracy, but if if we can work on that and get it out on the street, we'll put a team together, start reviewing once we like certain team, then we can start talking and negotiating price, but then bring that back to council. Um, I'd like to go ahead and get started on that because I think it's going to take a while. Chief, anything to add?

Oh, I agree. The U process building up and evaluating prospective consultants will take months probably probably at the July 1 time frame we we would be ready take about six months there you go August 1 so is council okay with us starting that process I don't have a dollar amount yet but I'm doing the estimate but again we have some grant money available to use for this I I think it's necessary to go ahead and start the process there's no need to waiting. So I think for me it's definitely necessary that we start this process as soon as possible.

Everybody else I'm seeing headshake. Thank you. I'm just going to put up here start the process. Green light that will come back to council with our recommendation and the amount. Get your approval. Are there other items, Jim, and I know you've got the whole budget process to go through, but as far as other items like that you'd at least like to get council's consensus about being able to start or any is there anything else you really would like before you leave today to know something about as far as

No, I I think you've provided uh great direction. Thank you. Um there are three things that we're going to bring back over the next couple meetings. One is the budget amendment for that 700,000 and those items that were listed. So, you'll get a chance to review that again and consider approval on that. Number two, Kelly will be working on our uh federal agenda uh and state agenda and bring that back to council um February. Kelly, when do you think? March.

Second meeting February or first meeting in March. February or March and um gosh there was one or more other one that thank you that's it strategic plan big one uh so we uh went through the updates with you we'll we'll go back and tweak based on this feedback uh today if there's anything else and we'll bring that back at a council meeting for your in review and approval February 17th February 17th.

February 17th. So those three items will be coming back. Uh uh but based on the discussions you've had, don't see a whole lot of changes to it. Yeah, I forgot to mention when I was doing my summary the update from the the lobbyist. Uh but that was that was very good. Anything else? All I have unless mayor, you or council have anything. Good. Always say, what do I always say? Skate park. Thank you. Hadn't said it for two days.

I do want to just say real real real quickly again, and I'm not just saying it. I love coming here because I'm honestly so impressed with what I hear and see. I'm not just saying it because I like y'all and because my daughter works here and one of my best friends here and fish

my one of my best friends in the world lives here. No, I I do love this city and but y'all just always everybody impresses me and and I mean that sincerely. So, thank y'all for allowing me to come. Uh I I I really really do enjoy it and this is proof that good government does exist. And I mean, I thank y'all for letting me be a part of it.

Mayor, uh, let you, uh, close us out, but I wanted to thank Jeff. I think you did a great job keeping us moving and on time. Uh, uh, capturing the conversation, uh, sharing some stories with us. That was, uh, tremendously beneficial. And so, thank you for being open and sharing and keeping us moving. We appreciate your work. Mayor, council, thank you all. I started the meeting yesterday recognizing how busy you are and you've given up two days. Um, I know council member Jackson said he worked till eight or nine o'clock last night on some issues. So, I I get it. You all are very busy. Um, but very much appreciate you taking two days to uh hear from staff and give us some direction and talk about your goals and it it uh builds teamwork with you all as a a new council as well. Like to also thank Kelly again for helping lead and coordinate this uh uh and you want to share again who all work? Definitely want to thank Adalie and Claire for their creativity, for the incredible food, and um along with Connie and Macy, they've helped as well. And Cynthia and DSi, they've just been a tremendous help with this, but they really make the the special touches that that make this a fun two days. So, definitely want to thank them.

So, great team. And uh Mayor and Council, before you leave, we can get a picture over here at the tent and uh fire. I think that'd be nice to to do. And finally, I'd just like to thank the management team and other staff that participated, Tracy and others. We had some guests come in from Dr. Lynn to our lobbyist and several engineers. Um I uh just appreciate all the work. You see, this doesn't happen overnight and uh weeks uh months of work going into planning and preparing the the papers and and the uh slides. I think you all have a copy of the presentations. Now, if there's any questions, let us know. And I just like to end there's a lot of eyes on the city of Salsbury, especially the past two weeks, things you all have mentioned. We had the Walk for Peace. We had the MLK weekend. A lot of events. We had the storm. We have this. I just got an email. Now we're up to six inches of snow. Maybe one inch tomorrow. Who knows? But a lot of eyes on the city of Salsbury because of all the the good things we're doing. And uh appreciate your leadership and your support. Uh it it it's a great team here with staff and counsel, but um I love it too when I open the paper and uh the post is featuring uh people to watch in 2026 and uh last week we had Christina R. and Christina great volunteer uh with city does great literacy works with human

relations. But one of the uh interview questions they asked the people that have been uh selected as the people to watch who they are watching in the coming year. And so Christina when I asked who is someone you will be watching in 2026 does anybody know who Christina is going to be watching and little knows. I know.

Let me share this with you. This is Christina saying I'm going to say Kesha Cox from Salsbury Parks and Recreation. I think the community has already seen some of the work that she is doing for the community. She's very passionate. She thinks about the most vulnerable community members and just brings a lot of energy to the space. Um I'm grateful that I'm able to work with her right now. So Kesha,

you are a center. You are a person to watch by one of the people to watch. Congratulations. But uh just a lot of good things going on and this is a wonderful team doing great work. Thanks to all the management team, council, thanks to you. Mayor, let you close us out. Um council, I if you all have any parting comments, start with you. Jamal, if you have anything to add.

Uh no, I just say I appreciate the time and effort that everybody put in. Um it was great. My first retreat I watched every one of them online um before sitting behind this um table. Uh I knew a lot but I also learned a lot today understanding the why and being able to go back to tell you know the community on why certain things are done certain ways. Um so I'm learning and I'm I'm grateful and I'm thankful and I appreciate each and every one of you at the table. The ones that even that's not at the table, our community and the staff that still continue to push forward through it. Um, so continue to do the things you do and u we'll continue to support in any way or form or fashion. And thanks to y'all's leadership uh to continue to guide that and and watch over that even though we had the segment on uh mayor ran government versus city manager ran government. Yeah, we know where we stand and I think we're pretty confident on that right now. So, thank you all. Uh just continue to to help continue to make Salisbury thrive even even greater each day. So, thank you. I just say that uh success is built on continuity regardless of what it is you do. And I have been impressed since I have been involved with the city. uh every department, every team member. Uh I know people have concerns and things they would care to complain about, but I have not I haven't heard anybody outwardly have anything negative to say about what goes on here. Um that's incredible within itself. coming from a large organization that I work in, to have what 500 employees, when you can get that in one space, that's that's a secret sauce you need to bottle and sell to other people. So,

thank you for what you do and uh you make me a better citizen. You make me a better council person and I'm just glad to be here with you. Miss K.

Well, I've said this before, but when I left here 12 years ago, I never ever dreamed for a minute that I would be back. And uh didn't have any idea what it would be like. And so when I came back, I was just I I can't even describe how thrilled I was with what I found here. And um after spending 15 years here before um with wonderful people and wonderful success um to come back after all this time and with what I found all I can say is wow um council members the city manager city attorney clerk staff um everyone it's just it's been so amazing that when it came time for council members to reup and uh run for re-election that I wouldn't have dreamed I would have been doing either. After a week, I just said, "I really want to do this." And people would ask me what it was like. And I said, "I love it. I love every minute of it. It's so exciting for me to see what y'all have done and to be a part of it." So, thank you for for including me. I'm very grateful. Uh again, just want to obviously thank each and every one of you for what you do every day and how you lead your teams, right? Um you all are sitting here still doing your jobs for two days while you entertain us, but what we hope is it pays off when we look at the budget and how we take care of our citizens. Um like Carlton said, you know, we're citizens, too. So, um, how you take care of us is, um, unparalleled. Sure, nobody's happy all the time,

right? Um, but you guys keep grace and you seem to keep kindness and I've I personally witnessed that over the last few years. So, I want to thank you all for that. Jim and Kelly, I think that comes from you guys. You make sure that happens. Again, I know Kelly, you thank these folks. I want to rethink them on behalf of the council for making everything just so good to the last couple of days. Uh Connie, thank you so much for always taking care of us. Adelaide, who does so much that most people don't even know have a clue how she makes sure everything happens. Uh again, Claire, uh Macy and Cynthia for making sure today and yesterday went. Uh I thought I ate a lot for that snow day. I was like, "What are you gonna I'm just going to eat." And yeah, so I've continued that uh trip these last uh I'm ready for my my trail, right? We were at the trail head, right? And we took off and my pack is a lot lighter because I've eaten so much. So, um anyway, uh I just want to thank them all for all their hard work on that. And I would just say whether it's an orchestra that you dig or a rock band or even the blocks on a Rubik's cube, the sum is greater than the parts. And so that's why it takes all of us to do this. And I know several of you mentioned in your presentations how not working in silos and things make the world difference. So I think if we just keep on that course, we get our strategic plan, we'll be ready to rock. So thank you all so very much. Um, and with that I would accept a motion to adjourn.

Have a motion. All those in favor say I.