City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, good evening, everybody, at 6 p.m. This is Tuesday, December, or September the 8th. This is our September regular meeting of the Town of Spencer Board of Aldermen. We are called to order, and we will begin with an invocation from Mayor Pro Tem Rashid Muhammad.

At this time, Lord, we come to you with a clear heart and clear mind, with the Town of Spencer in mind. Put forth righteous guidance. for the direction of this board, for the town and the residents. In your name, we continue to pray. Amen.

Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

Right. Board, you have before you the agenda for this evening. I'm not aware of any additions or deletions, and as such, unless there are any additions or deletions, we will entertain a motion to adopt the agenda before you.

Move to adopt the agenda as presented.

Motion by Ms. Sledge. Second. Second by Mayor Pro Tem. All in favor? All right, all opposed? And our agenda is set for this evening. We have several recognitions that we will start with tonight. I'd like to turn the floor over to Alderwoman Pat Sledge for a recognition for the Spencer Labor Day Dance.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, board members, folks in the audience. I hope some of you are here, maybe all of you, but we had a wonderful evening on Saturday. What a special night for the parade committee, the Holiday Caravan volunteers who put this all together. And congratulations to our newly crowned Miss 2026, Miss Spencer Holiday Caravan Queen, Miss Carolyn Monroe. She is currently enrolled at UNC Charlotte for her master's degree in curriculum and instruction, while taking on the daunting task of being a kindergarten teacher at North Rowan Elementary, helping to shape the next generation. No way I would want to tackle that. Not a room full of kindergartners. We had a wonderful evening with Motel Soap. They were back for their third appearance here in our park. I wanted to thank the sponsors who put that all together. And the committee members, I think I have most of them. If I've missed somebody, I apologize. But Heather Racino and Lynn Purvis, Devin Purvis, Winna Howell, Jennifer Crawford, and the owners of the Kettle Corn, Coleman and Melissa. And if I've missed somebody else, let me know. But thank you all for all you do. We look forward to the holiday caravan that will be held on November 25th, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. And thank you for bringing this entertainment to our wonderful town park on Saturday evening. It was cool. It was nice. We had a good turnout. I didn't get a full, I didn't really get an idea of the number of people here, but we had a number of people here, a larger crowd than we've had since, I think, our first opening of the park. So thank you all for coming. And for those of you who didn't, there will be more opportunities coming up soon.

Thank you, Ms. Sledge. All right, next is Otter Woman Erin Moody. who has a recognition regarding the town manager.

Thank you. Tonight is my privilege to recognize our town manager, Peter Franzese, as the Rotary Club of Rowan County's Distinguished Rotarian of the Year. Mr. Franzese truly embodies the spirit of service above self, both through Rotary and throughout our community. He is a humble and dedicated servant, consistently giving his time and energy to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others. His commitment to honesty, goodwill, friendship, and fairness guides his professional and personal life. We're grateful for the opportunity to recognize his outstanding contributions here in Spencer. So congratulations to Town Manager Franzese on his well-deserved honor, and thank you for being such a wonderful representative of the Town of Spencer.

Congratulations, Peter. And let's see, you also have some family members with us tonight to be able to celebrate that. So good to see Chelsea and Rocco.

We might also mention that he drives a mean fire truck.

I heard that.

That's right. We do appreciate him driving the fire truck for East Spencer's parade that we got to participate in.

It was a good time.

Very good. All right, the next recognition we have is one that I will make regarding our town staff for all the work that they did. They did work this past weekend, but the weekend before, especially for the North Carolina Transportation Museum's America 250 locomotive celebration. Hopefully those of you here tonight had a chance to at least drive by and see some of the locomotives that were in town from all across America. If not, hopefully you had a chance to go to the celebration. But we had a lot of our town staff, our police department, and our fire department as well that was participating and helping with that event. We welcomed locomotives that were United States-themed, America 250 locomotives. locomotives and cars from all across the United States to be able to celebrate the nation's 250th anniversary and so what a great way to celebrate the founding of our country and a great way to welcome folks from all across the United States and beyond I think we had some folks from Canada maybe that we're down to to be able to to welcome them to our community and It was a packed downtown, which we love to see on weekends and just a great celebration within Rowan County and within our community. So we appreciate our town staff, all that they do to help out, not just for town functions, but also for other functions that the museum has throughout the year to really make this community special. So thank you all very much. All right, we'll move on to public comment this evening. We have two individuals signed up for public comment. And as a reminder, public comment, you have three minutes to speak. We do have a timer that will help you keep track of time. We ask that at the end of that three minutes that you please end your comments so that others have a chance to speak. And we will begin. We have Trudy Gale. We'll ask her to come forward. And if you will come forward, please state your address for the record.

Hello, my name is Trudy Gale, and I, along with my husband, Robert Pendleton, own the property at 207 Alexander Street, along with the adjoining lot on the corner of Alexander and John Streets. I am concerned about the rezoning of the property between John and Jordan Streets. This property is home to a raptor of turkeys, lots of deer, numerous owls and hawks, a family of red foxes and lowly box turtles. Also, tons of bluebirds, golden finches, and hummingbirds make this their home. This is one of the last areas of this type in Spencer. Spencer is eliminating so much green space that we're going to become a concrete jungle. Like the song says, paved paradise, put up a parking lot. The RMST designation would allow just about anything on this parcel, retail, restaurants, workplaces, civic, and multifamily, and even a dollar general in the future. You say you want more development in Spitzer, but we already have a lot of empty houses as it is with people rotating in and out that do not take care of the property. For example, the house right across the street at 200 Alexander Street The grass has not been mowed all summer and is literally up to my knees. Since 2020, there have been four different owners and several renters. It is currently empty. There are two newer houses in the 600 block of Whitehead. 606 has had three different owners since 2021, and the current owner resides in Charlotte. 604 Whitehead has had six, yes, six different owners since 2021. and the current owner resides in Salisbury, so again, another renter. Many of these newer homes are just a revolving door of owners and renters, not people who care about the town of Spencer. I'm not opposed to renters. In fact, I've been a renter here myself, but the owners were longtime residents who took care of the property. I believe the question before you today is not simply whether the developer has plans for houses today, The question is, are we comfortable giving this property a zoning class that could allow substantially different uses in the future? And if you think RMST is such an asset to our town, why haven't you rezoned your neighborhoods to RMST? I mean, most of you live in the single family residential area. Rezone the entire town if it's so great. My home was rezoned without my knowledge. Another question, is money more important than the people who live in this town, the wildlife, and the environment? If you care about the environment and climate change, you will not want to keep destroying our trees and grasslands. I'll close with a slogan from the town of Spencer's own homepage, where hometown charm is plentiful and residents can enjoy the quality of life they desire. Let's keep Spencer's charm and let residents enjoy a quality of life, not so much quantity. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mrs. Gale.

All right.

Next, we'll invite Sharon Hovis forward. Sharon Hovis, 401 North Ryan Avenue Extension.

My appearance is for the purpose of this ongoing saga with easement located at 401 North Ryan Avenue Extension. The matter is still not resolved from the 2002 and from 1998 when the town enlarged it to create a wider road for the middle school. The easement was a stormwater drain that started as a creek and now is a big gorge. The family property at this time is still losing ground and land. The easement is now a gorge and infiltrated with undergrowth, chemicals from introspect, and anything else backwashed down the town of Spencer Street. The agreement was for yearly maintenance and management from the town. The family allowed uses of the town solely for the purpose of town servicing it after the agreement and low ball payment of a mere $4,000. This is solely for the maintenance and for it to be properly maintenanced. The board agreed on the resolution of that contract with agreement And to no avail if you saw the pictures that I sent you all ahead of time You'll see that the maintenance isn't there the riprock isn't there according to what you've already received in the email field The town does not want The town doesn't want my family to fix the easement but at the same time to You guys don't want to repair it or do anything to help save our land. So I'm asking again one more time because this will be my last time trying to come before you guys. My family is so done with me trying to ask and go through the proper channels. We already know that we need to pay. We could pay for it. It's just all these different contractual things that we know we'd have to get from permits or whatever. But nobody won't even allow us to even do that because you guys have us under this. this easement agreement. So I'm just asking one more time from you guys to try to see what you can because it's not going to be okay where staff can tell me one minute we'll do a wall, a retaining wall, then the next minute we'll close it. But in three years you still haven't done any of those things. You still haven't maintenanced it. All you have to do is look at the pictures. So I ask that you guys just make sure because it doesn't do any good for me to come. I've already been on this board. I already know It takes more than just going to staff. It takes coming to the board to see if I can get more help. So I'm asking for your help one more time.

Thank you, Ms. Hopus. All right. That ends public comment this evening. Board will move on to our consent agenda. Your consent agenda is before you. There's only one item on the consent agenda tonight. So if there is no reason to pull an item, we will entertain a motion to approve. Motion by Mayor Pro Tem. Is there a second?

Second.

Second by Ms. Moody. All in favor? All right. All opposed? And the consent agenda is approved. All right. The next item, it will be a presentation that we receive this evening from the Rowan County Public Health Department regarding recreational partnership opportunities. I'll invite Mr. Morris forward, who will give an introduction.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Board of Aldermen. The Parks and Recreation Advisory Board submitted a work plan to the Board of Aldermen back at the planning and retreating spring. And in the work plan, there was a specific recommendation to enhance partnerships to provide recreational opportunities for the citizens of Spencer. And so what we have tonight is a presentation from the Rowland County Health Department. Amy Smith and Sierra Goetz are both from the Health Department. They have presentations on two different programs, one being Story Walk and the other being Mobile Play. And these are two opportunities that will benefit our citizens. And we're certainly, from the standpoint of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, they have endorsed these ideas. And as an advisory board, they're submitting this to you for your consideration and approval. And it looks like we've teed up story walk first, but so we just ask Sierra to come up and introduce herself and then also present on this particular item.

Hello Mayor Williams. Thank you for having me and to the board members. I would like to present this idea of the story walk and hope that Spencer would like to partner with us. My name is Sierra Fitz. I am the program manager at Rowan County Health Department. So basically, story walks are an idea to basically get the community back involved, get families outside, increase healthy living in the area, increase literacy rates. It is important to get children and their families outside instead of on tablets. We want to increase mental health and just love for the community overall. And these are some of the things that the story walk can promote overall. Up until recently, there were no story walks in our county in particular but now thankfully we do have one in salisbury and by the end of the month we will have one in cleveland but we would love to partner with sensor to add one here in the park of your children the story wall will require 22 panels they are in compliance with ada accessibility Each pedestal is set to be 40 paces apart. Whether that be a child 40 paces or an adult 40 paces, it will be completely up to you. And some of the prompts that could be put at the end of the story walk, because the books will not complete the full 22 pedestals, but you can use it to maybe promote some marketing for Spencer. You may be able to put some prompts to encourage math skill building, observational skills. physical movement activities that families can participate in, fun facts that families can participate in. We do have a QR code that you can add there to get some information, to collect data, and also list those activities. And it's also a space for individuals to put in questions that they may have about the story walk or even put in books that they would like to see in the future.

So basically, if partnering with us, the town of Spencer would be

subject to provide the land and the um installment of the signs we won't be able to install them but we will have them delivered to you guys um the rowan county literacy council will be responsible for putting the books in every time they're changed out um they will be changed out monthly unless you guys decide otherwise um and one county public health will once again make sure the pedestals are designated to whatever spot you all have us to deliver this to. This is just a sample of the books. You do not have to pick these books in particular. You can get books that are specific to your area. I know Cleveland, they went with some agricultural books. So whatever decision the board makes on what topics would fit Spencer, that can be discussed with the Rowan County Literacy Council. once again as i previously mentioned we would like to install that qr code to make sure we can measure measure the success and participation um it does include a survey for questioning it does ask specifically which story walk are you attending because it's not only that we want people to visit the special park but we want everyone in rowan county to participate and get to know each individual town um it also allows for community members to post selfies if they would like to. This can be an opportunity to get more children or community members involved with the library and participate in there. You can even have a competition or they can offer out bookmarks for those who do attend. Next steps would be discuss the partnership and any concerns the board may have. Panier is the chosen vendor for the storyboard panels. They do come with instructions on installment. If you have any questions about that, feel free to let us know. We do just need to talk about the timeline for installation, order materials and books once they are picked, which would happen through Long County Literacy Council at the library. Prepare for the installation, but again, the media and marketing in regards to when it will open and ribbon cutting. And then just track the usage and that will be through the QR code. Thank you so much for having me. This is my contact information as well as my colleague, Amy.

All right. Thank you, Sierra. Thank you. Good luck. Board, are there any questions on the story walk at this point?

I did have one. What is the initial contract length? Like, Rowan Literacy Council providing the book, are we talking initially like a 12-month plan, an 18-month plan? Is it... I'm assuming we can't commit to forever, but that would be nice.

The plan was less than 12 months. Once the materials are delivered, it is completely up to Spencer to have them installed. And once the books are here, they were ordered on Amazon. So once you have contact with Law and Literacy Council, it may take several months, but really is based on when they get installed by the town. There is no specific timeline that we have in to stick to. So once again, once the pedestals are delivered, installation happens, you let us know that they're installed. Rowan Literacy Council, they basically have to dissect the booths to make sure that they can each fit into the pedestals. And that's when it is based on planning where to cut it after that. I believe Cleveland took around six months for installment planning and everything.

But I think your main question was about going forward, how frequently they're changed out.

Oh, monthly.

Okay, I'm sorry. All of the books will be ordered from the beginning. So they'll be planned out monthly by Rowan County Literacy Council. They have their own schedule. They will communicate with you specifically on what works for you all based on whatever day the ribbon cutting is.

And what our goal is, is we're hoping to have a story walk in each of the municipalities where Rowan County Literacy Council will be in charge of placing the books and then we can rotate them out so there will not be the same books in each municipality. So that may answer your question. I know this is something that our health director is also passionate about because if we get higher literacy rates, we get There's a direct correlation with higher literacy rates and better health. And so it ties directly into what our goals are with public health. So I'm sure we can work with municipalities to find funds to find more books and things like that.

As of right now, there is one in Spencer and there will be one in Cleveland. They both have a year supply of books. We will supply in Cleveland. in conjunction with the library will supply one year of books so that's at least three years worth of books in rotation if they are changed out monthly um we are also planning to work with two other municipalities coming up so that will be two more years worth if the books are all different um if they happen to be changed the same we try not to duplicate those that's the point of having warren county literacy council to make sure that we all have different books so We are hoping that that is five years worth of books that can be interchanged. And from there, like Amy said, we'll try to work with you guys continuously. Our hope is that we can have events there. We can continue to bring families in and other towns in to really learn about the county overall.

Just to sort of give you an idea, Miller Davis is taking care of constructing the books for the panels. We have ordered three editions of each book. So when they dissect it, as Sarah said, they can put it together so it's very pleasable to the eye. But to give you sort of an idea, a year's worth of books, three editions of each paperback book, would be about $400. So it's not a huge undertaking, but just to sort of give you an idea of what it would cost to supply the books.

but the cost of the pedestals and everything provided through Rowan County Public Health.

I just wanted to say, as a retired teacher, I applaud this program. I think this is wonderful. And I hope we do have a big ribbon-cutting event, and we invite our own Ms. Holiday Caravan, who is a kindergarten teacher at North Elementary, to bring her class up here for that, and maybe the other kindergartners too, and Christopher can help. Krista, that's her mom. Sorry. Caroline. Okay, Caroline can help cut ribbon. I think that'd be wonderful. I'm really excited about it.

Yes, this is something that Amy and Rowan County Literacy Council has started and we hope to continue it up.

We appreciate the support and partnership. Mr. Morris, one question for you. The Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee has heard this and considered it and are recommending it. Have they indicated a preferred location for these signs?

So there was a prior slide showing the next step was to talk about this. And so sort of the logical location would be Library Park. There is a perimeter sidewalk there, and there are a couple of crosswalks and that sort of thing, and we believe that there's adequate space to do that. It seemed to be a natural connection with the literacy dimension of this. So that's the general proposal. We wanted to make sure the board was on board so that we could pursue that. We also talked about Spencer Town Park, and we even talked about the Stand Back Educational Forest, the gardens there as a potential location. And what folks at the health department have indicated is that we could potentially be the first place to have two of these. The second one would be at our expense, but that's something we would take into consideration. So based on the board's approval tonight, the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, We'll work with the health department to identify a location and lay out an appropriate spot for it.

Thank you.

I think there's something similar to this. I don't know if they call it a story walk, but over in the Davidson County Lake and River Park, where they have stations where the children go from one to another and talk and read about different things. I know I've seen the one there at the dog park that says, walk down here and go there. So I think they have something similar to that.

Very similar, as Sierra pointed out. Here in Maryland County, we didn't have that.

So by working with our municipalities, we could fill in that area that we weren't offering that to. But the other two municipalities that we're working with, in addition to y'all, is the town of Granite Quarry and the town of China Grove.

So there actually will be a storybook in each area of the county, and then we'll fill in as we go along. I don't know how far 40 paces is. I'd have to think about that. No, no, just go back.

Okay.

So this is actually pictures from Overton's Greenway and the first one to your far left is the initial board. They actually dedicated it to one of their educators, long life educators at Overton Elementary School. And then the third picture is That's 40 paces. I would say that's 40 paces for an adult, not a child. So that kind of gives you an idea of how far apart they are. And then the last one actually shows you the QR code in the bottom right-hand corner. So we can do surveys. We can do work with the city if y'all want to promote things or things like that.

So just to get to where it gives you an idea of what it would look like. Okay.

Board, is there general consensus that we want to move forward with this?

Yes. I think it's a great idea.

Okay. Thank you all very much. I know Amy has some other material to present.

So good evening, Mayor Williams and alderman and alderwomen. I'm Amy Smith, and I also work with Rowan County Public Health. Just to sort of bring you up to speed, every three years, the Rowan County Public Health department is required by the state and also our accreditation process to do a community health needs assessment. In addition to us, Novant Health is also required from the federal government to do a community health needs assessment. So you may have remembered Courtney Meese may be presented to you. about the community health needs assessment. And we also worked with WellCare during that process. And they identified three health empowerment zones in Rowan County. And one was the town of Spencer, one was the town of East Spencer, and one was the West End community. And a health empowerment zone, it just identifies a community that is at higher risk for chronic diseases. So once we found out this information, we actually hosted focus groups in these three communities and asked the citizens what they would like. And some of the citizens identified that they would like additional services. that would not only help with healthy behaviors but behavioral health and possibly to learn more about housing and how to make better decisions with housing so the rowan county public health has actually well care funds that we have available to us so we are in the process of trying to find those services for these three communities we're working with the rowan county literacy council We're also working with Ruffy Homes. And tonight I came to present to you about a proposal with the city of Salisbury. And they have a mobile recreation center. Rakeem Brawley, who's the assistant director of Salisbury Parks and Recreation, would actually be your point of contact. But I promised Parks and Rec Advisory Board that I would make sure that meeting came together and that we would pan the baton off very nicely and with no problems whatsoever. So what is mobile recreation? So mobile recreation is a City of Salisbury initiative that brings fun and fitness and community engagement directly to the residents. To sum it up, I think it is a field day on wheels because I think all of us probably had field days at one time or the other. growing up. A mobile program designed to reach all corners of the city and also the county now. And it serves not only youth, families, and communities, but it also promotes health, wellness, active lifestyles. And I think the important part of public health, it promotes mental health. It also promotes social connectedness, which is a big proponent mental health and also removes barriers to recreation by coming to you so we what we're proposing is we the health department would actually have a contract with the city of Salisbury we would pay for that through the well care funds and they would bring their services to the city up to the town of Spencer So it increases access to recreation for underserved communities. It reduces barriers such as transportation and cost. It fosters a sense of community and belonging. And it encourages not only physical activity, but healthy habits. And it provides safe, supervised activities for you. So the pictures you're seeing are pictures of other communities. past mobile park and play and they actually have all this equipment but they bring the staff and their staff stay and so they have to be they have to have a I think it's called a COL for liability so they would be covered with that and here is a picture of their staff George and Rakeem's in the middle, and then you have DeAndre at the side. They have sports equipment, which we have helped from the health department purchase. They do physical activities, arts crafts for younger participants. On-site staff, as I shared, are entrained recreation leaders. stay on site and they do seasonal programs for free or a low cost participation for all residents. And in this case, we're proposing that the Rowan County Public Health, we pay for the services, but then they're just brought to the town for different events that y'all are having.

So just a few more pictures just to let y'all see what would be provided.

And I actually think this is the left picture, your left, of North Rhine Middle School. I think they may have come to like a field day there. So it's nothing new to the town, but we're just providing more access to it. So why are we so involved? We just want to build a healthier community, not only for the city of Salisbury, but for everyone in the county of Rowan. Here again, it promotes regular physical activity, wellness, education, resources, healthy lifestyle habits from early age. It also addresses chronic disease prevention through movement and connects residents with health and wellness partners. So thank you. And just to let you know, I've had a few conversations with Otter Woman Moody, and she contacted me about an event for National Night Out with the Spencer Police Department. And we already tentatively have... October 6th on the calendar for them to bring the mobile park and play to this event. The contract is not signed yet, but hopefully by October it will be signed. And then I've also worked with Dion Dixon for the event for the Race to the River on October 17th. So we have both of those tentatively planned with the Salisbury Parks and Rec staff. So they have those on their calendar. So I don't know if there's any questions or concerns that we can address, but I'll be happy to help or answer those.

Thank you, Amy. Florida, are there any questions?

So when you bring the... physical things. Is it like for a day or for a weekend?

It's just for the time of the event. So like for Race to the River, it would be 8 to 10, 8 to 11, I think. And then National Night Out, I'm not sure. 6 to 8.

So this is primarily done around events then, not like on a monthly basis or anything like that.

Right now, just events. Our contract is saying at least two per quarter, but we're doing it for the next year. So I know y'all do a huge Halloween event here as well. But the city of Salisbury does a huge one as well. So it's kind of hard to say that. But we're also working with the town of East Spencer and the West End community. So they're wonderful to work with, Rakeem and Keisha Cox, who's the director of Parks and Rec. So here again, if y'all approve of this, then I will more than happily hand over and introduce everyone to whom they need to work with.

And what ages? What's the lowest age?

I think it's probably pre-K, and then as you saw on the slides, it went up to middle school. I think, as I shared with you, the staff will be there, so I think they would probably make sure that the younger ones and the older ones are probably not together just to make sure no one gets hurt, things like that. But they are all certified recreation staff at Salisbury Parks and Rec.

And those two of those things look like inflatable. Is that correct? Do you have, I mean, are they secured? Yes, they would have to be.

I think especially with them working under the COI of the city of Salisbury, they would have to make sure that they are following all their insurance guidelines. But we will double check with that.

There was one that got blown away one time. Yes, I'm aware of that. But thank you.

So I see a picture. You have the inflatable, you know, Apparatuses as well as cornhole toss and it I think was that the tater sack or something are there any other?

activities that you all would provide That would be a question for Rakeem and for the Parks and Rec Advisory Board, but if if we can support the program anyway, like I shared we have bought a equipment for that program because we're a big supporter of just getting people physically active.

I have gotten to observe as someone who goes to an awful lot of field days, which is my favorite part of my life. But it is really engaging. I've seen even high schoolers, I think it was at Henderson Independent at the end of the year last year. It's really engaging. It keeps young people at events longer in my observations. Anytime you can chuck it towards the basketball hoop. I mean, they really love it. And I think it'll also depend on what kind of space we give them to set up in.

And I think Parks and Rec Advisory Board shared with me one of the goals of the Spencer Park was to utilize it more often. And I can see someone that has no knowledge of it and they're in the car with their parents and they see it, then they'll probably yell, stop, let's go.

Yeah.

All right, board, other questions? All right, similar to my last question on the last item, is there consensus that the board wants to move forward with this program? All right, Amy, thank you so much. We appreciate Rowan County Health Department and all that you do for our communities, and thanks for this partnership.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Good night.

All right. Board, next, we will consider an appointment to the Historic Preservation Commission, and I'm going to invite Kyle Harris forward.

Good evening.

Good evening.

So the Historic Preservation Commission currently has two vacancies, but the commission is also working on a lot of very ambitious projects right now, so we pretty much need all hands on deck. We do have one... Appointment to consider tonight Greg Lambeth the second Greg lives at 100 North Yadkin Avenue And you all are considering appointing him for a four-year term that would expire September 30th 2030 I'm just a little bit of more information the HPC already interviewed him at their meeting on August 17th, and there was unanimous approval to recommend his appointment to the HPC in your packet you have the Leslie Calvert the chairs letter of recommendation and as well as some additional materials for the candidate, including his board application and resume. So with that, I'm just going to go ahead and invite Greg to come up here and provide a brief statement about himself, and if you want to ask any questions, feel free to do so.

Okay, thanks. Good evening, board. Good evening.

I'm still new to talking to government officials, so excuse me.

It's okay, we don't bite, promise.

Well, my name's Greg Lambeth, that's previously stated. I am a graphic designer on the side. I graduated from Rowan-Cabarrus with an associate's degree in advertising and marketing graphic design. And I intend to utilize that for the HPC. But more importantly, I wanted to specifically join the HPC because I value the vast size of the historical district here in Spencer. One of the largest in the state of North Carolina specifically. And I grew up in the same house that I now own. I lived at 100 North Yadkin Avenue, which is a 1928 house. And it was like there's nothing square in the house.

Honestly.

It looks like a single story from the street, but it's built into a hillside, which makes it, with the addition to the attic, three stories. Comfortably. And I just... up to 2007 when i moved to salisbury with my parents and then later moved back this march i'm officially a resident of spencer again i appreciate the house probably offers to me as a resident it's very cozy and i see that there's a lot of other houses just like it around me just like behind us blocks and blocks of blocks of various different houses built from the 1910s to roughly the 1940s, and then so forth as you branch out further. I'd like to see any viable way to preserve what's here to be matched, and I see the value in contributing in any way possible. If you have any questions, I can answer.

Thank you very much.

Board, any questions for Mr. Lamba?

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Greg.

All right, board, we will consider a motion to appoint Mr. Lambeth to the HPC for a four-year term that would expire on September 30, 2030.

I'll make that motion that we accept Mr. Lambeth. Second.

There's a motion by Mr. Miller, a second by Mayor Pro Tem. Any discussion? All in favor? All right. All opposed? and that appointment is unanimous congratulations thanks for being willing to serve thank you all right board the next item on your agenda is to receive an update on the 17th street stormwater improvement project and consider authorizing drafting of easements for the project thank you very much mayor members of the board i'm hoping that uh our

consultant Tom Gray with Hazen is with us, and there he is. We can see him. He is going to give an update on the project. Tom has recently taken over as project manager for this with Hazen, but he had been working with us for the last year plus on the planning side of the planning project we also are working on with Hazen. Tom, welcome. I'll let you get right into it, and then we'll talk about the other part of this once Tom is complete.

Okay, thank you, Peter. Thank you, Mayor and Board.

This evening, as Peter had said, I'm here to discuss an update on the 17th Street Stormwater Improvement Project. I'm going to attempt to share my screen here.

Let me know if you're not able to see this. Is that good on your side? It is. All right. All righty. Well, progress update.

The agenda that I have for this evening is to provide a project overview, a summary of the funding deadlines, a project status, future funding pursuits, and then answer any questions that you may have. This stormwater improvements project is located on 17th Street. It's intended to help mitigate the flooding that occurs on the street. Currently, the stormwater that arrives to the street is carried by roadside ditches and the proposed project intends to create or extend the stormwater curb line along the west side of the road. It could be the top of the street here. Along this curb, there would be proposed drainage inlets that would help pick up the water from the roadway and support the ditches so that there's less water on the road and less erosion of the ditches for this stretch of the street, beginning near South Row Inn Street intersection and then extending to the intersection of Pickett Avenue. On the screen here, you can see that there are three phases that are designated for this project. Currently, through the ARPA funding, the full project has been designed. But with the funding that is available, phase one, and maybe a little further, is capable of being constructed with grant funding. And so I will provide a zoomed-in view of the project phases just to give a summary of the main elements of work. As I described, there will be a stormwater curb that will be placed along the west side of the road. And then underneath the roadway, in red here, will be a 48-inch stormwater pipeline that will serve to help carry the load of stormwater, share the load, really, with the ditches there. And then the green line represents a proposed sewer pipeline line that will need to be replaced in order to reconnect the sewer laterals from the properties back to the sewer line. Currently, with the stormwater pipe in place, it blocks the existing connections. And so with this project, in order to make everything work within the right-of-way space we have, the sewer will also need to be replaced. And then along the ditches, which are really, in many cases, along the stretch of our stream channels, They will be improved in terms of stability. They'll be matted. Also, string bed material will be replaced within these streams so that they'll be put into a better condition with some stone protection at the outfalls of the driveway culverts. And some of the driveway pipes will be replaced just to improve the capacity. And this same type of work continues from phase one, the downstream end, all the way through the rest of the project. Each phase is about the same length, about the same cost, and also about the same type of work, sewer line replacement, as well as the installation of a new stormwater trunk line. Our newly amended funding deadlines are shown here with the milestones and The one that we're focused on currently is this November 13th deadline. This is our deadline with the state to advertise the project for bid and to receive authority to award the project from the state. Our next deadline will be to execute the construction contract by December 31st of this year and then all funds are to be expended within a year of that contract execution or by December 31st of 2027. And those funds total $1.6 million are currently what is funded to construct the project from the state. As I had said, phase one can be completed with that amount of funding and potentially a little bit into phase two is what we're hoping for, but it will be dependent upon contractor bids for the project. the current project status we are pursuing the permitting required by the state to award or put the project to bid the water and sewer permitting is currently under review by salisbury rowan utilities erosion sediment control plan has been approved the fema floodplain permitting has been approved environmental permitting is approved NCDEQ plans and specs approval. They have reviewed the plans and specs and have noted verbally that their comments are addressed and so they are currently waiting for approval of the water and sewer permit as well as recorded easements that are necessary for the construction of the project. And then once NCDEQ approval is obtained, our next step will be to move into putting the project out to bid, and that will be, again, phase one of the project. Now, for the future phases two and three, we are currently trying to pursue other funding that could help allow for the construction of those phases. There is a Hazard Mitigation Grant Program application currently under review by FEMA So potential for funding through that program. And then we are currently in discussion with NCBEQ regarding additional funding for the other phases. And they have communicated that there could be potential undesignated ARPA funding that they could contribute to the project. There may be unused session law 134 funds that could be used for the project. And they have also proposed that potentially maybe the sewer work that's a part of the project There could be funding through the water infrastructure division to potentially cover that. So we're doing all that we can to see what other monies are out there and how much more of the project can be constructed than just phase one.

And with that, I'll stop sharing my screen. And I guess if there's any questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them. All right. Thank you, Mr. Gray. Board, are there questions on the project at this point in the update?

All right. So we've completed part of phase one. We're working on phase two now? No.

So what we have completed thus far was the CCAP grant program. And that was done with Joel. That was done internally with soil and water conservation district. And basically that was just downstream of where phase one is. So that essentially opened that channel up to accept more water. So kind of what we're doing is working our way from downstream up the road to address the downstream issues that continue to clog all of that up and back the water up. So what we're talking about right now, the phase one, two, and three, is all of the piped infrastructure and then the ditch improvements. Phase one, based on the cost and the way that the construction costs have escalated, phase one is what they believe that they can accomplish with the current grant funding that we have. Right. So we've been able to design everything. Now we're talking about the construction of phase one. And then the hope is that for phase two and phase three, which are all upstream back towards Salisbury Avenue, that those could be addressed with additional funding.

And the other part when we're talking about the bidding is we have a plan to bid it out such that we can get a price on everything and perhaps have options to extend the project under the contract that we will go forth with the first phase so that if we were successful with getting additional funding, we may have an opportunity to more quickly get into those other phases rather than having to start over again with another bidding process.

Unfortunately, I think the way that construction costs have increased over the last several years, that we thought we could do more with this project in construction originally. But every month that we don't get started, the costs continue to go up. So that's, I think, the urgency to go ahead and get construction started, to get some prices locked in, and then try and seek the rest of the grant funding for those future phases.

But if we don't get the grant funding for the second and third phase, phase one will have gained us something.

Correct. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, basically the key is that if you start downstream and you address those issues, make the ditches accept more flow, have the piping that can accept more flow as well, start downstream and do that. You start opening things up that addresses everything backing up upstream. So that's why you start at the end and work your way to the beginning.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Miller.

Do we have any problems with easement as far as the front view version? I guess they've already contacted you. They understand the project and everything else, and you anticipate any problems with

So in your packet, you'll see a table that shows a status, and I wouldn't say we have any problems. We have signed permission letters from each property that is involved in this that allow us to go forth with the design and permitting process with the understanding that we can come back with a request for a deed of easement on the property that's located at 207 17th Street, which is Exhibit 2. We have actually already completed and recorded that one. So we actually, it's mainly three other property owners plus one on some town property that we need to finalize this. And so what we put forth, and certainly welcome Jay's comments as he sees fit, but the idea is that the deed of easement document that we used for the property that's already recorded would serve as an example of how that would be addressed. There is a sub-consultant that has already provided the exhibits, the drawing exhibits that would go along with it. Jay, I don't know if you want to jump in there.

They've been out. They've done some survey work. People are aware that the project is happening around them. And so they've given us permission thus far to have access to do those things. So I wouldn't anticipate any problems. And it's designed to correct issues anyway. But, yeah, I think everything's in place.

Kind of based on the property that we're actually talking about, the length and the width and all that.

Yes, yes. And all these are really limited. I mean, it's not huge swaths of the easement property.

Is there a certain value per foot or whatever it is for easement?

Can they determine that? Our hope is that we are able to acquire this with dedication from the property owner. If we need to get into a negotiation about a price, then we would do that, but it would be based on looking at the amount of land we're talking about as it relates to the property value. We're only talking about permanent easements in a few cases and temporary easements in other cases, but that's our goal is going to be to proceed hoping that we can acquire deed of easement with a good faith understanding, I guess, with the property owner wishing to contribute towards this for the benefit of all.

It's for the betterment of them as well.

Yes.

Okay.

Other questions for you?

If not, we will accept a motion to consider authorizing the draft deed of easements for the project. that are in your packet. Motion by Ms. Moody. Is there a second?

Second.

Second by Ms. Sechrist. Any discussion? All in favor? All right. All opposed? And that is approved. Thank you. The next item is to receive a report on the potential use of the design-build-delivery method for procurement of qualified designers and contractors for the Rocky Branch Loop Trail. Mr. Morris.

Thank you again.

In 2023, the Board of Aldermen adopted a resolution that essentially authorizes the use of design-build procurement. And it's a process of procurement that is allowed by general statutes of the state of North Carolina. We had received funding. for the construction of trails and amenity in the new portion of the Stanpath Educational Forest. And as we began exploring our options for building out these trails with a match from the Great Trail State program grant and some local funds, we fundamentally have a budget of just shy of $700,000, actually $690,000. And so we began looking at some possibilities and talking to various trail builders and visiting other communities that were building trails. And we had an opportunity to go up to Elkin and meet with folks there, and they were utilizing this process. In 2023, when the town of Spencer was looking at design buildings for the construction of the fire stations, and Peter had made contact with some of his former colleagues in Concord who had utilized this process for constructing a fire station. Fundamentally, design build is different from design bid and build in that we would put together a package that we would submit requests for qualifications out for consideration. One of the things that we have to do though in preparation for that is assess the ability of the town to actually manage the design and construction project. And so we have a proposal to create a team made up of the city manager, other members of the town staff, including our public works director, city town planner, code enforcement officer, myself, our finance officer, and also a member of our Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, Bob Pendergrass, who has experience in a lot of recreation and trail building projects. And so we believe that we have approach and a methodology that is consistent with this type of procurement and this group would be responsible for issuing through the town request for qualifications and then evaluating those responses that we receive. I don't know what part I need to stop and I guess I'll stop now and tell you our original plan was to have this presentation to the board with the idea of having the RFQs ready for publication first of October. And then we would have about a 30-day period where we would be getting qualifications back and selecting a qualified design build company, and then potentially starting construction in spring. So I'm looking over at the town manager now because of what he mentioned at the Board of Aldermen's meeting last Thursday is that there's an opportunity to use these funds to help match our EB 5861 project. And so I don't know exactly what the timeline is, but what I'm sharing with the board is the idea that we believe that we have established criteria that would help us in the assessment of an RFQ. We know that we're building trails in the Stanback Educational Forest. We would be looking for a designer that has trail design experience and a contractor that has trail building experience, and that this team would be qualified, our team would be qualified to manage this project. And the biggest benefit is time saving with making field decisions. as you're building the trail system, that you would be able to have reroutes and slight changes and that sort of thing that could be reviewed quickly and made quickly and build the trail in an efficient manner. So, Peter, I don't know if you wanted to add anything about what we're going to embark on as far as potentially using this as matching funds for EV50. It's a good one.

I think we'll know more this time tomorrow. We do have a call set up with our consultants on the EB5861 project to talk about a re-scoping of that to include this. And so what basically will have to happen is that revised project description will get reviewed through the MPO and DOT, and that project will then get updated. And once that's all in place, then we can basically get to work on all of it. Uh, we think there's an opportunity to keep some phasing associated with it to hopefully not tangle it up too much and maybe be able to proceed with this part, uh, and the other part separately. But those are, those are questions we don't quite yet know the answer to about how this would really work, but we're, we're certainly appreciative of the flexibility that NC DOT has, uh, uh, it showed an openness to, to be able to allow the town to move forward on this after, you know, who knows how many years, I'm still not exactly sure when this all started. And so this was a, we thought a creative way to try to move it all forward. And we don't, but we don't want it to impact our ability to deliver on these other projects that we were really, you know, ready to go on. But this does seem like the best chance to, pull it all off together.

To piggyback on Peter's comments and the mayor's comments about the timeliness of construction and waiting too long and prices are going up every day, this has the potential to unlock $3.5 million. It depends on how much we actually land on.

whatever it is, we get reimbursed 80% of it.

So it's a way to stretch the dollars that are available to the town, and so I think that it will be worth it. The other part of it is that by sort of lumping this, and we talked about this a little bit in the staff meeting this morning, is that we feel like with the DOT plan to provide the bike lanes on 29, that would be in summer of 2017.

Or later.

Or later.

In the future.

That we might be able to shift to, instead of a 10-foot-wide multi-use pathway along the side of the road, that we would have the bicycle lanes and then have five-foot-wide pedestrian sidewalk.

And the same goes for Whitehead Avenue that just had their resurfacing and re-driving done there.

So if that all works out, it would allow us to focus the ponderance of the funds for EBE 5861 on the area around the schools, Charles Street, Oakwood, and Whitehead, so that we could make those connections which were cost prohibitive up until this moment. And finally, there's a possibility of, if there are residual funds, it might help us with discussions that we're having between the Catawba Center for the Environment and the City of Salisbury for the Grants Creek Greenway that connects Standback Forest to the Catawba Ecological Reserve. It has the potential to unlock a lot of possibilities that we were not able to consider based on cost and the town's inability to provide the matching funds. I'll have to say I was surprised when Peter told me that this might be a possibility and so I think it's worth considering.

Any questions for Mr. Morris?

Just as a reminder, this plan was for the trails inside the new portion of Standback? Yes, ma'am. And the EB50, what is it, AB51?

EB5861.

Okay, and that's the pathway from 3rd Street all the way to the Yadkin River. Is that correct?

It was known originally as 3rd Street. greenway but we already once updated the project description to shift towards the idea of seventh street so the project we've been talking about in earnest it starts at 7th street and whitehead and follows whitehead to oakwood charles to salisbury avenue up to the river

Because again, so originally I think the plan was to have a totally separate bikeway and sidewalk running area all the way out to the river. But we've heard lots of feedback from the community about needing sidewalks to connect our local schools to make that a safer area for the students and everything. So what we're trying to do is actually accomplish all of that to where we're having sidewalks. and bike lanes there through Whitehead and connecting Oakwood to the other schools and the high school, and then extending that all the way out then to the river with the sidewalk.

So does this impact then the Blueway?

This is actually part of it. We've been told that the Blueway project, the trailhead, that's a $100,000 project. project that was through state parks, the connecting communities, the state trails program. And actually that $100,000 can be applied toward this local match, I'll call it, with the caveat that we spent about $11,000. And that's really sort of the primary thing that we're working around is that you can't spend the money in advance of the approval of the scope. And once we have the scope approved, we hope that we'll be able to proceed with these other trail projects without a great deal of delay. And so we're going to jump on the call tomorrow and see if we can expedite this so that we're not delaying this anymore.

And one other source, and we'll talk about some of this tomorrow, but we have been collecting payment in lieu of funds. You heard Steve talk about this. As development happens, a developer has the option rather than constructing their own sidewalk to contribute an amount for payment in lieu of. I think it was last week we were just talking about perhaps the amount. We weren't asked that question. And I did a little bit of cursory research, and there's something that's certainly charging a lot more than we are, so something to look at for sure. But there may be some of that that could be applied towards this, say if we need another $10,000 or $20,000 or whatever the number is. It could be that we consider that as part of this. We don't have probably the time to say, well, let's see what we can budget next year and put towards this, but working with what we have right now might be some additional possibility.

Steve, you had a question?

Well, I guess my question was, I guess we got authorization from the county for corrosion control for this canoe and outpost?

The timing of your question is impeccable.

I've got people that keep asking me, so I've got to ask you. What's the answer?

We were hung up on a floodplain development program that required a no-rise certification. that we received in early August that was forwarded to the county floodplain administrator, who in turn shared it with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, DEP. And I wrote an email today asking our friends at the county where that was. They said, your timing is really good. And they sent me the letter of approval from DEP. And so I have completed completed the application for the permit, and all we need to do is send them a check for the tidy sum of $250, and you'll be ready to go. Or actually, good to go, is the way it was described.

So we won't lose that. No, we won't lose it. Because I think last time I asked you, it was kind of iffy.

We have a little bit of delay in exacting the no-ride certification from civil engineers. And the response I'm getting from the civil engineering community is, you know, it's not the development workload, it's the regulatory backlog. And so we've been able to get through that now, and we should be able to proceed.

All right, let me question. This Rocky Branch Loop Trail, will it come out of that parking area?

Yes, there will be a spur. that goes out to the Grants Creek Blueway, and there'll be a 10-car gravel parking lot that will be accessible to 11th Street. 7th Street. 7th Street, yeah, 7th Street. And so right across from where Whitehead tees into it, there'll be an access, a culvert along the side of the road there. Go into the woods, 10-car gravel parking lot, and there'll be a loop trail that goes back. to the Rocky Grand Strip.

So that's where the Blueway comes in to kind of tie it all together.

Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. And that proposal for the housing that was there because of the problem with the subsoil, has that completely gone away?

No. They're still talking about it. But no action's been made. We haven't had a specific proposal. They're trying to

Find the right consultant. Right.

Any other questions, Board? Thanks for the update, Joe.

Well, I think we were asking for authorization to proceed with this in the event that we can't.

Okay. So, Board, there is a request from staff to be able to use the design-build-delivery method for procurement of designers and contractors, specifically for the Rocky Branch Loop Trail, pending the outcome of our EB 5861 conversations with DOT. So is there a motion to move forward with the design-build approach?

So moved.

Motion by Ms. Sechrist. Is there a second?

Second.

Second from Ms. Sledge. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? All right. All opposed? MS approved unanimously.

Thank you, Jim.

All right. The next item is to receive a presentation on Spencer growth and prosperity from Mr. Blunt.

Mayor, members of the board, you might remember that some months ago when approving an annexation for two small lots over on Lincoln Avenue, We talked about the fact that they were, even in staff's mind, a marginal question mark on whether the tax revenue from those marks would justify the annexation based on the cost of services. And the board asked a very good question about, can we afford to continue to grow like we're growing? What is the long-term cost of the growth that we're seeing? So I put together this quick presentation And I put it together right after that meeting, and it's already out of date, so I've added a few numbers here.

Let me jump right in. First, commercial industrial growth. Mike, it's not working. Okay. Do we need new batteries in the adventure? Hey, you good?

All right, sorry about the delay there. I was about to have to do some tap dancing. This gives you an idea of some of the industrial projects that have been planned, some of them that are nearing execution, all of them to the north of the core downtown area of Spencer. And you see the square footage, and we talk about how big they are and what type of businesses they are, but we rarely put the price tags on. And I thought we would add this slide in so that you would see that if all this takes place, by my calculations, we will grow our tax base $626 million. Our current tax base isn't but $405 million. So this will be 155% increase in our total tax base in the town of Spencer. And those numbers don't include whatever's going to happen out at Red Rock as far as the work out there. Industrial projects pay for themselves. There's almost never a question about whether it's worthwhile to do these industrial projects. Growth through annexation. Again, some numbers to give you something to think about. In 2020, per census data, Spencer consisted of 1,965 acres of land. And that shows you roughly what we had in 2020. I chopped it off at the bottom so you don't see down there. 2022 and 26, 2022 and 2026, we annexed 119 acres. And you see there the parcels that were annexed over that period of time. There are a few in the works, a few that I think will happen in the not too distant future. And so by 2027 plus or minus, I think we'll be up to 24, 2,494 acres of total area in our town which is an almost 13% increase in physical area over a six-year period, which is a dramatic growth rate. And there's still other areas that could be annexed in the future. So it's not the end of annexation when you finish these that are in the pipeline. There are big swaths of land out there that could be annexed for various projects. Residential growth, I'll just Hit on the highlighted parts from July 2024 to July 2025, the state added almost 150,000 residents, which was a 1.3% growth rate for the state of North Carolina. We're one of the fastest growing states in the United States. The Charlotte region has seen 47,000 people grow from 2022 to 2023, which is 1.6%. Keep these percentages in mind because that's the number I want you to think about. The I-85 corridor from Raleigh-Durham back to Charlotte is growing more rapidly than any of that. Spencer's growth rate. This is what's out of date because since the time I made this, we've actually issued a lot of permits for residential growth. But when I made this presentation up, it was 119 zoning permits for residential units over a four and a half year period. At 2.75 people for residents, that was 327 people. Our 2022 population was 3,350. Just doing the math, that means that we had, over that period of time, a 2.17% growth rate. And actually, I didn't redo the percentage, but yeah, there it is. I did a quick count of the number of permits I issued in August of this year for residential housing units. I've issued 17 individual zoning permits. In the year of 2026, I've issued 52. So that number, instead of 2.17, would work out to 3.7% growth. That's almost twice what the state's growth. So the question becomes, can we afford to grow? And my answer would be, can we afford not to? Every time we do an annexation project or an industrial type client or the project, property tax and sales tax revenues more than overcome any short-term cost. That makes us happy, makes you guys happy at budget time. Same is true for big residential projects, especially high-density residential projects. The question that was asked, and it's a good one, what's the long-term cost of growth? And do the property tax and sales revenue increases cover those long-term costs? And those are what the long-term capital costs might be. Things like a new fire truck, a new fire station, new equipment for Joel, a new garbage collection. And then the big one is growing labor costs. We're gonna have to add more people over time because of more routes to pick up more garbage. So in my mind, and I hope that you believe this too, growth is good. Commercial industrial growth increases our tax base and revenue without much demand for services, provides jobs for our citizens. Residential growth increases our share of sales tax revenue. Sales tax is a portion based on your population. And higher populations levels will attract new business and encourage new amenities in our community. But you need to grow smart. And we can talk about this later when we talk about another project. You have a comprehensive land use plan. The very purpose of that plan is to give you a map of future growth, how the town should grow. It was done with a great deal of input from the public, planning board, and this board, and it was revised in 2022. That plan suggested embracing higher density development, higher density residential development. Density equals efficiency. If you run a sewer line, and you put one house on that line, then you have to justify the cost of the sewer line for that one house. If you put 10 houses, you divide the cost by 10. If you put 100 houses, you divide by 100. So density equals efficiency as far as municipal services go. The same really is true for services like picking up garbage. If you scatter the houses out over long areas, it's a longer route to pick up garbage if you get them close proximity to each other it's a more efficient process and what we have to think about is town spencer ordered on the south by salisbury the east by east spencer the north by davison county we've got a finite amount of land we can't grow but so much and we're going to run out of places to put this so what i would advise you to think about is to avoid the tipping points and for that i Department heads need to keep you apprised every time we do an annexation, every time we grow, what impact that might have on the demand for services. We've already talked in staff meetings about that. We need to do everything we can to avoid those different forms. But we also need to start planning for them to happen. And that happens in the budget process on the line item that you've already got. called a capital improvement plan and unfortunately what happens with all municipalities in all counties is that you struggle through a budget trying to meet your daily needs for that year and something that's 10 years down the road you forget about so my advice to you and i've suggested it to our department heads is every budget process going forward start identifying those tipping points putting dollar amounts on them And in every budget session that you have, fund that capital improvement plan. Put the money in it that needs to be put in it. Think of it as just as important as paying for the current expenses. Put money in that capital improvement plan. Growth is coming our way. In a staff meeting this morning, we were talking about the John Street development. And I think it was the manager that asked, why now? Why is there such a demand to build in this area? This was planted in 1904.

And Joe was a smart one to come up with the answer. Demand. There's now a high demand for housing. You can see it in the numbers that we're issuing zoning permits on.

You also had somebody ask about the impact on property tax rates or valuation of the houses. And what will impact that more than anything is to allow demand to soar. and not increase the stock. That will run the cost of housing up, and as the cost of housing goes up, the comparables will run up your tax valuation. So we have to keep the supply of houses in various types and sizes in track with what market demand is. And again, we'll be talking a little more about that later. I'll be glad to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Blount. Board, do you have questions for him?

Not a question, but an observation. I was shocked when I found out that the life of a garbage truck was eight years.

Takes almost that long to get one.

I know.

Steve, one of the other things I think, you know, that I had brought up. couple months ago and I think it's timely given these discussions as we head into budgeting season how important it is for this year for us to begin making some longer term projections over the next five to ten years with some of these developments particularly the industrial developments that we're talking about to start forecasting when we expect that tax revenue to start to come online because I think that's going to help us develop a plan to be able to fund that capital improvement plan and start thinking about that. We obviously don't want to count our chickens before they're hatched, but I think we need to know what that likely revenue is going to be to start planning that out. Because I think we also need to have a plan for, we say as this tax revenue comes online, it provides us an opportunity to hopefully be able to lower our tax rate for our residents that are here so that some of these industrial developments, commercial developments are sharing in that tax burden. And so as we do that, it would be nice to know to be able to forecast how all of that works together. So I guess my charge to staff would be as you work through budgeting this year to start coming up with those projections, because I think as we head into strategic planning next spring, that's going to be a big focus I think that we want to hit on.

That ARPA fund was a one-time gift. Correct. We were able to use it and do a lot with it.

Right.

The million dollars doesn't fall in your plate.

But similarly, our residents expect the level of service that we've provided since that ARPA funding, since COVID, they expect that level of service to continue or even increase, but it cannot increase without increasing our tax base. Exactly. Any other questions?

All right. Thank you, Mr. Blunt.

Let me ask one. Is there somewhere, have I read somewhere that there is a percentage amount of annexation that a town can do based on its size?

There is a qualifier as far as satellite annexation, and it was 10%, but so many communities were seeing that that they individually and as groups went through state legislature, and we are one of those that's been exempted from that 10%. And our satellite annexation is nowhere near that. We've been able to couple them back to the continuous board.

Right. Okay. Thank you.

We've been fortunate with our annexation, so they've all kind of lined up. They're puzzle pieces that keep fitting together as opposed to having to do satellite annexations. All right. We'll move on. The next item is to consider adopting Resolution 26-13. This would approve the conveyance of 600 South Salisbury Avenue. and 520 South Salisbury Avenue. Again, that is the parking lot beside the Pinocchios that the town owns along with the old town hall. And that would be to approve the conveyance of that for economic development purposes according to North Carolina General Statute 158-7.1. Mr. Blount, anything you want to mention on this tonight?

We can just stop there and let you vote, but I will run through this for the viewing public at home very quickly. This is The building that you're talking about, the old town hall building at the corner of 6th Street, Salisbury Avenue, and the parking lot across the street to the northeast. These are views of the building from various perspectives. This is the parking lot that will be sold to the developer and improved with paving and landscaping and lights to make it a better place. They will, as we have agreed, allow Pinocchios to continue using that parking lot. with a nighttime track. The purpose of the sale of the property is that the developer wants to renovate it into a light new office space. He's looking at a budget in excess of a million dollars to renovate that building. These are some conceptual floor plans. That's a little bigger so you can actually see it. He will be moving his office staff into this building and then also leasing out spaces for other small businesses so it almost meets the needs of the business incubator that was talked about in the past except for a daycare center right and this was just again some concepts of what it might look like as far as finishes go and then the interior office spaces class a office space so with that we've gone through various procedures to meet the letter of the law as far as selling town-owned property. This is the last step for us to authorize the manager to execute the documents. And I think the developer has some due diligence period after that, and we hope to see some construction start.

And, Board, as a reminder, we put some money into doing all of the asbestos and lead abatement. I guess now about a year and a half ago and funded that with the thinking that we were going to demolish that, which is approximately a $60,000 cost. And fortunately, it doesn't look like we're going to have to do that because they're going to be able to reuse and update this building. And again, our plan all along was that we were going to tear the building down and then market it for the purposes of economic development in town. It just so happens that we had a developer come with a proposal to reuse the existing building. um and invest quite a bit of money to turn it into something that can generate additional revenue for the community so we don't have to tear the building down and we it will no longer be if you choose to move forward with this no longer be a town-owned property so it will generate tax revenue for the community going forward so in questions for mr blunt or mr manager or mr manager

I put in a recommendation that they try and recreate the old floors. This looks beautiful, but I miss the old carpet. The sarcasm is heavy tonight.

I like this.

The stains on the carpet were something else. I will. Thank you. Again, I think people have heard me say this, but when I first got elected mayor in 2019, I walked into the office and there's a giant stain right outside the door about the size of a person. And I thought it might have been an unfortunate manager from years ago that met his demise. All right. Board, we'll entertain a motion to approve Resolution 26-13. We do approve the motion. Okay. The motion by Mr. Miller. Is there a second?

Second.

Second by Ms. Sledge. Any further discussion? All in favor? All right. All opposed? And that is approved unanimously. Thank you all. We'll move on to the next item, which is to consider Resolution 26-14, which would grant an economic incentive grant pursuant to North Carolina General Statute Section 158-7.1, and the town of Spencer's investment grant program that we adopted in June of 2022 for Crow Holdings Development at 626 Willow Creek Drive. Mr. Blount.

Thank you, Mayor.

Again, you've seen this presentation before, but I'll run through it for the viewing public at home. This is An incentive grant request is basically what's before you tonight. This is an industrial project on Willow Creek Drive. That is the site location on the east side of I-85. A little closer view. Again, diagonally across from the Inspec building and a mile or so distance from the existing Duke Energy facility. This is a view from the interstate. Same view from the other end. This is a creek that runs down the side of the southern side of the property, laps around the back a little bit. This was one of the complexities in stormwater management system that we talked about on another project, but they solved the problems to my satisfaction. There's a house on the south side, a distant resident right next to that creek, and therefore the question was raised about buffering and protecting that resident. This is a site plan showing the slightly more than a million square feet of industrial space in two separate buildings. This is the landscape drawing and the area in the, I'm not sure what shade of color that is, tan color, is the buffering that would be required. This is a little closer detail actually getting down to show the plants that we planted on both sides, the north and south side, to protect the residential development adjacent to this property. On the steep slopes, they have to do what's called a reforesting plan, and they included that in the landscaping plan to show where nutrients would be planted on those steep slopes to prevent erosion. It's an 80-acre site, two buildings, a little over a million square feet. The estimated investment in the building alone is $80 million. The possible investment in machinery and plant upfit would add another $40 million to it in the future. We have an incentive grant policy that you adopted several years back. This project, that it's estimated value would qualify for a level two grant, which is 75% of the increase in tax revenue paid over five years. That's a simple way of looking at it. A little more complicated is that during the first five years, we collect $2.5 million. We give back $1.9 million. So for those five years, we retained $630,000. A very wise county commissioner told me one day about incentives. You can oppose them, but 100% of nothing is nothing. So if it doesn't get built, we don't get the $630,000. And then after that, over a 10-year period, the tax revenue would be $5 million. They'd get $1.9 million back in those first five years. And then over that 10-year period, you get $3 million.

So that helps a lot.

So what we're here tonight to ask you to do is approve the incentive grant as requested. And we can give you more details on that if you have any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Blount. One question for the board's information. Following the conclusion of the grant program at the end of

five-year term what would be the estimated annual tax revenue uh coming into the town uh you'll have to do the math you're going to take in uh five million over five years so that would be a million it'd be half a million a year so that's about what you'd be getting each year

Assuming the tax rate we have today. Correct. That's a year-to-year calculation.

Determined by the tax rate and the tax valuation of the building. Again, you start out at $80 million with the building. If they add $40 million worth of equipment, you're up to a $120 million project. So this could grow.

Yeah, at $120 million, that would be $756,000 a year in tax revenue at the current rate.

But it's my understanding that after a couple of years, the tax rate drops. It also drops the incentive rate.

So the way the grants work, the budget will recognize both sides of the equation. So the budget will recognize the full revenue because we legally collect it, and then the grant is budgeted as an expense. The tax is just used as a formula for calculation of the value of the grant so it's not that they don't pay their taxes uh or that we give their taxes away all that sort of thing it's a um it's used as a model to kind of calculate the grant the value of the grant so the

if that makes sense.

So we'll see both sides of the equation, and you will always see a net gain in revenue that will, after the expiration of the grant, then your revenue gain goes up.

And again, the purpose of these grants, obviously it's a recruitment tool for industry, but the other thing it does is it helps when these industries are being developed. It helps as a...

means to be able to kind of front load some of the address some of the front loaded costs like water and sewer service and things like that that are a significant cost to get these developments off the ground and i'll add this particular building is is critical to us as a tipping point and what's called a clustering effect it's visible from i-85 it's going to be a big very attractive project as people see that they will be seeing special they'll be seeing Let's go build something there. So this is great advertising for our community. It will also create a lot of jobs. There's no way to estimate the number of jobs right now, but there will be obviously a lot of jobs that go along with the government.

Sometimes incentive grants are based on a company bringing a number of employees or something like that. There are no conditions on this type of grant.

Not in our policy. Rowan County's policy is almost entirely based on how many employees they build.

Right.

But then it goes back to how much taxes paid as to calculating the amount of the grant. So they recognize that it's more important to them to fill the number of jobs in the county than it is to the next state.

And at some point, we'll be reconsidering how we do our incentive grant program. The county just recently reconsidered theirs, and they've kind of backed off on some of the stuff. And the reason why is because they're seeing a lot of that development. They used it as a recruitment tool, and we're seeing a lot of that in the southern part of the county working its way to the mid part of the county. We are kind of on the tail end of all that, right, because we're the farthest away, but we're starting to see it now. So there will come a point that, you know, we're no longer necessarily in recruitment mode like we are right now to where we can begin to reconsider how our grant program is structured.

Positions or something.

Right.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Okay. So, Board, you do have a Resolution 26-14, which would grant an economic incentive grant to Crow Holdings Development at 626 Willow Creek Drive. We'll entertain a motion on that resolution now.

I'd like to make a motion that we approve the incentive grant to Crow Holdings.

All right, there's a motion by Mr. Miller. Is there a second? Second. Second by Mayor Pro Tem. He beat you, too. Got to be on top of it, Ms. Sledge. All right, any further discussion? Okay, hearing none, all in favor? Okay, all opposed? And that's approved unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Blunt. All right. The next item, and what I think most people are here for this evening, appreciate being patient and waiting for us, is to consider adopting Ordinance 26-12 for rezoning of Parcel 03-4004, located on John Street from single-family residential SFR 3.0 units per acre to the residential Main Street transition zone RMST classification. Mr. Blunt.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, Before I actually get started with the slideshow, I want to admit to you that I made a grave error in my evaluation of this project. And I want to admit to it right now and give you a little more information than the slideshow will give you. And it came from Mr. Miller asking me a question before the meeting about the uses, what's allowed in the SFL-3 versus what's allowed in RNS-2. And you've heard some claims, some as exciting as a Dollar General being built on this particular site. So I don't know if y'all have ever looked through our table of use, but this is where you find out what's allowed in each one of the zoning classifications. And you probably saw me digging through my book over here before the meeting. I went through and looked, because I've been so focused on residential allowed in one versus the other, I didn't really think about those other uses. I went through every page, every table of use, and what I found is four things. that are allowed in RMS-2 that aren't allowed in SFR classifications.

Bed and breakfast, a daycare center with less than six, townhomes and multifamily, eight minutes or less.

The townhomes and the multifamily have additional requirements, very strict requirements as far as what gets done there.

So I should have looked at that and should have given you that information earlier. No Dollar General. No doctor's office. No tire repair. This is going to be residential. That's what it's going to be. With that, if Mike will queue us up, I'll run through. Let's go to the other. I don't want to spoil you all using agency slides. This is better than anything.

So this is rezoning parcel 034-004 from SFR 3 to RMST for a residential subdivision. It's a 3.21 acre parcel off of John Street with hopefully and almost probably a connection to Jordan Avenue. The rezoning is needed to allow a small residential subdivision up to 16, but right now it's planted out for 14. new single-family homes. It will require a new road to be built right down the middle of it, and it will be built to town standards. The existing RMST zoning is to the east and south. The SFR zonings are to the west. So it is at the border of the existing RMST line. Important to this and what I showed you in your growth presentation is that water and sewer are available. Sewer runs right down through the middle of the project. This is the site location. I'll zoom in a little closer so you can see that it's a heavily treed lot with a line down the middle. That line down the middle is the sewer line.

SRU mows that every once in a while to keep it clear. There was concern

expressed during neighborhood meetings and trips to the site about the condition of John Street. And in that picture, it looks pretty bad. But I actually ran into Mr. Miller out there one afternoon when I was looking to see how wide that road really is. A lot of the road is underneath the leaf and moss and dirt that has flooded out on the street on that side. So when it's cleared out, it actually measures 16 to 18 feet wide of paved surface. This is the sewer easement down through the middle of the property. When I said it was heavily treed, if you look at this picture, you'll notice that most of the trees that you see, except these two big oaks on this end, are not that big of trees. This has been cleared at some point in the not too distant past. This is Jordan Avenue as it sits today, coming off of Alexander, running back towards the project property. It ends right there. but it appears that the roadway, the road right away was shaped and the ditches were installed some distance past where the pavement ends. This is what we are hoping is that by building out the Jordan Street to the center of the property, that the project will have two points of ingress and egress, one from John Street and one from the extension of Jordan. So the road would look something like that. This, again, is the zoning classification, the RMST and the RMST East and South. The grants crossing to the southwest of that, although it's zoned SFR 3, I measured some of the lots today, and they're actually smaller than what's allowed in SFR 3, so they're closer to RMST lots as they stand today. Some of them are anyway. As I pointed out, you do have a comprehensive land use plan in place. It was developed. looking at what's good for all of Spencer and trying to figure out the growth patterns and the use of the limited amount of land we have. You had input in that, the plan board had input, citizens had input. And that plan says embrace high density residential development, especially out in this direction and especially within our existing municipal limits. This was the first concept drawing that was given to me by the developer. And it showed that cul-de-sac on the south end. And I immediately put a big red X on that because I didn't like doing that. When we have cul-de-sacs, we have problems with our emergency equipment making the radius turn. It heats up a lot of land for nothing but pavement. So we've been talking ever since then. And the developer has embraced the idea of doing the connection to Jordan instead of having a cul-de-sac. At the neighborhood meeting, as I pointed out Thursday, Some very valid concerns were expressed, that John Street was too narrow and poorly maintained to support more traffic, that the stormwater will run off to the western property owner's land, that the RMST zoning would allow multifamily development where the current SFR 3 would not, and that too many small houses on small lots would change the character of the neighborhood and that small houses would be cheap and attractive. My words, not theirs, but bad people that are concerned about the quality of folks that would live in their zone. Again, we're pushing with the developer to build out the Jordan Avenue connection. I don't think that will be any more costly to him than building the cul-de-sac. The right-of-way already exists, so there's no right-of-way acquisition that needs to be done. So I think the developer's going to go along with this with no resistance at all. So that solves part of that problem. I did, like I say, went out and measured it. John Street's 16 feet plus or minus wide. Alexander's 18 feet plus or minus. Jordan, that little portion of it, that one half-block portion of it, is also about 18 feet wide.

All of those are built on 50-foot right-of-ways.

As I pointed out in the first slide, John Street does need some maintenance. Those trees, those big trees that you see, are exactly where the drainage ditch should be that takes the stormwater and moves it off the property. So those trees will need to come out so that the land can be shaped and that there will be a ditch that catches the water instead of flowing west to the property end. The section of Jordan Street is in decent shape. Alexander from Jordan going south is in great shape. It was just repaved, I think, Joseph two years ago. And going north, as you can see in this picture, it's not all that bad. The ditches are in pretty good repair. The edges don't look too bad on Alexander. This is our residential street cross section. It shows you exactly how this street will be built to our standards, including the base and Asphalt on top of that, the width of the roads, all that's pre-spelled out, so it has to be built to those standards. I've got a slide at the end that does a better job than this, but the concern about the water running from east to west onto the property owner's land is a valid one. That's the way the property flows now. That's the way rainwater flows today. It will be easy, in my opinion, to solve that problem. with grading and ditches along the new road and various things that a civil engineer will determine during this work on this project. So while it's a valid concern, I think it's a concern that we can solve during the site plan evaluation. The RMST allowing multifamily, yes it does. And that's one of the four things that I found in our ordinance that RMST allows that SFR 3 wouldn't. The only purpose in going to townhomes is to increase your density. Our townhome requirements are stricter than our single family home requirements are as far as parking and buffers and things of that nature. So by my rough estimate there, you could take three lots and turn it into a townhome building and maybe put six units in there. Or you could take three lots and put duplexes on them under the SFR and put six families there. So going to town homes is not gonna help the developer very much at all. And therefore, I don't think that's gonna be a route we'll pursue. Too many houses on small lots will change the character. I actually went through and did a study of all the houses on Alexander Street. The acreage works out to 0.34 acres. average size for each of those lots. Average tax value according to Rowan County is $160,000 for those houses along Alexander Street. The new subdivision size, yes, the lots will be smaller. I showed it here as 0.144. It actually, if the developer goes along with the plan I've created, and I'll show you in a minute, they'd be slightly larger than that. And his estimate of value is about $280,000 per home. So the value of the homes is higher, the lot size is slightly smaller. Higher population density, when we talk about crime and socioeconomic problems, higher density doesn't mean that you're going to have crime. There are a list of socioeconomic things that go into the creation of crime and the promotion of crime, and just population density in one of those is not something that causes it. I pointed out to you at the public hearing that this subdivision has been around for a long, long time. And again, the question was asked this morning by the manager, why now? Why is somebody interested in building out something that's been there since 1904, 120 years? And the answer from our wise old planner, Joe, was that we now have demand for homes. For a long, long time, Spencer didn't have any demand. And now we do. If we don't build homes, the demand will outstrip supply. And when that happens in Economics 101, the cost of the homes goes up. And then when they do a revaluation, they're going to compare it to those higher values, and everybody's tax values are going to go up. So if you want to keep tax values where they are or lower, make sure that we have enough houses, enough houses that are affordable to a wide range of people to avoid that supply-demand crux that would run values out in the sky. So there's the final look at the site. When people are concerned about new development in general, but certainly higher density development, this is what they, I think, see in their mind, that this is the kind of concerns they have. And we heard that on other projects. But if you ride through town of Spencer, you see what happens on 50-foot-wide lots. Some beautiful homes get built. The landscaping that those homeowners puts out changes the appearance dramatically. These are some of the newer houses that have been built on 50-foot-wide lots throughout our town. This is that existing sewer line. This is Salisbury Marine Utilities service map. The water line runs down John Street. The sewer line runs right through the middle of this project going south. Again, smart growth is using your existing infrastructure. When you've got an existing sewer line, existing water line, build there instead of building somewhere else that requires you to run new lines. This was part of the slide that Mr. Miller, I think, was interested in as far as what would be done under the current zoning classification versus the RMST as proposed. And I also looked up what the old R8, which is what this was zoned before the new ordinance was adopted, and what's proposed. And again, this is slightly out of date, and I'll show you in just a minute. But again, SFR 3 requires basically a 60-foot wide lot. That's the thing that's limiting how many number of lots you can put in there. And it works out to about 10 lots, 10 to 12 lots based on that 60 foot. The RMST allows you to go down as low as 42 feet, but what's proposed is 14 lots that would be not the 50-foot wide, but in my opinion could be 57 feet wide. So they would be very close to the width of the SFR3 and the R8 classification. Again, I'll show you that slide in just a second. So the biggest difference and the reason that the developer needs to have this higher density, needs to have those four extra lots, is that he's got a lot of expenses to meet. He's got 640 feet of road. He's got 800 feet of sidewalk. 600 feet of the water main extension, fire hydrants, street lights, street trees. I don't want to give you the whole list, or he might get up and walk out of here and decide not to do this, but he's got a lot of expenses to meet, and he knows that he has to have that higher density. He also knows that that's what the market is demanding now. My house sits on a one-acre lot, but two-thirds of the lot is in woods. I don't use it. My house is on the first third of the lot. Same as why we took it to the makers. The one-acre lots are a thing of the past. They're just not in demand anymore. Most young families don't want a 4,000-square-foot house to keep up. They want something that meets their basic needs and nothing more. That's all their budget can afford. So, reasons for approval. You've got an unopened road right away that will provide good access to this development. It utilizes existing water and sewer infrastructure, provides 14 plus or minus new homes and new families, which would be 35, 40 new citizens, increasing our sales tax revenue. It expands our property tax base by $4 million, plus or minus. The size of homes being proposed are similar in size to the existing housing stock in that area. The lots are smaller, but the houses are about the same size. Our comprehensive land use plan recommends and endorses this very type of development. And that's a plan that is supposed to benefit all the citizens of the town of Spencer. So when we make a decision on one particular property, we're making it with all the citizens in mind. And again, this is the type of building and housing and lot size that's demanded by the market now. Now, over the weekend, I lost a lot of sleep worrying about this and worrying about how to solve the problems and maybe make everybody a little happier. I came up with this drawing, and that's my amateur attempt to be a civil engineer. If you'll remember, his proposed site plan took the upper right lots, two of them, and dedicated them as the common open space, which is required by our ordinance. And that's 15% of the overall acreage is what the requirement is. In this drawing, what we do is take that 15%, and instead of taking out those two lots, We use that 15% on the back of each blot to create a 25-foot wide vegetated buffer to provide separation from the new backyards to the older backyards, the established backyards. The blue lines are the drainage ditches. And again, as I showed you in that first picture, the water is supposed to run off John Street and then run from the east to the west. And I had another picture I actually took of where the water runs across John Street into a gully on the north side, that needs to be piped. That will be piped during a part of this plan. The road, as I pointed out, runs north to south and then connects to the existing road. By doing that, by doing away with that common open space as a dedicated area, it allows you to put those 14 lots in there, except they would be 57 feet wide and 150 feet deep. So getting very close to what SFR 3 allows. Not quite, but close. Why can't we agree that that's what's going to happen today? The developer has to hire a civil engineer who actually knows what the heck he's doing instead of moving it to me. And he will actually calculate the flows and the absorption in the ground and the pitches of the land and how fast the water's going to run, how much water's going to be there. And his decision may be that To make this thing work, you're going to have to have a sediment pond. Civil engineer will do his magic and come up with the calculations, and he might say, you can't build on that last lot down there because we need a sediment pond. And by the way, you're going to have to pipe it from there down to France Crossing and tie into their stormwater system. We don't know that yet. To know that, the developer has to spend tens of thousands of dollars hiring a civil engineer to do this planning process. and then come back with a cost estimate of all this and how it works. If it came back with something like this, what I would suggest is that you make the lots on the west side back to that 50 foot width, the ones on the east side, the 57 foot width. That would give the developer the same 14 lots and allow for a sediment pond. We won't know any of that until we get into the site planning process. And that comes after we get the rezoning done so that he knows what to shoot for. He knows what his limits are. This, I think, will be a good residential neighborhood. It will be a good addition to the town of Spencer. And I had, on one of these slides, recommended approval, but I'll leave it to your capable hands. I'll be glad to answer any questions.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Blunt. Ford, do you have questions?

How can that buffer zone qualify as common open area?

We would require that an easement be put on these properties so that that land would never be developed, that portion at the back of the property.

Can you go back on that sheet, back on the slides to show me that plot, the original original flat from 1904? 1904 flat.

Yeah.

So, okay, we've got the green. That's the property we're talking about now. So the other property that's further up on that drawing, is that developed or is that not developed?

There are a few homes in there. The upper right-hand side, what's listed as 034, 003, 163, and 164. Those three lots are not built upon, but they have submitted zoning permits to build single-family homes on those.

Okay, so there's still space up there for an additional subdivision.

And there's a lot of undeveloped land behind the existing homes that could be subdivided and built on in the future.

And the sewer, is it running, would it actually go on up further up there?

No, once you go past John Street, goes downhill again. So that will be one of the limitations on developing those northern properties is that it will probably require a lift station to get the sewer back in.

Mr. Blount, I had a couple questions for you. One, we did have some citizen feedback today by email to the board basically expressing some concern with SRU and having repeated water main breaks along Alexander and John Street. And so I guess my question would be, obviously, we're talking about putting new water infrastructure in, but, you know, and I think this is maybe separate from the development question, but it is an issue. You talked about having repaved Alexander Street, but if we're having to go in there and do, SRU's having to do repairs frequently, It's tearing up the road. I think from our perspective, we need to find a way to push on SRU for the residents that are currently there and potential new residents to make sure that the water lines in there are reliable and that we're not constantly having to repair those.

I saw that email and some suggestion that the joints were boiling out. They would fix one and then the pressure would boil out the next one. These are probably fairly old lines and they weren't SRU lines to start with. They were Spencer lines. So we younged them, we put them in.

But they bought them. They acquired the rights.

They acquired the rights and they acquired the problem. So they've got to fix the problem. So I totally agree with that. As you can see at the end of John Street in this picture, there is a fire hydrant located on John Street. So my SRU maps don't give me sizes of lines, but I would think that that's a fairly large line, at least a four-inch line that runs down to that fire hydrant. So if it's a four-inch line running down there, you're looking at, probably 20-foot sections, a joint every 20 feet. So I can't add up the number of joints that might blow out. But again, it's SRU's problem. If it's an overall quality problem for the whole street, then it would be their responsibility to come back and replace those loans.

I think we need to continue to push on them because it is SRU's problem, but every time it breaks, it's our residents' problem. I agree. The other question I had you made a comment about the parking or restrictions with parking requirements and things like that, however, given the the infinite wisdom of our state legislature here recently. Looking to restrict some of our development ordinances, one of those being. parking limitations i guess how does that play into this development and also future developments because i think one of the things we definitely don't want and i think our current residents wouldn't want would be people parking along the streets that there is dedicated on property parking for each of these problems our ordinance still and will continue to require a certain number of parking spaces for residents my reading of the new state statute

and all of the conversation that's going around it is that the intent was to deal with large parking lots, not so much individual parking spaces for individual houses. So as far as single-family residential, I think we're on solid ground to continue to require a certain number of spaces per house. They may get us on our townhome regulations. I don't think they could stop us from requiring the parking to be in the rear of the building, which is what we require now, either in our garage or at the rear of the building.

Hopefully, they're going to refine that ordinance a little bit as it goes forward. But I think we're okay for now. Other questions? Okay. Thank you, Mr. Blunt.

Board, we've heard lots of feedback. We've heard feedback and comments. presentations from Mr. Blunt. We've heard feedback from the community. We've heard from the developer as well. And so I will leave it into your able hands to move forward as you see fit. We are considering adopting budget ordinance or considering adopting ordinance 26-12 that would potentially rezone parcel 03-4004 from single family SFR 3 to residential main street transition zone.

What is the pleasure of the board?

I think after hearing the uses available for the RSF, the RMST, I think we've answered the questions that some of the people had about what could be built on that property. So I move to adopt the ordinance.

All right.

Appreciate feedback, but we can't have comments from the audience at this point.

So I move to accept Ordinance 26-12 to allow rezoning this property to the RMST zoning classification.

Okay. Or there is a motion on the table to approve Ordinance 26-12 to rezone. That is from Sledge. Is there a second?

Second.

second from mr muhammad all right motions on the floor is there any discussion on this item from the board at this point before we vote yes i was wondering steve if you could come up and address um i'm also appreciative of knowing more about the rmst zoning classification and the four types it can involve um so can you thank you for addressing that earlier but can you just give a little bit more peace of mind.

And then also, if you will please clarify, because I know there was some feedback from the audience a minute ago, clarify versus what is being shown on the website versus what is in the codified development ordinance.

In our ordinance, there are descriptions of what the zoning classifications most generally are used for, a general description of how they can be used. And that may be misinterpreted as saying you can put The Dollar General is invented. The Dollar General is back here. What really rules what can be built is our table of uses. And that's where I made the mistake. I didn't go down each column. Our table of uses is eight pages long. It looks just like this. And RMST and SFR3 are right next to each other. It's pretty easy to go down the two columns and see what's allowed in RMST that's not allowed and single-family residential. And again, by my review just a few minutes ago, and maybe I missed one or two, but I for sure looked up the Dollar General. I know that's not allowed. But a bed and breakfast, a daycare with six or less, townhomes, and multi-pain. These are the only four things I could find that were allowed in RMS-2 that aren't allowed in the SFR classification.

Which, Steve, just for the example of a dollar store, it would show up as retail sales.

It took me a while to find it because if you don't find Dollar General, you don't even find convenience stores. What you find is retail other. And retail other is not listed in the RMSD classification. So those kind of uses are not allowed. No way to show it to people.

board i will say i also when mr blunt said that i went to back check him i did pull up the table from our development ordinance and he is correct in what it indicates they are very similar in uses the primary difference is the development density that is allowed thank you for clarifying that mr I would ask, though, because obviously there is some confusion with what is posted, that we make sure, because we're going to talk about this recodification process, that we're making sure that any type of ambiguity or anything like that in those development ordinances, that we make sure that that is cleared up so that it's not confusing folks.

There are a lot of things that could be called ambiguities, but it's really a matter of you have to look at the whole ordinance, look at all the sections of the ordinance. For example, parking in front of houses. is allowed, but you can't park in the front yard setback. So you can't park in that, in the RMST, you can't park in that first 12 feet. You've got to go back another 20 feet and build your parking path there. Unless you have a garage, then you can set the building at 12 feet and drive right into your garage. That doesn't show up in the use category. It doesn't show up in the lot description. It shows up in our parking section. There are a lot of things that you have to know which part of the ordinance you're looking for to find out what the final answer is. In this case, I was thinking purely residential. There was no question in my mind that this was going to get built out residential, so I never questioned the fact that it was raised that a dollar general could be built here. When I went through it the first time, I thought that's not true. I sat over here and went through it two or three more times just to make sure. That list that I just gave you, I think, is the only difference.

Or are there other questions for Mr. Blount or any further discussion amongst the board?

Okay. Hearing none, there is a motion and there is a second before you. And so with that, we will vote at this time. All in favor of approving Ordinance 26-12 to rezone Parcel 03-4004 from SFR 3 to RMST zoning classification? All in favor? All right. All opposed? And that rezoning is approved unanimously. Thank you all. Thanks for all the feedback and residents as well. And I would trust that the developer works to make sure that all the adjacent property owners are happy and satisfied and the drainage issues are resolved. We do appreciate you investing in our community, but we also appreciate the residents that live there and all the feedback that y'all have provided. All right, the next item is to consider adopting Budget Ordinance Amendment 26-004 or 04.002 to appropriate funds for the Standback Educational Forest Shelter. Mr. Frenzies.

Yes, so we talked a little bit about this at pre-agenda last week, and we have been doing some research as to the questions asked about our insurance claim and cost of replacement. And I'll jump to the conclusion is we'd like for this item to be tabled at this point while we continue to work through this with our insurance provider. But what we found out so far, we did get some additional documentation that showed their estimate of how they came about. It appears the materials that they were putting into their estimate do not align with the pre-engineered materials that were used to originally construct it. We were able to go back and find some information from the original project in 2016 and 2017 and get in touch with the manufacturer. The manufacturer today provided a price of over $26,000 just for the materials. We're also seeking a price for installation from a general contractor so we can share all of that back with our insurance provider and say, here's what it's actually going to cost to replace this. But it appears that that is what happened is they were basing an estimate on simple pine, treated pine and that sort of thing and not the pre-engineered. Thank you for checking on that. Well, we appreciate the fine-tooth comb that y'all placed on it to help us out.

All right. Board, is there a motion to table this item until a future meeting?

I'll make a motion that we do table this item.

Okay. Motion by Mr. Miller. Second. Second by Mayor Pro Tem. All in favor? All right. All opposed? And that motion is tabled. All right. The next item is to consider adopting Ordinance 26-13. This will be an ordinance that adopts and enacts a new code for the town of Spencer, North Carolina. Again, this is our recodification process that we've been going through. Mr. Francis?

Yes, so we have before you the adopting ordinance to recodify our town code to include the development ordinances. This will greatly improve our ability to communicate what is accurately on the books, get rid of the confusion of our prior codification that's been out there still. And so we... We have that before you. I know, Anna, I don't know if you can share some of the information you got today in talking with the folks at Media Code about the supplement in terms of fixing the correction that was needed.

Yes. So all the women such did find there was a spot that we all missed that still had the old town hall address. And it was, I have to, pull it back up. I'm sorry. Um, if you want to know exactly what it was for, but it was something about having, um, citizens that they needed to apply for something or pay like a permit or something that they go to that location. Um, and so I did, I was able to get in touch with the, um, attorney at Civic Plus who's been working through this with us and he said we can, um, the probably easiest and least expensive solution would be to, uh, fix that in a supplement which we are able to do those the online supplements are can be done a couple of times a year printed ones would be once a year but the online version is the one that people would be able to access citizens are printed we're only I think getting one is it one or three we get three we're getting three printed

code books for our internal use and it would be available for public inspection and such but generally that online code and supplement process is going to be the key one for the public.

I apologize for not reporting that earlier.

I'm glad you found it. You always find something so thank you Ms. Sledge. Board are there any questions on the recodification process? And if there are not, is there a motion to adopt ordinance 26-13 that would adopt and enact the new code for Spencer?

So moved.

Ms. Moody. She's fast. Motion by Ms. Moody. Is there a second?

Second.

Second by Ms. Stanley. All right. All in favor? All right. All opposed? And that is approved. Okay. We are now moving on to our departmental reports, and we will invite Mr. Blunt forward.

I'm surprised that you have more. You have my written report. I'm glad to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Blunt. We appreciate that. Any questions for Mr. Blunt?

I have a question. What's happening on the corner of 9th Street and Salt River?

That has been subdivided into four lots, three of them facing Salisbury Avenue, one of them facing ninth street i believe it is and they have been working with salisbury utilities trying to figure out how to serve those lots and they've finally gotten that figured out so i think what you've seen recently is them starting to locate the underground utilities with flags and then lay out the lots and start the subdivision process residential one other question i thought i saw in your earlier remarks about The developer for the North Carolina Finishing Company project has identified the need that we've known about for years now of an access road running from Longs Ferry up to the Hackett Street and Fisher Lamb and then North Carolina Finishing. The sewer for the the Yaki River District Plan, the apartments and anything else that gets built in there, will actually run across US Highway 29 and connect to the sewer system that's gonna feed the stuff on the east side of the highway. So all of it's tied together, and he's come up with a budget of what the infrastructure's gonna cost, huge amount of money. He has reached out to us to see if we can help out in some way with incentives. We're also working with the county trying to get them to come up with some money for incentives. But the amount that he's asking for the impact of the development, I think it's fairly minor. We have identified some ways that we can add some funding. We obviously had the grant from North Carolina Railroad that helps out with the infrastructure. But we also have our yearly allocation from Salisbury Marine Utilities that's been increased to 100,000 a year. So we could dedicate that some portion of that to this project over a certain number of years so without having to reach into the tax pocket we think we have identified ways to help with an incentive process to make that project move forward steve what they're looking for is yeah assistance with funding for the sewer infrastructure for the left station enforcement that would have to go in um and

they've asked that we kind of consider that as the overall project. So it would be the Yadkin River District development, the mixed-use multifamily residential and commercial right on the river, and then also then the potential for up to 13 industrial buildings between Highway 29 and I-85 to basically redevelop the entire finishing company site as well as the Fisher-Lamb site that we annexed last month. Is that right?

Yeah. And then expansion of Innespec, and there's a couple other properties where property owners have contacted us about building industrial in that area. The Johnson Development Project, even on the home loss area, has been a fit from this. So it's something we see as an important project for us, certainly worthwhile to come up with some incentive plan to help make it a reality.

Okay. Very good. Thank you.

Any other questions, Ford? Can you move it on the truck stop?

I think they had three people out there today. That's 100% increase over yesterday.

Is it my understanding that the woods that's cleared from the old sewer treatment plant, did they do that? Or there's a clearing right there, and I thought that would be their sewer easement. to get to the old plant, right there on the .

Their sediment control ponds are down in that lower left-hand corner as you're facing the site. And that has been a problem for them in that the site has been bare for so long. It was picking up so much sediment that it's over-washing the sediment pond and has now gotten into the stream that the water flows to. They've been violated twice for erosion control problems. And they're fixing it. They actually go in and fix the problems, but it costs them a lot of money to do it, so we hope they will get the spot to finish it. Once it's paved, obviously there won't be nearly as much sediment running into that farm, so there shouldn't be a problem with sediment after that.

But like I said, is that clearing right there in the woods going through the old treatment plant? Is that where they're going to run their sewer main?

No, their sewer main will actually come out at the upper As you're facing it to the left, it'll run out and run down the road, down to where the old sewer treatment plant was. And that would be also the sewer main that will serve Johnson Development on the other side, and then all of these projects that we talked about.

But it would come to the property owner to provide that sewer main. They've got to provide the sewer. They've even got a cost estimate on all that.

They're working with SRU, and I haven't heard the numbers, but they'll be big.

Yeah. then that would be started by now.

The only beauty of this project, and I'm not sure if beauty is the right word, but when they submitted their final site plan and wanted to get started on construction, the only way we allow construction is if the infrastructure is either built or they give us a bond for the value of it, plus 25%. And we hold a bond for all that work out there. So if they walk away, the bonding company will come in and finish it.

You know, about About a month ago, there were two boonies put out there, and I said, well, maybe they're going to get started now.

They've always had interesting excuses for things slowing down, but I laugh at them when I talk to them now. They know I'm laughing at them.

There's a lot of material sitting out there.

Well, apparently the first contractor didn't order all the steel that was required, so they had to spend a lot. I got some reports that steel's going up, steel's going up, so I rode out there to work. Still wasn't going up. They were just sifting through the pile trying to figure out what was missing so they could actually put it up or something. So then they had to order those extra pieces. So it's been a comedy of errors out there.

Any other questions for us?

Those people have other places. I mean, if it's still the same people that started out with it, TA is the company.

They're the developer out of Raleigh, and they've done a number of these and do a lot of hotels also, so they're not amateurs by any means. Right. Their contractors, apparently, might be interested.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Blunt. All right. Chief Fowler, we'll invite you forward for code enforcement and police.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the board. Good evening. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Steve's done a lot of talking, so I'm going to try not to. I'm tired for him. I've provided the standard monthly report on code enforcement. I did want to kind of point out a couple things this month on code. Actually, everybody knows grass is high. So I actually went out with Preston one day and gave him a hand because we were just overran with high grass complaints. You know, we normally average somewhere in the low 30s is what is considered a good month that we like to see built-in cases. He built 59 cases this month. So not quite double, but not far from it. And 81% have already been cleared out. So good resolution within the same month. Kind of flipping over to the back of that page, looking at the yearly report. I keep on bringing up that we kind of see those numbers change throughout the years. We're finally to that point. So we are now at 80% that we have cleared voluntary abatements, and we're at 92% clearance for the year. So we always see this last quarter where those numbers start hitting the cases he's been working with individuals on throughout the year. So I'm always happy if it's over 80%, I'm certainly happy. And that 92% is really good. So I just wanted to point that out briefly. One last thing, if you flip to the very last page of the code enforcement packet for this month, there was a case highlight in there. We do these every now and then on ones that we've been working on for an extended period of time. I want to thank Joel and his group for helping us out on this one. So 610 South Carolina Avenue, there's been some complaints on that house over the years. It's changed hands in the same family multiple times. So the new owners in the family say that they're intending on selling the property. and they were ready to have it abated. So they have already paid the abatement fee, and they were happy that Joe threw abatement for them. So we appreciate that. It looks substantially better, and they're going to continue working on it. They're kind of going through the actual property in the house now, and then they're intended to sell the parcel and have it, I'll say a flipper. I don't really know if that's what they're looking for, but it definitely needs updating to be marketable. I think that's the intent is to sell it to somebody that's willing to rehab it and turn it into another nice house. So we're certainly happy to see that one kind of off the books for right now. But I will try to answer any questions you have on code enforcement this month.

Thank you, Chief. Any code enforcement questions?

I have a question, please, sir.

No.

When somebody reports tall grass in the yard, how can you go out and serve a notice? How long do they have?

So typically as a rule of thumb, we give them a door tag and then Preston goes back the following week to see if it's been resolved. If it's been resolved, it never, it goes into the system as a case, but then that's what clears out as volunteer abatement. So they take care of it the first week, but then it goes out as volunteer abatement. If it's not taken care of at that point, they go ahead and issue the NOV and then there's 10 days before Joel can actually go out and mow it. So it could be up to 17 days, but that's kind of mixing the balance of being friendly with the citizens and giving them the seven days to attempt to do it. And then we have to, you know, by our code, we have to provide them the other time before we can go out and just abate it. Now there are some homes in town, I'll tell you, that are owned after they've been abated X number of times. We no longer have to follow that. We can just go straight to abatement. So there are some that, unfortunately, we just have to keep mowing. But that's what turns into them waiting on the money to be paid back to the town or a lien conveyed onto the property.

I know there's certain people that take advantage of that.

I'm sure there are certain ones.

All summer long.

Yeah, I'm sure. We definitely build numerous cases where we see the same addresses filled. We give them the notification and they mow it. Sad that you have to go tell them to mow it. But like this month, that's how that volunteer abatement was so high this month. That's where we door tagged a lot of them and went back the following week and they were all mowed. So then they go in and volunteer abatements. Now they may be high again next week and we're back to door tagging them again.

Probably a good idea.

Any other questions, Gordon? Are you talking about my yard?

I didn't have a question, but I did write down a citizen earlier this evening noted a summer of tall grass at a residence. So I guess I'll drive by there to look at it, and then I will get my first pain experience at using our portal, which I was trying to describe to someone the other day, realizing I have never used it.

I believe about three of them came in while we've been in this meeting. So I've seen the portal ping a couple times. They're definitely coming in. It is a hard time with grass right now with the way the weather's been up and down in the rain. So, I mean, we've got to be understandable to some extent, but the yards that are 20 inches tall, that's just not going to grass.

Okay. We'll move on to the police report.

All righty. Again, standard monthly report, just under 2,300 events for this month. Nothing really to highlight on the report unless there's questions about it. Certainly want to remind everybody at National Night Out, which is on Tuesday, October 6th. So that will be out here in front of the building from 6 to 8. So we've got a lot of legwork that's been done, and thank Ms. Moody for a lot of it, because she has been instrumental this year in helping coordinate some of our events. So we're excited to see another year of it out here. So this is our busy time of year. I think all the guys are already tired from the 250th event, across the street. We have never parked so many cars in our entire life. And it was all hands on deck to park all those cars. But this is really the kickoff of our season and we'll be working nonstop between now and New Year's.

And I hear everybody that you park over there is so nice and courteous to you.

They were pretty good this time, but... I will say we parked way more cars than on the worst Polar Express night you ever had. So we've got a program that's working pretty good now.

I was told that they had 10,000 people over there. Yeah, that came from the director over there.

Yeah, we kind of estimated. Now, you know, we didn't have a clicker to check, but we estimated 4,000 to 5,000 cars before we parked. So that's a lot of vehicle traffic.

And that's not counting the parking in the high school or the church or middle school.

Yeah. Yeah, you know when you start filling up the schools and one fills up and you have to go to the next one, the next one fills up, and you go to the next one, and you see the principal grab a school bus and start shuffling people because people are just standing there pouring sweat. So it was all hands on deck. There's no doubt about that. But it worked. I'm certainly glad to see citizens come here and spend their hard-earned dollars in our town.

I think it was good that some of this money went to the schools.

Yeah, they were very excited about it. I think that's something they want to continue doing. They had student volunteers out there and part of their volunteer work at the same time helping fund programs that are historically underfunded at schools.

That was good. That worked out.

Any other questions on the police report? All right. Thank you very much. All right, the next item is our fire department report. I understand that Chief Lanning is feeling under the weather this evening, so your report is before you. If there are any questions, perhaps the manager can answer those.

I do have just an additional piece he wrote on there about the preparative engine 752, and that has to do with there's something called a V-pod variable pressure output device on the turbo. That is what they figured out what the problem is. So they're trying to get that part fixed on it, but that's what they've determined is causing their problems.

All right. We'll move on to the public works report. We'll invite Mr. Taylor forward. But before he gives his report, I would like for Mr. Deese to provide us an update. I know we heard from a resident this morning about an easement issue, but I know our staff has been working diligently over the past several years to maintain that drainage easement. And Mr. Deese, if you could give a quick update on that. the history, just so that it's on public record as to what we've done to address that issue.

And this was outlined in a communication that I sent to Ms. Hovis that I believe has been shared with the board. Yes. Okay. And we went through this process. It was an unrecorded easement. We had been using the property as a drainage easement for some years without a recorded easement. And when Ms. Hovis brought that to our attention, we then undertook to have an appraisal done. We had the property appraised without the easement and then with the easement and determined the value of the easement at that point in time, the impact on the property. And so characterizing the payment, however it may be characterized, it was based on an appraisal that we had done at the time. that everybody agreed to at the time. And so we did acquire that easement. And in that easement, actually several meetings predicated entering that easement with regard to terms for maintenance. We had several meetings here at Town Hall with everybody in the room, President and Ms. Ovis as well. And we talked about it and we came up with the terms of the easement. It was drafted specifically based on that. And then the premise of my letter to her most recently was that we've reviewed and Joel's kept pretty detailed maintenance records. I mean, we have the schedule of maintenance. We have everything that we've done. And so based on everything that we've done, it's my opinion that the towns upheld their obligations under the easement agreement. And that's basically what I said in the letter. I believe Joel and his crowd have done everything they can. There was some confusion over discussion of retaining walls or redesigning or completing it. And what we said from that particular meeting, and I was present for that meeting as well, was that we would have at least two contractors go review other options for that easement area to consider retaining walls or some different system than just RITRAP, which is what's there now. And Joel did have two contractors go and visit the site. And the prices range from, I think, $40,000 to over $90,000. And that's without any cost share obligation. So the town would have to consider $40,000, $90,000 worth of possible work to go in there, not to mention we would have to get that work permitted before we even had approval to do it. So we're not even sure that we would have approval to do that with regard to the waterway and the approvals we would need to change that. It's my opinion now, and out of all due respect to Ms. Hovis and my relationship with her for the 20 years that I've been the Rowan County attorney and working with the Sheriff's Department, and then she's with E. Spencer as the Chief of Police, and she was an older woman here for this town board when I was appointed the town attorney, and we've had a long-standing, very positive relationship, and I respect Ms. Hovis highly for all the work that she's done as a public servant in law enforcement and in service to this town. It's just, it's my opinion that we've done what we need to do with regard to this particular easement. And at some point, that's just the answer. Keep asking the question. It's not going to change that answer, except in a year from now, if we were reviewing, Joel hadn't been out there, but I can tell you that There's a lot of attention on this particular property because of the number of times that it comes up publicly. And there are a lot of eyeballs that are monitoring what Joel's doing with regard to this particular easement compared to all the other easements that we have to monitor and all the other places that we have to monitor for maintenance and groundskeeping and things like that. This one gets a lot of attention. And so because of that, Joel, sort of has to make sure that he's on top of it. When we say we maintained it, we better have maintained it. If there are things growing in it that aren't supposed to be growing in it, if it's not helping the easement, those are things that Joel and his professional discretion has to manage. But it was my opinion, based on all the information that the town had, Joel's schedule of maintenance and what we did to acquire the easement and do it correctly, that the town's met its obligations under the easement and will continue to do so. We don't have a problem with going out there and working on it. So the town will continue to do it. Joel's one of the hardest working people I've met in government. And he doesn't shy away from going out and doing the work himself. And so I have no doubt that Joel... is going to keep doing what they've been doing. So I appreciate his efforts in a sticky situation like this, having to navigate these waters and Peter's as well. But she received our communication and that was our final answer that we believe we've done what we need to do.

Thank you, Mr. Deese. And so for clarification too, that has always been a naturally occurring stream. Yes. When that area of the the town was developed for the North Rowan Avenue extension that the stormwater outlet was put into that natural drainage. So it's not like it was something that was created. It's always been there. And the other thing I want to point out is obviously we did see some pictures that were provided with some vegetation, but fairly minimal growing in the bottom of the stream. And I just want Joel, you to clarify that we will not spray in the bottom of, that drainage because it's introducing herbicide into the waterway if we were to do that.

That's correct. We do manual cutting in the bottom. We do spray the rock on either side, specifically on dry days if we want to. That kind of stuff, if that water level does go high. But in the bottom, though, we do manual cutting in the bottom. So we do need to get over there and trim those high screws.

Thank you.

All right, Board, any questions for Mr. Deese on that particular item?

Ms. Hogan has been in contact with me as well, and she mentioned that people came on the property without letting them know that there was somebody coming on. She said she had cameras, and I said, well, with the easement we have, that does allow our people to come and do work. I don't know if there's a way that you could just notify them that I'm going to be there today.

That's okay. Okay. Anything else? All right. Thank you both. Mr. Taylor, your report.

All right. Thank you, Mayor and members of the board. Just a couple updates. I do have the bid packet for the street. It actually has come. I had to send it back for a couple revisions because it has some typos in it. I hope to get that tomorrow. and then we will have the date set and we'll get it up to bid and then it'll be for your approval next month. The way the weather is holding right now, we should be able to get it paved in October with no problem. So we'll get that taken care of. The date for the Fall Months Giveaway is on October 3rd, so I just want to emphasize that one more time. We do have plenty and I need to grind again, especially with all the trees that stand back, the forest is eating right now. We're moving on. Same thing, we'll be there from 7 to 12. If you want delivery, you can let us know beforehand. We can get it scheduled. Or the day, the morning of. Either way, you can come down to the pile and we can get it to you. The water line project has yet to get started on the Salisbury side. I think they're messing with an eastern issue. I'm not sure exactly on that. But they have been in contact with us for certain things that we want. such as the pipe hydrants and that kind of stuff, which will be placed on that mine. So the chief and I have been together and sent all their information. So all that stuff has been ordered. So as soon as that easement gets going, they'll be rocking and rolling. They'll be coming down through there because they're itching to get started. If you noticed, we have had to use the backup trash truck in the last several weeks. I'm sure you've seen it go by the house with guys on the back. like the old times. We did have a valve issue with the truck, and then we also had an AC issue. The repair cloth was there, and then we've had to send it back. But we did get it back this morning. It was over the weekend, so they did work, and then so it's back in operation full force, so we're good to go with it. The planter on Main Street has been completely fixed. I hated it didn't get done before the 250th. I was kind of hoping it would, but Mason came and got it taken care of for us. And Susan, we have filed it with the insurance company. So we're just looking for reimbursement on that. The tree at Standback got taken down this morning. The remainder of the tree was taken down this morning. So we have another mess to clean up. But it's down now. So the path is completely open. It's clear. They can use it as full force. And then we'll get more information on the shelter and get that in the works as well. We did have two trees go down. It's like two every week this week. We had one on 4th Street on Thursday night. It took power off the sides of two people's houses. But we got the tree out of the way and the electrician was already there. And by that afternoon, the Duke Power had their power back on. And then we had one Sunday night, just about 10 o'clock, it went across 9th Street, or Rowan Avenue at 9th Street. So I'd just like to thank the fire department for sticking around long enough and giving me some light. Their trucks have a lot better light, so we could get that cleared all the way. And I'll answer any questions if you may.

Thank you, Joel. Board, any questions for the Public Works Report?

I don't have any idea what the markings are on Charles Street. Have you seen those?

No, I have seen them. No, I have not heard what they're called. I know that Randy's SRU has been marking some areas that I pointed out and it looks like sewer line issues in the streets. Does that may be what they are? I'm not going to promise because I don't know. And we did get a request on the sewer right of way, which we use as part of the trail. Across Spencer Avenue, right across the trail, there's several trees down through there. I talked to Randy about that. They want to take care of that with focus on the sewer driveway instead of us taking our equipment down the road. So that they will be clear in the next several weeks or so that people are trying to get in the way. But I know that's an issue that's sitting on our game on what people know there is to be worked on.

I have a question. Yes, sir.

The crag myrtle trees, I know you're experiencing trimming crag myrtles as far as they go, but the narrow strip between Sunwalk and the street in front of Old Town Hall. Those limbs are leaning over and of course nobody's parked there.

Right.

But eventually are you going to trim those this winter and everything? Especially if this sale goes through?

Well, they need to be trimmed before all this rain. They need to be trimmed now. The balloons have actually been spent now. They're holding a lot of water. So what we'll do is we'll go down and trim it to car height. But at that point then the people will be purchase the town hall, that would be their trees.

Will that be their tree? Yes, sir.

Okay.

Now, if it impedes the street, it will still remain our problem. You know, we'll do the street portion. Yeah. If they elect to keep it.

That's basically what I'm talking about. Right there at the street. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that would be our tree.

That would be their trees.

Oh, it would be their trees?

Yes, sir.

Okay. Mm-hmm. And that's what I said, we'll keep the street jammed and clean, you know, I mean, where you can park on it. If they elect to keep those streets, that's going to be up for government.

Yeah, I noticed the other weekend with the big train celebration over one of those spaces all the way down to 6th Street or 7th Street with you. They were right there, right above those cars.

And they're worse today. I saw them today.

Thank you. Any other questions, Boyd? All right. Thanks for all the hard work.

You're welcome. Thank you. All right. Next is our finance report. Ms. Kahn.

Good evening. Good evening. We're going to have to go to intermission.

Amen. Amen.

All right. So, the reconciliation drug date is August 1st.

Normally, I have a sales and impact report for you, but I don't have one yet this month. Normally, they come around the 4th or 5th, but maybe because there's a holiday. I did want to note that Allison will be out of the office 9-22 and 9-23 for Black Mountain Software User Conference in Greenfield. Chris, you'll be out of the office as well on vacation, but I'll be here at your home as well. You have my report I made a couple of notes on there for you for example on page 3 the special compensation under 40s is over about $45 we made a miscalculation in the separation allowance pay for that and we'll get that corrected and then on page 5 there was under solidly, almost near the bottom, 5750 526 Utilities and Communications, a landfill deal was posted to that account in error, and that's incorrect. And I think that's really all that stood out to me. But if you guys have any questions, I'll be happy to answer. Oh, and the auditors will be here next week.

Okay, thank you.

Ford, any questions on the finance report?

I'll accept prayers for that.

Do we have a quote yet from Snow Insurance about our insurance rates for next year?

Not that I know of. We've asked them to keep in communication with us, but sorry. So I did today get a request from them for census information, which is what has to happen first. And then they send that to the insurance companies and pester them until they send information. I have to look at it closer. I didn't really have time today to look at what Donna was asking for, but I think it's probably about the same. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions?

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Next is our active living report. And I am keeping track of how many people step out of the room. We're up to three now. Yes. I might be next.

Yeah. I second the vote for an intermission. We need longer meetings. I'm actually having to make a note. Sorry. Oh, you know what? Actually, that brings up a question from the previous minutes, just for everyone's edification, I suppose. If people leave for whatever reason, not... Oh, man.

To take a personal break.

Well, without the board excusing them. Thank you.

I asked the question.

And there happens to be a vote in the interim, then their vote is considered the same as if it were an abstention, which would be a yes vote in North Carolina.

Correct. So the important note is don't step out.

If you intend to vote no, you better not leave the room.

Yes. Well, we'll wait until the Department of Reports. Yes.

We'll be away.

All right. Active living reporting.

Yes. So, and just on the same note of thinking teamwork that went into my head throughout this meeting, these reports, I give them, but it's through a lot of help from members Of course, Joe and Peter and Beverly and getting somebody. The advisory board. Yes, the advisory board, yes. And on that note, the advisory board met on August 5th. And most of the information you all already heard about, either at the last meeting or this meeting, And since then, the subcommittee, they formed to look at possibly having plays in the park. We have met once, and there's been some more communication trying to hash out some of those details. And then events in August, there was the neighborhood walk in Sandbeck Forest. And then the third Thursday with Destiny Stone. And of course, this month we've already had a couple of community-led events such as Labor Day, street dance. That's who I forgot. I don't know how I forgot Joel. The Public Works people helped, of course, with the events and everything as well. And the Creek Week, Rowan Creek Week is coming up on September 14th. There will be storm drain marking keeping in place in the morning. There's also a walk through Sandback Forest, I believe. Yeah, I think it's on a different day. And then on September 15th, we'll have our next Talk of the Town. And this one will be used for public input for the Children's Discovery Plate Garden Design Workshop. And that's the one that we've been discussing about putting out near the fountains. And then the 17th is Third Thursday at the top of college. One of the things that Librarian McCraw has been working on this year is organizing and decluttering the library, so she did note that in her report. And through that, she's found several historical Spencer documents, which depending on what they are, we're either working on moving over here to put in the vault, or there are some things that were personal So those have been returned if the families wanted them. I'm not really sure how some of these things have ended up at our library, but they have. And then she outlined upcoming events, one of which actually, one of our substitute librarians, Molly Burke, she has written a children's book and she'll be talking about that and reading it on September 15th. And then September 30th, there'll be another event with the Dr. Sadie Elder. And then the next one will be on October 14th. Special projects, if you have specific questions, I think Joe covered a fair amount of this already, but the Town Park grant application was submitted for the Permanent Pavilion Sound System, Grant Creek's Blueway, no rice certification we talked about that earlier um and then the standard course center um working on that um and then we received those reports the presentations earlier today about the mobile play the recreation and the story walk um yeah it's everything it's a lot thank you forward any questions for anna

All right, thanks so much. Move to our town manager report, Mr. Franzese.

Thank you very much. I was going to highlight next week's talk of the town that we're going to do in the park with the designer for the Children's Discovery Garden. You just heard about that. So, I mean, with that, I'll just entertain any questions that y'all might have.

Okay, thank you. Board, any questions for Peter? All right.

Board, we will open it up for requests and comments from board members. Ms. Sledge, we'll start with you tonight.

I don't even know where to start. I want to say that every single staff person who works in this town wears more than one hat on a regular basis, and it does not go unnoticed. Thank you all for all the work that you do. It's been a busy summer, and we'll be soon, I guess, after Labor Day, starting to cool off. I'm looking forward to that. I'll be representing Rowan County at the meeting of the Central Atlanta Council. tomorrow because I've been selected to be the spokesperson for the county for the executive committee and I've also been asked to serve on their search their I guess their search team there for their new executive director the executive director has resigned and it's moving on and so I'll be serving on that that committee I will say that on Saturday evening in the park, a couple came over, and they first walked over and just were standing there close to me, and they said, what's going on here? They had... visited someone here in town and further down the road, I think they said down toward the river, and were headed back to Rockwell and saw something going on here. So they stopped and they read the sign and it said street dance, but it flashed and was gone. So they said, well, what is going on here? And so they went then and got chairs and came back. joined the group and then called and I think that their relatives who lived in this area also joined them. So we have people coming here from all over the place. A couple of, just a few weeks back, I ran into a family who were here from Concord, I believe, Kannapolis or Concord, who had been here to the Transportation Museum other times with the child who was really into trains but this was the first time that they had seen the park and they were really impressed with that so they bought hot dogs from Roger Dogs and brought them over and sat in the park and ate and just talked about how much you know how beautiful it was and how much they appreciated the things that were happening here in Spencer so thank you for everybody who helps to make that possible and thank you for being kind when people come to visit us

Thank you, Ms. Sledge. Ms. Seekers.

Just a couple quick things. Don't forget Table 10 is this Monday, the 14th, and I think Quinta is having a Mediterranean thing, so try to come to that if you can. I want to make a special welcome to Greg for being on the HBC. I think you'll do a wonderful job. I've been on that committee before, and I know you bring a lot of perspective and history. it and I think you'll do a wonderful job and kind of ditto and on what Kat said my street is pretty settled with only a few families coming in and out but in the last month I've met a couple across the street who came originated in Canada but came from Africa and are helping their kids get settled in in a home and I mean, so the word is traveling. And today in my driveway, I met a man from Maine. I said, oh, my heaven. I don't think I've ever met anybody from Maine. So, I mean, this just did not happen. I'm not from Maine.

Close enough. Close enough.

Close enough. But it was just, you know, when I was growing up, that just did not happen. So we do have people coming from all over the place to settle in here, and I think it's wonderful. Just wanted to say that.

Thank you, Ms. Seacrest. Mr. Miller.

All right, tonight I want to talk about the CAC, which is the Community Appearance Committee. Several weeks ago, it was announced that the town's CAC was being put on hold until the end of the year. Chairwoman Amy Ray of Pinocchio has resigned from her role on this committee. I would personally like to thank her for her leadership in helping keeping this committee together for a very trying period. I would also like to thank all our current and past members of our CAC. With the dwindling number of volunteers, this group worked hard for many projects for the town of Spencer. Thanks also go to several town staffs for their support, Chief Lanning and his crew for the constant supply of water for all our plants, and Mr. Taylor and his crew moving dirt when needed and their support in helping the development of the Jefferson Street Park. Over the last several years, the CAC has made several outstanding accomplishments for the town. The development of the community garden along with the Presbyterian Church was their number one project. With the help of a group from the Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, a new vegetable stand and food pantry was built. The community garden has this past year over 10 raised beds, raised by local citizens. We also had our local folks supporting the food pantry, which is needed in Spencer. Food Ride Organization provided fresh vegetables to anyone this whole summer. Last year, our community made a commitment to develop the Jefferson Street Park. I'd like to thank the town for helping with the financial support for this green space. However, there's no definite commitment for these two parks in the next several months, which I am concerned about. The town of Spencer has been blessed with many different parks and green spaces. Even the town logo, as we see right back there, shows the importance of developing green space for our citizens. It is my hope that the future of our community will develop a different approach for a CAC. There should be more emphasis on help maintaining our parks and green spaces. It should also stress the importance of encouraging our citizens to help beautify their town with their own profits, encouraging their neighbors.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Miller. Ms. Moody.

I'm just going to do one more shout out that October 6th from six to eight is going to be the police department's national night out event, which is always amazing. But this year there are a lot of new attractions and just a reminder to our community that is a free event. There's going to be dinner, entertainment, and some unique things for our community to take advantage of that night. And then on behalf also, we've probably mentioned this tonight, but Race to the River 5K and Fun Run is also coming up on Saturday, October 17th. I think the 5K starts at 9 a.m. I'll report back on that more next month if that changes. But I think it's important to get these things on your calendar. Do you have any input on that?

Yeah, I think you're correct.

I Googled it, okay? But, you know. And just as the board member who gets to sit in on the Historic Preservation Committee, the Police Chief Citizens Advisory Board, and our Parks and Rec Advisory Board, we have a lot of amazing volunteers in this community who have brought a lot of great things coming our way. So thanks for everyone for volunteering.

Thanks, Ms. Brady. Ms. Stanley.

All right, so lately I've been giving the awareness for other month. This month is very personal to me. It's Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. I lost a grandchild to cancer, so this awareness is very important to me. But I do want to leave you with this. A thriving small town is built through shared visions, steady effort, and confidence in strength of people. By honoring the town's unique character while embracing thoughtful growth, the community can build a stronger economy and a more promising future for generations to come. I want to thank all of those who make Spencer Spencer.

Well said. Thank you, Mr. Stanley. Mayor Perry-Kent.

First and foremost, I want to say to the staff, department heads, and the board here. There's no good deed or work that goes unrecognized, so it's greatly appreciated for all the events that have taken place that they were successful and the ones that are coming are going to be successful. And also, too, thanks for the volunteers as well. I want to thank the residents that attended the meeting here physically and the ones that watched virtually. I want to say on the 26th of last month, the Rowan cabarrus mpo tac meeting was attended by myself and mr miller um also to this past what was it last weekend east spencer and the town of landis had their 125th anniversary and we were able to as a board go to support our neighboring towns and i believe that's important because when we do things we want others to come visit us as well so With that being said, I also was at the street dancing event that occurred here at the town hall this past Saturday. It was a very enlightening event and just good to see the residents and people from out of town that came to support the event and just excited about the growth that is taking place here in this town. And one thing I'm going to say is when I first desired to come aboard this council, It's important for us to have growth. It's important for us to beautify what we have already and what is coming. Because if we don't, the town will decay. So with that being said, we want to make sure that we're making it brighter and better for those that come after us. I hope everyone has a blessed evening. And again, residents, please do come to the meetings. Please do bring your concerns. You know, we have open comments. You're able to speak. You have three minutes to speak. And again, don't hesitate to stop if you see me or one of my fellow constituents here or just to address your concern. Be it good, bad, ugly or indifferent. We're here. We're here to serve. And I just want everybody to have a blessed night. Thank you, Mr. Muhammad.

I don't have any comments, but just when we thought we were done, I realized that there's one item that we need to go back and do related to the rezoning that we considered. We did not adopt a motion for a statement of consistency and reasonableness. Ms. Sledge let me down, but I realized it. So if we can go back to item 15, and we will entertain, since we did approve the rezoning, we will entertain a motion for the statement of consistency and reasonableness.

I can find it again.

I'd like to make a motion that we accept the ordinance 26-12, rezoning of partials 0-4-0-3-4-0-0-4, located at St. John's, from single family residence to 3.00 unit acres, SFR-3 to residential main street transition, RMST zoning classification.

All right, so we have already considered that motion. We do need to consider the second. or statement of consistency and reasonableness. The long one.

Do you want me to read it?

Sure.

Mr. Mayor, in regard to... Ordinance 2612, I move to adopt a statement of consistency and reasonableness stating that we find that this rezoning is consistent in general with the town's comprehensive land use plan for requirements of North Carolina General Statute 160D-605A, said plan stating specifically, quote, dash area north of hawkenstown road comma east and south of seventh street and west to salisbury e t j border includes a mixture of small and medium-sized parcels with limited residential development if combined and redivided and provided with municipal water and sewer, this could be prime area for higher density residential development and annexation, end quote. We further find that this rezoning to be reasonable in all ways as prescribed by North Carolina General Statutes 160D-605B, this rezoning will be beneficial to the citizens of the town of Spencer.

Okay, so there is a motion for that statement of consistency and reasonableness from Ms. Sledge. Is there a second? Second. Second by Mr. Mohamed. Any discussion? All in favor? Okay. All opposed? And that statement is approved. With that, I don't believe we have a need for executive session this evening. So we have reached the end of our agenda, assuming that there is a motion to adjourn. Motion by Ms. Moody. Second by Ms. Stanley. All in favor? All right, all opposed? We stand adjourned. Thank you all.