Town Council - Regular Meeting

13th Stallings Town Council meeting. I'd like to start off with an invocation, please.

Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to serve the town of Stallings. We just ask that you give us wisdom and make good decisions on behalf of the citizens of Stallings. We mourn for the loss of Senator Graham for our neighboring state, South Carolina. We just ask, Lord, that any disagreements we have on the council would be seasoned with civility and respect. We ask that you just guide us in our proceedings. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag the meeting to order we'll start off with public comments and we have Kathy Finochi but you might be wanting to speak at the public hearing right okay so we'll call you for the public hearing time any speakers for public comment for tonight yes yes come up to the podium your name thank

My name is Bob Rahilly, 73. I reside at 5950 Stevens Mill Road, and I'm here to talk about the RV occupancy issue. On January 12th of 2025, my house burned down with me in it and rendered me with nowhere to live. So I was in the ICU for three months, got out, went through rehab, and it's been a long trip. But I'm glad to say I'm back in the game. I think I'm 99% back. I got a message from one of my neighbors today indicating that there was going to be a meeting concerning the RV occupancy rules. I feel like I'm probably the target of those rules because I live in an RV on my property. So just for clarification, I wanted to bring forth what I think is kind of out of whack in these rules that are printed in red. Specifically, it says permit may be issued for a period not to exceed 90 days, add one extension up to 90 days, may be granted if property owner demonstrates reasonable progress. This is for anybody that's had a hardship. I certainly did. The problem I have with this 12.10-1 occupancy proposed rule that the staff is recommending is the 90 days plus 90 is essentially almost absurd. I spent the first 90 days in the hospital Second 90 days figuring out where to live Waiting at least six months before I got a settlement from the insurance It took a year before Union County installing would even allow us to tear down the burned-up house so Been working day and night trying to get a new structure built well I had to get permits, Stallings demanded all kind of new information on the property, which we had just built the first house two years before, so nothing really changed on the property in two years. So it's just crazy to think that you can settle with the insurance company, find an architect to build, design your new house, Get an engineer to approve the plans. Get the county and Stallings to approve the plans. Go through all the rigmarole they put you through and find a general contractor. and actually start the construction of the house. That can't be done in 90 days, much less the additional 90 that you're granting there. You're talking six months total. It's a physical impossibility. So what I would like to say is I think that needs to be altered. We've done our best, bought that property eight years ago, It was the biggest eyesore on Stevens Mill Road. I personally, for three years, cleaned it up with my bare hands, made it look very nice. All my neighbors and people in Shannon Morrow commented that we improved the property, improved the whole neighborhood, and we're continuing to do so and want to make that whole area, our property, proud of people on Stallings Road. Contribute quite a bit of my tax money to what we're doing. So that's where I stand on it. And I just want to know My RV has been there for well over 60 days. So Am I gonna catch hell because I've exceeded this document as soon as you guys sign it into law tonight So, that's that's my two cents worth thank you whooped your name again I

What was your name again?

Bob Rahilly, R-A-H-I-L-L-Y.

And is that NASCAR fame?

Yes.

Okay.

Steven knows his cars. Huh? Steven knows his cars.

Yeah, 14 years of it, been still doing it. Still doing it? That's how I make my living. Oh, really? Yes. Now he's going to want to tour your garage.

Yeah.

Come on, open book.

And if I may, I drive by your property every day, and it brings a smile to my face to see that it's being rebuilt, and it looks great.

Yeah, that new house looks awesome.

Did anybody see it eight years ago? Did not. Yes. Do you remember what it looked like? Not especially. I saw it, but beyond that, I don't. Trucks, vans, piles of trash, broken down fence, terrible.

Well, we appreciate your turning it around and We're sensitive to your issue. We'll figure it out when it comes up in our agenda tonight.

Okay. Thanks for hearing me out. Thank you. Thank you. Come see me.

That's my old truck out there. Any other speakers for public comments tonight? All right. Hearing none, moving on to the consent agenda. Staff is asked to take the item C, lake drive bridge replacement phase one approval off and add it to the regular agenda, which I would like to add that to 8A. Since Kevin will already be up there then, that makes a good time. And any other changes from council?

Do we need a motion?

I do, there's no other changes.

I move that we take item C from the consent agenda. I think we're just approving the consent agenda now.

Agenda approval is down here, so we'll make that move later, right? You just want to. You're right.

You want me to wait until we go to the.

Well, we are pulling it off, but then we're going to approve the A and B on the consent agenda.

What? You're making a motion to approve those two items.

I got it. Okay. I move that we approve Consent Agenda A and B. Second. Okay.

I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Unanimous. All right. Thank you very much. Got it. Move on to reports. I'm happy to announce I went to Raleigh a couple weeks ago, a month ago maybe by now, and spoke with our local contingent up there twofold, partly on Centralina's issues and partly on any municipality regarding the property tax issues and other land use issues. I got a better understanding of the land use ordinances that they were, statutes they were working on, and I was able to add $150,000 or receive $150,000 out of the current state budget coming back to Stallings for capital needs. So that'll be coming. I don't know what the process is to cash get that to put it in here but we will have 150 unexpected dollars that work on a capital a capital item the other issue is that I have recently is central line is can remember if I mentioned this the last go-around but our executive director is resigned and has resigned and will be moving on in the end of middle of September and If you have any thoughts on Centralina services that you want to talk about for the next executive director, let me know. I'm the chairman of the Centralina Board of Directors. And that concludes it from my report. Stephen.

Council. I don't have anything to add tonight, sir. Nothing, Mayor.

Two items. Last Tuesday, when I was out and about, I was glad to be able to stop by Chalk the Walk at the municipal park across the street. Caught up with Eunice and Tori and saw a lot of the kids who were taking a break from the splash pad from one to two out there. It's unfortunate I'm usually gone on the weekends when their events are being held, so I was happy to be able to stop by. Did not know that Eunice was as talented an artist as she is. There's A great turtle chalking on the sidewalk, which may have now sadly been erased by the rain today. But really appreciate all the time and effort and energy and enthusiasm that goes into. those events from the Parks and Rec staff. So thanks. That was really cool to see. And still have been working with the Neighborhood Association in Hunley Creek to try and get their yards back into acceptable shape from the utility right-of-way work that's been done by the internet companies that are putting in their lines there. So still a work in progress. Obviously, the grass is not going to grow back as much as folks would like it at this time of year. But Alex has been very helpful in terms of holding those companies to account and making sure that they do repair the damage that's been done in a variety of yards in that neighborhood.

I'll just follow up on Mike's comments real quickly. My yard was one of the ones that there was a utility strike from the boring for the fiber, and it struck my water line, and it was leaking into my yard, and they did come and restore it. The people I dealt with with Union Water and with the Kinetics contractors were all very professional and did a great job, and I really appreciate the efforts. Who paid for the water lost? It was on the roadside of the meter. You have a nice green grass. No, I had mud. That's a shame. Yeah. But again, we're talking about what Mike said with the, you know, grass isn't going to grow this time of year, but they are going to, they agreed that they would come back in the fall and address the grass at that point when it has a better chance of growing. Thank you.

So, Mayor, I've got one report tonight, and I'll try to keep this in. It's a complicated issue, but I'll try to keep it succinct. As you're serving as chair of Centralina, I'm serving this year as chair of CRTPO, Regional Transportation Board. Many of you have seen in the news debate and discussion over the future of I-77 South. Let me give you a quick background and give you a preview of sort of what's happened and what's coming up in the ensuing months. Briefly, the I-77 South Toll Lane projects or managed lanes projects has been on the books for 12 or so years. More recently in 2024, when I was serving as vice chair, our board approved, as we're required to do by state law, a funding mechanism, a private party to manage those toll lanes, much like the project on I-77 North. That is, in itself, not without controversy. We did so as a board unanimously because it's the only way to fund that project. It's a $3.4, $3.5 billion project. The state allows $600 million a year for funding. So it became pretty clear that that was the only way to fund the project. In the news more recently, though, there was a vote at the Charlotte City Council first part of May that directed their representative after much community outreach and much community outcry, some with neighborhood groups, some with those who don't like tolls, and some who harken back to some racial policies back in the 60s and 70s when the road was built the first time, were successful in getting the city council in a really close, unexpected vote to switch their support for the managed lanes project. I would argue without full understanding of what they were doing. I don't mean that as a dispersion. I mean, because they were calling for a 60-day, six-month pause, state and federal law don't allow such an action. That action would require the project to be pulled and removed, and the $600 million would be leaving our region to go other places. Following that, because of weighted voting at our Regional Transportation Board where Charlotte controls 42% of the vote based on a loose per capita voting structure, it's virtually impossible to outvote Charlotte. Charlotte was joined by a few other municipalities, Matthews, the MTC, we'll talk about that later tonight, Metropolitan Transit Commission, Mecklenburg County, Davidson, Cornelius, and Huntersville all voted to rescind support following the City Council and Monroe and Union County. And that led to where we are today with the project at risk of being canceled. Last week, the governor approved the budget, which had a very interesting clause in there. It's been in the news. You may have read it. That would require repayment of money expended by the state following the October 24th approval by CRTPO to proceed down the project. They got the green light to proceed with a third-party private partnership. Once they started spending money, their logic is now, unilaterally pulled support after we've expended money, so we're entitled our money back. Only, though, interestingly for those municipalities that at that meeting voted to rescind support, Stallings is not one of those. I voted in support representing our board here. The governor's budget... set a 90-day period, what would be between now and the 1st of October, for any member of CRTPO to recant their vote, rescind their vote, reverse their vote to pledge support for the project. So we're headed towards some discussion Wednesday night in August, probably for a vote in September. You'll see a lot of news about it. There'll be a lot of questions about his stylings on the hook to repay. Any money or Powell bill funds rescinded or projects delayed in our community? The answer is no. What will likely happen is there'll be some conversation with Monroe and Mint Hill. I didn't mention Mint Hill earlier. They voted in the negative. and others to determine what their board would like to do to continue to oppose the structure of managed lanes or to be on the hook for reimbursing the state. So it's fascinating and it's interesting. So if you have any questions about that, feel free to let me know, but I'll be presiding over those meetings throughout the fall and hopefully have a resolution by the end of the year.

When is that next meeting, you said?

Wednesday.

This coming Wednesday.

There's also a to-be-decided question of the legality of that clause in the budget, right?

There's been some opinions by lawyers on either side that say it's valid and it's invalid, so I don't know. Yeah, there may be a lawsuit coming. We're not party to that as a town, nor at risk. That's my long report. Sorry.

That's right. It's very informative, and thank you for your work on CARPO. Exactly. Yep. Believe me, I know what kind of work that was. I went that one time, I'm like, I am so glad you're doing it, not me. Lori.

I don't have anything, but I would like to piggyback on Mike's. Fairview, where I live, is also having issues with the Kinetic and the other company. So probably everybody's going to be blasting the town

If I may add on that as well, just since it's not an agenda item, but I appreciate our town attorney, Melanie Cox, has done a lot of research on this at my request. I don't know if anybody else has about what actions residents might take or the town might take. And really what it boils down to is that if your property is damaged, the town says that it has to be repaired. within the town's right-of-way, but there's also the separate legal question of what is the individual property owner's right or responsibility in terms of going after a utility company that does damage to their yard. And so the way that we have it written is that it has to be repaired to the town's satisfaction within the right-of-way, but as far as personal property that's damaged, Unfortunately, there's a limit on what we can do as a town, and it would come down to the property owner making that claim on their own behalf to get damaged property fixed in certain circumstances. That's a very distilled version of it, but is that more or less accurate? Yes. Okay, thanks. Thank you.

Alex, town manager and departments?

Yes, thank you. Good evening. No report tonight, sir.

What?

No report.

Any department heads?

No, sir. I don't believe so.

Surely you guys want to get up and speak. Okay.

Oh, all right.

Never mind. Next item, agenda approval.

One item. It's in front of you, the budget line item transfer list. It should be in front of you. Yeah. That's the routine intra-departmental transfers we do. This one was for June, so there was a lot of moving around at the end of the fiscal year to make sure everything was proper and appropriate.

Jesse, I have one quick question for Jesse. We all got an audit questionnaire thingy. What's the deadline on that? The end of the month. Okay. I printed it off. Filled it out, set it on my computer keyboard to not forget to bring tonight. It's still there.

If you have a way to just scan it at home or take a picture and email it directly to Maddie, you can do that.

I will do that because it's like there. Appreciate that. Wow. Now next up would be agenda approval. I suggest we approve the agenda as amended.

I got one more thing.

So may I add one item, Mayor? Another CRTPO item, this one not controversial, and I'd like to add approval of an amended MOU for the CRTPO. This should take five minutes. I'll explain it when we get there.

I want to make that number 9A after your pickleball question.

All right.

All right. I'll make a motion to approve the agenda with line item C from the consent agenda becoming 8A, and then a new item for our CRPTO discussion being line item 9A. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Unanimous. Excellent. Now, next up is the Lawyer's Road Commercial. Before we do that, quick question for Mac, our land use attorney. Would this be an appropriate time for you to briefly explain how these next items came to today and explain it into the record, please? Sorry to put you on the spot. I was supposed to email you.

Not a problem. Mac McCarley, attorney at law, doing your land use work. continued the public hearing on a couple of items at your last meeting because there were only four of the six council members present and for all of the items that were continued it would have required all four of those sitting members to vote yes. There's a due process question about whether it is fair to vote one of those items without telling the applicant that the voting rules are such that it would take all four members present to pass their item. So we informed the people who were present, and most of them chose to wait until they had a full board, as you have tonight, all six.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Now we'll move up to Bridge. Thank you, Bridge. I'll reopen the public hearing for the Lawyers Road Commercial Project and hear from staff.

Sorry, I wanna zoom in so you can see it. Good, okay. So this is conditional rezoning, application CZ26.0202, which is Lawyers Road Commercial Office. Again, Lawyers Road Commercial and Office is a proposed non-residential commercial and office development on approximately 1.23 acres located at 14721 Lawyers Road. The request seeks to rezone the property from single family residential one to conditional zoning mixed use two. We had a neighborhood meeting on March 31st. Our planning board meeting was on May 19th. Our first town council hearing was on June 22nd, which was continued to today. I'm just gonna quickly go over the current site plan that we have. Some of the conditions have been changed from the last time that you saw it. We have an additional prohibited use, which is tattoo parlors, which has been added to the conditions. And we have also added a condition for an architectural commitment, which states that the building will be brick and follow the style and appearance of the shopping center across Lawyers Road. In addition, this site plan does not show, but the conditions do include a five foot sidewalk and increased buffering adjacent to the courtyards on Emerald Lake HOA property, which is over here, which will be a 28 foot wide type B buffer with a six foot wooden fence. Does anyone have any questions?

I do have a question, and this may be a question for Kevin, just because it's regarding streets, about traffic on the road. I know this would not meet the threshold for a TIA, but Kevin, were you able to find out anything regarding possible sign placement? And I know the answer may be it depends on whether this passes and it's out of our control since it's not a town-controlled road, but just wanted to ask about that, because I had received some questions about that.

Yeah, I've done a little bit of digging, haven't been able to fully dive into it quite yet. Ultimately, there are NCDOT driveway manuals, the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, excuse me, devices, some ASTRO manuals, which just dictate guidelines and standards on roadway and geometric design, and guidelines on sign placement and things like that, types of signs. I know there is not a specific The MUTCD states that warning signage can be placed there. However, at this point, I don't have any exact language or exact guidelines on that quite yet. Still looking into that. But ultimately, I will say. As part of NCDOT's driveway permit review for this site, they will look at all that. Intersection site distance, make sure site distance is clear on both sides, which is contingent on speed as well. And if they believe warning signage is warranted, then those will be implemented.

So their workflow process is not to do anything until a parcel is approved?

Until they receive a driveway permit application. Okay. Correct. Yes, sir.

That answers my question. Thank you. Yes, sir.

I have a question about, it's probably for Melanie or Mac. When they're putting a stub in on this property to the next properties for the future, do they have to do something now? Is there a legal, you know, we're just going to say on the map they have to let the easement or right away or something. But does it have to be, you know, one of the legalese?

Like a condition. What? Like an added condition to say that the connection would be allowed if the adjacent parcel were to be developed.

Okay. And is that enough just to say that?

And it should be recorded on the plot as well.

Okay. So that's enough. Okay. Did you want to add that as a condition? It is the the stub is there so it would be required.

Yeah, it's just not written I'd like to see it on the map so that yeah, it's never Come here.

Yeah, it's right here. If you want to take a look that connection stub right here. I

I think her question might be, is it in the text, conditional rezoning notes? I see in blurry number five something about the connection. Is that what we're talking about?

Let me see.

I think it just says that there is a connection stub. Okay, I can't read it. That it would be.

So it is on there, 3B? Yes.

Okay.

But already is. Yes. And on the map.

A connection stop will be provided.

Condition. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah.

The developer is also here, if you have any questions for him. Or the applicant, sorry.

I think we're good. Right? Anything down there?

Nope.

Nope. Good.

I'm good.

All right. Then we'll hear from the public. We have Kathy Finochi. Is that pronounced correctly?

No.

Finocchi. Gotcha. Come on up and speak, please.

Yes, I'm Kathy Finocchi, and I'm the lucky president of the courtyards at Emerald Lake. Yes, you are. Like I said in the beginning, we're not opposed to the development of because that's what's gonna happen. I lived in South Park 35 years and I know how Charlotte runs things and so I know it's gonna happen. The only thing we ask is after seeing the, Aaron did such a good job with the presentation, all the notes, the backup that went with the agenda. So I went through everything and I saw his drawings of the building and the bakery You know, it's pretty impressive. So, you know, at this point, me, I'm gonna throw up the white flag for the neighborhood and say, you know, we're more or less okay with it. The only thing we ask is, I know we have an extended buffer and I know we've had a fence. The only thing we'd still like to see is maybe some of tall evergreens that would grow fast because a six-foot fence It's not gonna, you know, not too good for screening. And I know it's not Stallings' problem that the county came through and took out a 30-foot swath of trees for their sewer buffer, which those trees were never supposed to be touched. So, you know, it's just kind of one thing's led to another. So, you know, I'm excited about the bakery. I don't know about anybody else. I wish we could walk to it. I have written Kevin a note about maybe connecting the small part of the sidewalk to the Emerald Lake Golf. There's about 100 foot that needs to be finished there. And then you could get to the crosswalk. But then you'd still, he's on the other side of the road. So anyway, but, you know, just like to say a little bit, Tall extra screening in the back there. And I think we'd probably be good to go.

Thank you very much. Mayor, I'm confused. Yes.

I thought I saw 235 feet of separation between the parcel line and the...

Yes, I can...

I'm very... I can show you... And 30 feet of trees were removed, but I'm still... 200 feet, are they just bare?

Yeah, so... I'll zoom in right here. It might be easiest to see here. So this triangle parcel is the parcel that is in the application. This whole area here is all trees. What we're talking about that was removed is a small area right here that is about 25 to 30 feet, depending on the exact portion of it. So it's about 25 or 30 feet of trees that were removed here from Union County for their sewer easement. But again, he is going to add a 28-foot buffer here.

Okay, so 200 feet are trees. Correct. Are they just not evergreen, so they lose their leaves in the winter?

Correct. Is that the issue? I'm not sure the exact type of trees. Yeah.

Okay, thank you. That's all I had. And if I'm not mistaken, isn't that big 200-foot swath owned by the HOA?

It is, correct, yes.

Oh, they own that?

Yeah.

All right. Is that developable?

Not unless they did another conditional zoning for it. So they would have to do like a conditional zoning on top.

Is that a sidewalk running, that little, right to the left of the, to the right of the parcel number of that?

Right here.

Yeah, what is that?

It's a small like walkway. I think that kind of just comes down.

This HOA owned walkway through their property. Could they not connect through there to the parcel on property they own? their expense, of course, but I'm just curious that...

I think they could. If they wanted to, they... We're kind of up a hill. That's the problem. We're kind of above him. Yeah. So, like, from her porch or several of the porches, you can see down. Okay.

It's not even. Yeah, I'm just... I'm not talking about the trees so much now. Even though I'm satisfied, that's a huge buffer, much more than we ever see, and I'm a little bit disturbed that... We would add more requirements on a small business developer. It bothers me a little bit, but when you've got 200 feet. I was just making the point to staff that it wouldn't be inexpensive, but it could be a nice connection to Lawyers Road and the coffee shop if you extended that sidewalk.

They could, the HOA, if they chose to, they could.

Were you suggesting like a partnership to do that?

No. No, no, no.

I was just checking.

I couldn't follow the sidewalk. I wish we could walk there. And I'm like, well, you can certainly walk there. Sure. But it requires some improvements on the HOA land.

Close the public hearing and council deliberation and vote.

So last week, I went, Brad, onto that small walking trail in the back of the neighborhood and understanding that I visited at the time where the tree cover is thickest and that I was not on anyone's porch, so not necessarily looking down, but I did not see through the property line. And I think... that the applicant in this case has not only added buffer and a dense buffer, not the densest buffer, but like you said, I think that the fence as well certainly helps. And I like this project because having seen it first on subcommittee, I was not a yes on it, but I do appreciate the applicant's continued willingness to hear council's comments on it and adapt to those. And I said this to Councilwoman Watowitz earlier this afternoon, that when I first met with Mayor Scholl last year, considering running for this seat, We, both living in Shana Mara, said, well, where should we meet? We don't really have a space to meet. We met at McDonald's. It's not a bad place to meet, but it's not a place that I have any affinity for because there's thousands of McDonald's across the country. This would be the only type of restaurant in our town to be like this. And so I appreciate it for what it could bring as, to borrow a phrase, a third space of it's not home, it's not work, but it's somewhere in between. And it's a relatively low traffic use as well. It is a busy corridor. And that's why the question that I asked to Kevin was about, you know, what traffic improvements can be made, which are unfortunately out of our hands, but that it's zoned single family. I don't know that anybody is going to be building a single family home on that lot. So I think this is a nice addition. And, and I appreciate what the applicant has done in terms of their vision and their willingness to work with town staff and the council on making it the best that it can be.

Thank you. It may be small, but it is achieving our goal of increasing our commercial base over residential. So it is small, but it's in the right direction.

Just because it is in my district, I echo Mr. Cousins' sentiment and points was outside the small committee meeting I wasn't necessarily a no immediately or yes but I I WAS, I SAW THE POTENTIAL THERE, AND I AM SUPPORTIVE OF THIS. I THINK AS STATED, THE APPLICANT HAS DONE A LOT TO MEET OUR CONTINUED DEMANDS OR REQUESTS, I SHOULD SAY. I ALSO AGREE IT IS A HIGH TRAFFIC ROAD. THAT WAS A CONCERN OF MINE FROM THE START THAT SAID YOU KNOW, WE DON'T CONTROL THE ROADS, AND I COULD ALSO SEE CONCERN OF IF YOU PUT THREE HOMES THERE, YOU'D HAVE THREE SEPARATE DRIVEWAYS. THIS AT LEAST CONDENSES THEM, AND WE HAVE THAT CONNECTIVITY POTENTIALLY IN THE FUTURE TO THE ADJOINING LOT, WHICH I APPRECIATE THE APPLICANT AGREEING TO THAT. SO JUST I'M IN FAVOR OF IT AND LOOKING FORWARD TO SOME EUROPEAN BAKERY, BAKED ITEMS.

Well, council, somebody make a motion, please.

Mayor, I move that we approve CZ26.02.02, Lawyers Road Commercial.

Could you include the statement?

And find out it's consistent with our...

Consistency and reasonableness? Yes, with the statement of consistency and reasonableness included. Thank you.

Second.

Excellent. How's the council vote? Aye. Unanimous. Welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bridget. All right, next up, RV occupancy. I will reopen the public hearing. I didn't catch Bob's comments until after he started, and I decided not to interrupt him and let him speak earlier, but he was the public comments that would be on this item.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. So this item was presented at the June 22nd meeting for RV occupancy. I can provide a brief summary to the original proposed amendment, or if you prefer, I can move into the revisions that were changed at your request. Would you like a summary, or do you want me to go into the revisions of what was requested at the last meeting?

Do you guys need the summary, especially the ones who weren't here? If you don't mind, a brief summary would be helpful. Sure.

Yeah, thank you.

So there was a proposed amendment. Staff is proposing an update to Article 12.10 of the Stallings Development Ordinance regarding the occupancy of recreational vehicles. The purpose of the amendment is to provide greater clarity, consistency, and enforceability in regulating the occupancy. of those RVs. The proposed changes are intended to support residential property appearance, neighborhood compatibility, and the overall health and safety of the public. Currently, some of the challenges that I'm seeing with this ordinance is RV occupancy is up to 180 days per calendar year with no more than 90 consecutive days. Intermittent occupancy creates enforcement challenges. You know, you're trying to track those times if they're in and out of you know, the RV. Staff has to rely on repeated site observations and complaint-based monitoring to determine, you know, those occupancy periods. And it has resulted in difficulties and inconsistencies with enforcement. So the original proposed amendment would prohibit occupancy of RVs on all properties throughout the town. It would establish clear enforcement standards, promote the health and safety and welfare of the community as well. So at council's direction on June 22nd, 2026, during that meeting, council requested that staff include a temporary hardship occupancy provision. Staff has incorporated this provision into the proposed amendment to address situations where a dwelling becomes temporarily uninhabitable due to circumstances outside of the property owner's control. So that temporary hardship occupancy provision would include the following. It allows limited temporary RV occupancy through a temporary use permit authorized by the development administrator. It applies only when a dwelling becomes uninhabitable due to fire, natural disasters, or some other documented emergency. The permit duration would initially be approved for 90 days, with one additional 90 days of an extension there, if reasonable progress is being made during that time. It would require documentation, verification that the dwelling is uninhabitable by the fire marshal, a building official, or an insurance company. Additional requirements would include RV occupancy. It must comply with applicable utility and public health regulations. The permit is non-transferable. Permit automatically expires once the repairs are made and the reconstructed dwelling is ready to be moved into. And the development administrator may impose reasonable conditions to protect the public health and safety. Staff does recommend approval of the updated Article 12.10 amended as presented. This amendment does establish clear enforcement standards while providing limited hardship provision for residents experiencing documented a documented emergency. These proposed changes do add flexibility for the property owners that are facing these temporary displacements.

How many of these have you been seeing in town for the last, like, I don't know, year, two years?

Since I've been here and plus my previous time with the town, I'm aware of one, which was Mr. Raley's property.

Okay. Since this doesn't exactly solve his problem, and he is the exception so far to this, would it be, and he had a large enough lot, and he wasn't in an HOA, certainly had a large enough lot to do this and not be an eyesore to, would it be, and of course council would have to decide this, that we have a limitation of one additional extension. What if we eliminated one and said additional extensions may be granted, Etc the property owner demonstrates would that solve our problem? Well, it's not really a problem if there's only one but his problem of nothing that moves that fast in a fire and Certainly the hospital stay and certainly getting a builder The whole works took him probably almost two years.

I think both the houses that Burton in Kerry Green's, it took two years. And the first six months was purely the back and forth with the insurance and the fire marshal. I mean, they hadn't even solved anything by that point.

I think we need to be very generous with the exception on this in an extreme situation. And this seems too limiting in the way it's worded to me.

Just based off of his experience and the experience of the two people I know in Cary Greens, I mean, if we're just thinking about fire, I mean, one of the houses in Cary Greens hasn't even been rebuilt yet. And the other one, I mean, it was almost a year, I think, when I reached out to Alex, and they were still back and forth with the fire department after a year. So I do feel that it's pretty restrictive just based off of just my personal experience.

And I would like to ask, are they occupied? Are the RVs on those properties in Cary Green specifically? I'm unaware of if they are, but just curious.

There isn't, but at the same token, talking about the gentleman that came here tonight.

Yes, sir.

I mean, his timelines, what I'm trying to establish is his timelines, based off of what I've seen, is pretty accurate. I mean, I would think two years, I mean... Like I said, both the ones in Cary Greens, the one that got rebuilt was a good, I mean, two years. And the one that's currently burnt down, I mean, it was longer than this whole period here we talked about before the house even got demolished. Because, I mean, they wouldn't release the paperwork on it. So...

And I would like to clarify, and Max, correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Raley's, he was issued a, was it a construction trailer permit? So his situation would not really apply to this here because he was issued a permit for that construction trailer to be on site, which is there, what's the timeframe on that?

Do you know? It's just restrictive. I just don't know at the top of my head.

Gotcha. So I would like to add that that is something a little different in his situation to where this, I think, would be more so to partial damage to a home. I would like to also add that most production and spec homes in this area take four to six months. from start to finish to be built.

This is custom, yeah.

I understand that. And that's where that is a little different, but that would be a case-by-case basis there.

I mean, it's mostly the paperwork side of it before the actual construction.

Can you explain the difference of what you just mentioned, a construction trailer versus an RV, what the difference is in terms of occupancy?

So it's being treated, their RV I think right now is being treated, or my understanding is that the RV is being treated as the construction trailer for the home. The office space that you will. Is that accurate? If I'm misspeaking, please correct me.

You're not misspeaking. Technically, the RV currently on site We're allowing him to use it as a construction trailer because the house burned down. He's living in it, and he's using it as a site to, you know, a catalyst as construction, right? He knew that there was a hardship there. We wanted to allow him an opportunity to rebuild his home. Technically, it's not completely written verbatim, as to what I'm saying, but again, a hardship. And we did allow him a construction trailer.

So it's not an RV. It's a construction trailer?

What makes this RV a construction vehicle?

Because this was, you did what you could with what we had to make things work. That's what I'm hearing.

Or not allow it.

Yeah.

So he would have absolutely no leniency for the hardship whatsoever.

Well, this temporary hardship addition to the proposal doesn't help him at all.

We need to give steps like open leniency in an extreme situation.

Yeah, like I suggested before, just to eliminate the word one and just say additional extensions can be granted if they're moving along.

Yeah, they have to show due diligence and, you know, that they're making progress in the permitting process. The second red paragraph.

Matt, would that solve your problem of enforcement if he could apply for an extra 90 days if the house is still, would that solve the problem we're trying to solve?

Yes, I mean, I don't have any issue with that time frame. We were just kind of going by what. what we were able to find as far as how long it would take to rebuild something.

It's taken me over a year to get a certain building permit and then to get engineering, you know, you're waiting months on an engineer to approve a plan and then you're waiting on inspection process that, you know, I've had custom jobs that have taken over two years, you know, and it's not, because anybody was trying to delay anything. We're trying to get it done as quick as we can, and it's taken two years. So that's not an unrealistic situation that was described to us tonight.

Okay, so we've got 90 days, and then they need another 90 days. First of all, we could make it 120 days, and even after 120 and 120, can't max... something in here saying that Max can approve because the hardship is ongoing or it's still going on. Can we put something in there just so that in this man's case, He can get 120, and he can get 120, and then he can get, you know, keep approving it.

So what I'm understanding is not to put a limit on how many times it can be extended. Correct. Yeah. I don't see a problem with that, but...

I don't have any examples of that.

But, yeah.

I would like to just see 180 days, because 90 days... I mean, if you're talking about damage to a structure, in my opinion, you're not even going to get remotely started in 90 days. So I would just say 180 days, and then additional extensions can be for another 180 days.

What I might suggest, avoid it being open-ended. I could see, certainly not Mr. Bob or anyone else that we know, but we want to avoid a situation where someone abuses the open-ended nature of it. So, what I heard a couple years, what I might suggest, and Mr. Dillard, Mr. Shong would like your feedback, is maybe we just, I heard two years, one 365-day period with an additional period of up to 365 days. That would be a two-year period, and that would avoid a situation where the staff were open-ended without any criteria of which to really kind of approve or deny or the ability to investigate whether the hardship is still ongoing or not.

I certainly think that second line there has to demonstrate that there's been some progress made. I mean, I think that needs to stay in there because that's your enforceable capability there.

That's my question for Melanie is how do we define reasonable progress? Because that's certainly a point that could be argued if Matt's wanted to say, no, you have not made any reasonable progress. We're denying you an extension.

That would be up to staff, right, their interpretation of that. And I think if the applicant can show, right, I've paid the contractors, I've applied for the permits, and everything's kind of out of their hands at that point, they're doing what they have control over, then I think staff would say that that's reasonable progress.

I agree.

And there'd be a lot of paperwork involved. I think it said on your report somewhere that they have to keep giving you paperwork.

If they wanted to continue to get those extensions, yeah, they would have to show that it's been deemed uninhabitable, yes.

Sorry, Mr. Mayor, go ahead.

Do we need to send this back for a further revision, or can we do it here?

We can do it. I think at the heart of it, it's important. We don't want RVs parked in lots, people living there. Get it? Yeah. I think the only thing we're debating is the hardship. I think what the mayor's suggestion of just show documentation that it's still under construction, that it's uninhabitable by a building code, by the county, by a fire marshal. I don't care about the time limit, 90, as long as they come to the city or the town and get another extension.

Just eliminate the word one and say they're available, but you have to demonstrate that they're making reasonable progress, et cetera, et cetera.

All right. Change it to 180. Let's make the initial one long enough where they can get some stuff done at least.

I'm not even – I mean – Just trying to get a fence built. I'm not even sure I could prove to you in 90 days that I've submitted the right paperwork for my fence to get built.

So, John, would you support 120 days with future 90-day extensions?

I'm okay with what the manager suggested.

Yeah. What did he suggest?

365. Okay. If I may, may I ask our staff real quickly?

Mr. Chong, Mr. Diller, does that seem reasonable? Do you see any issues with 365 days? The open-ended nature of what was discussed before made me a little nervous.

Yeah, I would say staff didn't intend to add the hardship, so this is a test that we'd have to do. Okay.

Is the manager suggesting 365 days without an open-ender with extensions allowed?

One available extension.

With not open-ended either. Not open-ended as far as the proof of progress, reasonable progress.

If I may, just basically replacing the 90-day sections with 365 days.

So let's just take the case we had in front of us with Mr. Rahilly. His house burned in January of 2025. It's currently framed. I don't know how construction works on a timeline process, but somebody tell me if he'll be able to live in that house by January of 2027. Possibly. Possibly, but also possibly not. So that's two years. Then what does he do if, hypothetically, that next person has reached their two-year limit? Do we say, well, you got to go live in a hotel somewhere? Because that doesn't seem sensible either.

They just say, come to us and we'll decide, you know, if you're not comfortable after two years.

Additional extensions would require council approval? I think we're missing the point.

I might be missing the point. It feels like if it's uninhabitable due to fire, disaster, or other documented emergencies, and the fire marshal building official, insurance company, certify that he or she can't live there and he can produce documentation, we shouldn't worry about the open-ended nature of it until the house is built and occupiable. You got it, yeah. Occupiable. I'm okay with that.

They're not, it's not like they're, they want to.

They're not taking advantage. They're not trying to slow us down by any means. They're not the problems, I think. The hardship cases aren't the problems that you're having trouble documenting and causing you stress, I don't think.

Well, there has been an issue, not here, but I can tell you that in Fayetteville, North Carolina, one of my aunt's neighbors, their house burned. and they pulled a trailer up onto the lot, and they just, they made no progress on the house.

Okay, so we got that covered here. We got that covered here. Well, do, I mean, are we- Reasonable progress demonstrated by construction documents, people working on the site.

But if you don't have a time frame, how do you determine?

They're not making reasonable progress.

Progress within that time frame.

We'd have to have check-in documentation deadlines, basically.

I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

So we do need a time frame of some sort in there with periodic review.

If we're not, somebody could just say, well, my house burnt down. It's not livable. It's been 15 years, but it's still not livable.

WOULD IT HELP IF YOU MADE THE FIRST PERIOD 365 AND THEN LEFT THE EXTENSIONS AS AN OPEN ENDED ITEM?

90 DAY REVIEWS AFTER THAT. YEAH. THAT WOULD SEEM REASONABLE.

LET ME MAKE A MOTION.

I AGREE WITH THAT. I think 90 could be just a little too short because in three months, do you make, I mean, one permit review or something goes awry and you've made no progress. So I would say 365 days for your initial and then additional extensions up to 180 days may be granted. That's my. Make that a motion. That seems reasonable. Yeah. Make a motion.

All right.

I move approval of text amendment 26.05.02 with the change to 12.8. for the second paragraph, the temporary use permit may be issued for a period not exceeding 365 days. Additional extensions up to 180 days may be granted if the property owner demonstrates that reasonable progress is being made toward repairing or replacing the dwelling.

WITH THAT EDIT BEING MADE. AND ALSO THE STATEMENT OF CONSISTENCY AND REASONABLENESS, PLEASE.

AND THIS AMENDMENT IS CONSISTENT AND REASONABLE WITH TOWN STANDARDS AND, YEAH. AND COMPREHENSIVE LAND USE PLAN.

THANK YOU.

SO WE HAVE A MOTION ON THE FLOOR.

SO CAN I ASK A QUESTION? SO IT WAS... WE HAVE A MOTION ON THE FLOOR, THEN WE'LL GO TO No question.

Can you roll back up to that page? I apologize.

I just want to make sure that I heard the wording correctly. So it's additional extensions of up to 180 days?

Up to or just additional extensions of?

Up to is fine. That way it gives them the option to not do 180 if needed. All right. We have a motion on the floor. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Aye. All unanimous. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Council.

Hey, we appreciate your work. Thank you. But thank you. That's what we're here for.

Max and Mac, next up, evaluation of notification options. Hello, Council. That is a really heavy-looking display.

Okay. Hello. So last month, Council voted 3-1 in favor of this recommendation for the evaluation of mail notices, but it was not enough votes to pass the first reading, so that's why it's being brought back today. In my memo the council drafted at their annual treat an interest of Enhancing an identity of our town and they also expressed y'all also expressed interest of expanding our notification radius from 500 feet to 1,000 feet Just a little bit of a general overview the state statute recommend or enforces just mail notices to the adjacent property owners our Ordinance goes above and beyond to 500 feet mail notifications. And then just for some examples, municipal notifications like Indian Trail, they also do 500 foot mail notifications. Matthews does 100 foot mail notifications. And Waxhull does a combination of different feeds. So 600 for neighborhood meetings and then 300 for public hearings. We just do 500 feet. So we looked into the impact of a 1,000 foot radius. And I just wanted to kind of show you some examples. So I brought Pleasant Plains Town Center too. I put that in the memo as well. So we had two, a neighborhood meeting and a public hearing where staff mailed notices to 256 property owners twice. And I just wanted to kind of show you, it took staff around six hours to do both mail notices. One box is 500 feet, 500 mail notices. We have to mail and fold every single notice, as well as stamp them through our stamping machine. This is a box of a ream of paper that's 500. And then this Avery stamp book has about 600 labels. So it's almost the entire box of this, just for one rezoning. The reason I chose that one is all the parcels are very small. around the town center as well, so they reach a lot more parcels that we have to also mail notices. Additionally, stamps are around, I think, 74 cents each, and I think they're going up to, or 78 cents? Sorry, 72, I think. 78, and now it's going up to 82. 82 cents, but for example, it costs, the town $780 to mail all those notices, additionally with staff time. Me, Bridge, and Katie sat in my office for hours just folding paper. That's just for a 500-foot mail notice.

So you want a sorting machine?

I'm not requesting a sorting machine, but I just wanted to kind of go over that. It does take a lot of manpower, staff time, town resources to do these things. So I brought two recommendations to council. that I think are reasonable.

I don't wanna get unorganized.

But there it goes. One recommendation which did have the consensus of three council members last time was to maintain the 500 foot mail notice radius while providing homeowners associations with a broader area. So essentially adjacent to the 500 foot mail notice area. So if it's touching, so instead of just one parcel owner, I would go ahead and mail that HOA as well, the notice. That was my recommendation. Just knowing all of that, do you have any questions about the evaluation of the notification radius? State law requires 500? State law requires just the adjacent property owners to be mailed. We're already way over the minimum. Correct, yeah.

Do we have contact information for every homeowners association in town? We do. We try to keep that periodically up to date. Yes. The time now, like, do you feel like it's time well spent of, you described sitting in your office like that, of doing that?

I think so. We have good turnouts for council meetings. People are aware of all of our, we've had just with recent showings of conditional zonings, We've had a lot of public outreach for them.

So I wanted to ask you about item two, because I like both of these options of item one of reaching out to the HOAs, which you'll hope they'll be communicative, but you don't know, but it's another step on our behalf. But the expanded digital outreach, I'm not jumping ahead on you here, am I, in terms of what your options are? Okay, so this was just something that I like the idea of because I know that there's a staff plan in progress to begin in September about further digital outreach as well. So I'm just curious kind of what from, since you put this in the memo, what you think this would entail or what it would look like.

So if council chose this option, my recommendation would to come back to another council meeting after talking to our town manager and our assistant town manager about the notification options because we don't have that fully fleshed out. if council wanted to choose that direction, we would come back after researching that. We would also try to make it a tiered approach as well. So we wouldn't make it consistent across the board, but we don't think that every single rezoning would need all the notifications that some do, like for high profile cases, for example, usually apartments are high profile. Usually conditional zonings are high profile. I think general rezonings, you know, I think the 500 mil notice is usually sufficient. Those don't have as much of a turnout as a conditional zoning usually does.

Yeah, that's where I think the term higher impact projects deserves further scrutiny. If you're going to go back and look at it to determine what that is, whether it's by size, whether it's by type of, of, Rezoning that's happening, but I'm in favor of it.

I'm curious to know what everybody else thinks of one and two As presented on page 109 of the packet I like both options So for the Stevens mill project With it all of all the neighbors of Shana Mara that So it did touch

into Shana Mara about six or seven parcels into that, but those parcels off of Stevens Mill Road are larger in size. So they don't reach as many parcels, but it has the same radius of 500 feet. So I don't know the exact number of how many properties in Shana Mara received notification, but it went pretty, seven parcels deep at minimum to... Yes, for 500 feet. And it also got their HOA Association mail notice as well. Just for the 500 feet. If you did 1,000, it would reach almost into Mecklenburg County and well into Hemby Bridge.

What is there? Oh, the church?

Yeah, it goes that direction as well, yeah.

Okay.

Because it's a circumference of the. property for 500 feet.

We heard any feedback from, let's say, a more senior generation on, like, how they would react to, like, a digital approach to this. Because I made my, you know, I had a career in digital communication, so I, and the efficiency of it appeals to me. But I also, you know, understand that not every generation is there yet, even though I, you know, just spent last weekend with, you know, my 88-year-old father-in-law as he's, you know, scrolling through his phone and Facebook and everything. So I know it's getting there, but are we there yet is my question.

I have not talked to any individuals that, you know, like don't use Internet. We have a fully digital permitting process now as well that the process of people coming in just to do paper copies is very minimal. We do have a lot of people coming in for help, But I don't have the, I have not talked to anybody like that, but also don't receive many people that don't have a computer anymore at Town Hall. I'm sure there are a lot still in Stallings, but I haven't talked to them.

I'd say I'm kind of like of mind of Councilman Cousins that I could support either one of these, but my preference I think would be number two.

Max Stemm. Do folks who signed up for our distribution list get these as well?

What's it called? Not extended per state statute to things like this. Not to say we couldn't. I'm just saying that's not how it's.

Yeah. I remember the conversation. It felt to me that the. communication in wasn't so much about rezonings and going further though I like the HOA and I would be the fourth vote on that tonight if we vote it felt like it was town activities writ large such that if our database of those who subscribe to our sunshine list is broader more accessible on the front page of the website so that grows from 20% or 30%, and then it's added to this strategy, which would be digital. I think that solves a lot of our problems. I'm more concerned that you're spending six hours of how many people's staff time stuffing envelopes. Well, and then an aside, did the county's recent revamp of the GIS system change the ability to batch emails and addresses and all that? It added a few hours of work onto that. Is that something that... will continue, or are they fixing that? I can't imagine the only one dealing with that. Bridge, I remember you talking. They're not.

I've walked to the GIS management in Union County. They don't have grant plans to add that tool back to their mapping system, and we can't do that on our end.

That alone costs you a couple hours of having to, what do you do?

So we get a list of addresses. I don't know, I guess, would you explain the mail?

So we have to, so for something like Stevens Village that had multiple parcels, you would have to buffer each of those. So each of those has a 500-foot buffer. you would export each of those addresses to an Excel sheet, and then you have to go through and remove all of the duplicates that you had from there, and then put all of those into a template that you can put on an envelope. So you copy and paste all of it to that Avery, that little thing. Yeah, so you copy and paste all of them onto those so that you can put it onto an envelope.

You copy and paste each individual ones?

Correct.

You don't do a mail merge?

You can, but a lot of times the data that comes from the county doesn't work with the mail merge. I've tried it multiple times. Sometimes it works. It does sometimes, but when it's this large of a data set, a lot of times it doesn't work.

So we have a state minimum of 100 feet.

State minimum is adjacent to Marshalls, and our ordinance is 500.

So when we have an ordinance of 500, and if we miss somebody, do they have a right to complain, a legal right? We didn't comply with our own ordinance for 500-foot notifications.

We document every time we mail notices. We take pictures of all the mail notices. We also save all the addresses that we mailed out to. Once we put it in the mailbox, that's the U.S. Postal Service is in that hands. So it's really hard to document who's receiving.

What do you mean you take pictures of the notices? The notices or the envelopes?

The envelopes we print out. Like we put out a stack. We're mailing it out today. And then we save it with a file. One photo.

I'm sorry. All right. I feel like I'm in the weeds on this now, but that just feels so inefficient. It does. Should there be an investment in technology that solves this? Do you want to do it? Given that every municipality is going through this. Is Indian Trail doing a similar process?

It is hard because we can't. The county can keep up with. address records better than we can. They update their public available data set like every month. So we want to catch some people moving where they update their data set more often. And that would mean we would have to update our data set a lot more often.

But these aren't made to individuals by name. They're property owner at the address. Yeah. Okay. That's helpful. Okay.

Yeah.

I'd support the motion tonight and the staff recommendation, but I feel like we oughta have staff be creative about how to, not that you're not thinking about this when you're sitting with your stuff in envelopes, but there's gotta be a better way.

Don't you have a high school kid you could share?

We want planning staff to be over that because we wanna monitor who's making sure that every single letter is going out to the correct properties. So I know people have asked volunteers or the developer to do that, but planning staff really needs to be monitoring that because it's in our ordinance.

Well, I'll make a motion. Are you on a motion to approve, or did you want to do more digital investigation?

I would be open to approving Item 1 with the return of Item 2 at some point after staff has had a chance to evaluate the workload concerns for it.

Okay, that's the motion on the floor. I'll make a motion to approve the change to the public notification to include HOAs in addition to the 500 mailing radius and ask staff to report back on some digital ways to improve efficiency. Okay. Perfect. Can you augment that to efficiencies overall? Yeah, that's what I would.

Yeah, just because, I mean, if there really is something that we can do to kind of make it a little easier, even if that's like, I don't think Kinko's exist anymore. I think it's with FedEx. Whether or not they could print those out faster, quicker, cleaner. There are some companies that do it.

Or if there's a budget-related thing that you could bring to us that could be done in-house, that as well.

All that's included in the motion. Second. All in favor? Aye. That's unanimous. Thank you, Max. I'm still here. You're done for the night.

I think I have one more.

Oh, wrong one. I made my notes on the wrong one. I got ahead of myself there for you. Conditional zoning process policy. Oh yeah, this one.

This is a good one. All right, thank you, council. So at the council retreat, council identified the following priority, enhance the identity of our town initiative. And following the council February meeting discussion regarding potential revisions to our subcommittee policy, we didn't have a, I had a policy where I moved it to the beginning of the process, but there wasn't a consensus from council that that was the correct approach or the, you know, they were, you were questioning the purpose and the role in the future approach for the subcommittee meeting. So after several months of researching and discussing that with other town staff and just kind of seeing how some other things went, the most appropriate approach that I believe made sense was to eliminate the subcommittee meeting and make that, for transparency, make the council hearing the place where the public come, the council talk and discuss with the applicant as well in an open session. You know, we already do email the council members when we receive an application. You can always reach out to staff to sit down one-on-one to discuss it. You can also reach out to developer with individual questions during the process. So we drafted a policy, which you could already do without drafting the policy, but essentially the item will come to neighborhood meeting then planning board, then the council hearing. You'll get all the information at that meeting with the developer out in the public for transparency's sake, and then it'll be the standard to defer that to the next hearing meeting for decision. So it gives you a month to decide. You can talk to neighbors, you can talk to staff, you can talk to developers over the month to reach a consensus for what's best for the town. So that's what this policy really does.

What do other towns have? Anybody else have a subcommittee meeting?

So no, other towns really have subcommittee, but some towns, well, this is a Charlotte model. Charlotte does this model where they have the hearing, and then they defer it to another meeting for decision.

Not the subcommittee.

No, they don't do subcommittee. But there are some other municipalities that have like a 15-minute input session at some council meetings for developers to allow them to come in and talk to you guys for 15 minutes with no obligation. They just put them on the agenda and talk about the proposal with just questions before they submit. Some other municipalities do that. Melanie mentioned that model to me.

Yeah, the county, I know, doesn't vote the night that it's heard. They typically have the vote at another hearing. But several towns, I know Wingate and Indian Trail, what they do is have a developer's meeting, and it's typically before the meeting starts. So if it's a 6.30 meeting, it might be 6, 6.15. And it gives the opportunity for the developer to come and pitch this idea to see if there's any interest from the board on it. So before they pay the hefty fees and go down the engineering and incurring all these expenses and have staff spend a lot of time and money on a project that if they know that it's not gonna be approved and there's no interest it you know they can still submit it and go through the process or they can say I Don't want to waste my time and money if this is not a project that this board is interested in I Mean So this would be a meeting

They're not going to be on the agenda. They're just coming in.

No, I mean, it has to be a public advertised meeting. It's a special meeting before the agenda. Or you could make it, you know, you could put them on your agenda. You could make a developer's meeting, make it an agenda item if you don't want to have to come earlier. just for them to kind of toss out this idea. Now, it doesn't bind you all. If you say, yes, we're interested, it doesn't mean you have to vote to approve it. But if it's an apartment complex and you've told staff, we're not going to approve any more apartment complexes than we're in this area or the way it's designed, then it can kind of prevent a waste of time and money for everyone.

So they're not coming in to have a public hearing, they're coming in at whatever 6.30 and then, but they're not on our agenda for, APPROVAL OR? CORRECT. OKAY.

IT'S JUST AN OPPORTUNITY TO PITCH THE IDEA, AND THEN IT'S HELPFUL, RIGHT, FOR THE DEVELOPER. IF EVERYONE SITS UP HERE AND IS SILENT AND DOESN'T SAY ANYTHING, IT DOESN'T GIVE THEM ANY FEEDBACK IN TERMS OF, YOU KNOW, IS THIS A GREEN LIGHT, YELLOW LIGHT, RED LIGHT? HOW DO WE MOVE FORWARD? SO OBVIOUSLY IT NEEDS, AND IT MAY BE WHERE YOU GUYS SAY, YOU KNOW, WE HAVE A LOT MORE QUESTIONS.

DO YOU ALL NORMALLY HAVE SOME TYPE OF DOCUMENTATION BEFORE YOU GO INTO THAT MEETING?

THE PUBLIC MEETING. IN TERMS OF?

BEFORE WE GO INTO A COMMITTEE MEETING TODAY, YOU'VE ALREADY MAILED OUT A PACKET TO US. SO WE SORT OF KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN WE GET THERE. AND WE ALREADY KIND OF HAVE some questions and answers are already formed up, if you will. This is a fully submitted project, though. That's why. And you're kind of getting to where I'm going. It's like, how far in the development process are they if they're coming before they submit? I mean.

I guess it could be just an idea, correct?

Right. Yeah. Right.

At these meetings. And we could have one every, we could have one for the first 15 minutes of a council meeting on the planning. council meeting, and I could just have, I could schedule those in advance or something. But that just answers your question, Lori. I was just answering your question, bringing that up. I still think this is the staff recommendation, this policy.

Melanie, what you're describing, so that happens even before, like, planning board would see it then?

Correct. Before they have not submitted anything. They've not paid any fees. They've not gone down that path at all.

Okay.

It's just a preliminary. It's not binding anyone. It's just to get some feedback from the entire board. Is this something you'd like to see in your town or not?

And the proposal before us, what stage would we be seeing it at?

So you would get immediately notified whenever they submit. But it would not come before council as a whole until that first public hearing. So after planning board. So normally when we would vote on it.

I mean...

Normally when you would vote on it, but with this policy, you wouldn't be automatically required to vote on it. It would be expected that you would defer it to another meeting.

Default would be one month, but what if we had so many questions, the applicant says we're going to need two months to... That's up to council. Council can do that already.

So tonight... I mean, a couple of folks here mentioned that from the time that the committee met to tonight, what we voted on, there was quite a bit of changes. My concern with this change has always been that we're not allowed to give early feedback to the project. And I mean, can y'all explain if y'all... PROVIDED EARLY FEEDBACK FOR THIS PROJECT HERE? BECAUSE IT SOUNDED LIKE THAT PROJECT CHANGED QUITE A BIT BASED OFF OF THE COMMITTEES.

YES, MA'AM. WERE YOU IN THE SUBCOMMITTEE?

I WAS, BUT I WOULD ACTUALLY SAY I DID NOT GIVE THE ITEMS THAT THE APPLICANT AGREED TO, I DID NOT PUSH FOR THOSE. OKAY. THAT'S WHAT I'M LOOKING AT. THE SIDEWALK.

I GAVE THEM A LOT OF CHANGES OR I GAVE THEM A LOT OF INPUT ON THAT PARTICULAR PROJECT, LIKE MOVING THE BUILDING AND, YOU KNOW, THAT KIND OF SITE PLAN.

WITH THIS POLICY, YOU WOULD BE DOING THAT AT THE PUBLIC HEARING FOR TRANSPARENCY IN FRONT OF THE PUBLIC? but it's much later in the process. Correct, but you can always, during the process, talk to staff about things that you would like to see, message the developer as well, talk to the planning board. It's a legislative process. So it would take a little bit more involvement, maybe at the front end, to be aware of the project, but staff can keep you up to date, for sure. All right.

Okay, so everything that comes in, and you think you're gonna put them on the agenda, we'll get that just for information, not necessarily they're gonna be on next month for that 15-minute meeting.

So if they do decide, the 15-minute meeting's just an example of what other municipalities do to answer your question. We're not proposing that tonight. But how the process goes, whenever someone submits, we do automatically email the entire council. and give you an estimated timeline of when you might see that before the council. Is that, that's how I understand it.

That's part of what would be revised in this process, you're saying?

I think we already do this.

Okay. Yeah, I like this change because, and I understand, Stephen, your concern and I share it as well, but I don't know that it's overwhelming in my decision process of jumping in later than we would have normally on the subcommittee. So for anybody, anybody who's here knows, but anybody who's watching at home or after the fact that we had three person subcommittees and part of the difficulty we ran into was, say, for Stevens Village, a very complex process. It was myself, Councilman Vandereet, and who was the third person on that? I forget who it was, but for instance, John met with a lot of neighbors who I did not have the opportunity or the time to meet with, but because us two talking would constitute a quorum of that body and therefore an illegal meeting, We couldn't talk about that throughout the course of what was a really complex process. So I'm in favor of having this all be together because those subcommittee meetings being upstairs in the conference room, unless you looked on the bulletin board to know that those were happening, it's hard to know that those were happening and can't expect everybody to do that. But to have it on the agenda, I like that a lot better. So I think it does put a little bit more work on our shoulders in terms of tracking down staff maybe for information, but from a transparency process. I like this a lot better.

Will you make a motion for that, then?

Yes, let me.

Wait a minute, can we put the whatever, half hour meeting before a regular meeting?

I would suggest us to come back to propose that.

Oh, we're not?

This would not exclude us from adding that.

And that would be only if the developer requests it.

Yeah.

Right, only if the developer wants to get feedback before submitting the application.

for a rezoning. Council could already add any item to the agenda anyways.

I like the subcommittee meetings.

Okay. Vote that way when it's time. I'll let you make your motion and second it.

I'll make a motion to approve the updated conditional zoning process policy as presented by staff.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. I wanted to say that I think this is going to walk back and introduce a problem that the committee was set up for. So I'm a little concerned about that there. And I think... meeting with the developer this late in a uniform way is just gonna cause, bring back the problems that we had before. So that's my concern, is that we're basically undoing the fixes that we put in play for the issues that we had when we did our internal review after the Stinson Farms situation. So that's my concern with this. I'll leave it there.

All right, so we've got a motion on the floor. All in favor? Aye. All against? Nay. 4-2 passes. All right, moving to the next one. Indian Trail sidewalk partnership follow-up. Partnership follow-up with Kevin. Oh, you need help with that load.

Sorry, that's an awkward angle.

I thought you were working out.

Not to confuse anybody, these handouts are for the lake drive that are being passed around for the next item.

That's all. I'll hold on to it. Wait, what? It's not for this item yet. Thank you. Oh, got it.

Yeah, evening council, here to discuss the potential pedestrian projects in partnership with Indian Trail. And the purpose of the meeting tonight is ultimately get some council direction on one, whether or not to pursue any of these projects, and two, a decision on how to fund those projects, whether that be 100% through local funds or pursuing CARPO funding. So just a brief recap, at the first meeting in June, staff presented two potential sidewalk projects after coordinating with Indian Trail at the direction of council, those projects being Chestnut Lane sidewalk improvements and sidewalk improvements on Matthews Indian Trail Road. Excuse me. As a result of that discussion, Council had some specific feedback that they requested staff to look into and evaluate and coordinate with Indian Trail on further, specifically for the Chestnut Lane sidewalk project. And they also gave some general feedback associated with the Matthews Indian Trail project and that wanted to continue talking about it. However, it was identified by Council as kind of a lower priority on our PED plan. And so just a brief recap of both of these projects. So the Chestnut Lane project is installing five-foot sidewalk gaps from Matthews at Weddington Road all along Chestnut Lane. down to Potter Road. There would be an eight foot sidewalk along the intersection here at Potter Road, and then a boardwalk crossing the 12 Mile Creek Tributary, approximately, in this location. The Matthews Indian Trail Road project is much simpler in scope in that just an eight foot sidewalk connection from the existing sidewalk terminus here at Atrium down to Chestnut Parkway.

Wait, what? Can you show us that map again?

Yes. So this is up here on the top left. This is Atrium.

Right.

The hospital, Stallings Road roundabout there. So it would be installing sidewalk from here south along Matthews Indian Trail Road down to Chestnut Parkway. And this is Indian Trails Town Hall right here. Okay.

Yeah. Okay.

Perfect.

And so kind of Jumping to the feedback that we received from council, specifically for the Chestnut Lane and what we found out after further coordinating and further evaluating that feedback. The first piece of feedback was essentially trying to look into bypassing 2000 Chestnut Lane. And I'm sorry, I'm jumping around here. So bear with me, please. 2000 Chestnut Lane is this unincorporated Union County parcel right here. This is courtyards at Chestnut here in Stallings. And this is the new Pulte development. I've got a better site plan that I'll show later. This is the Pulte development that is being built around this unincorporated parcel. And the reason council wanted to look into bypassing 2000 Chestnut Lane there was just to mitigate the impacts along the frontage of that property. So staff looked into those concerns, and we don't believe bypassing 2000 Chestnut Lane is a good, viable option for a few reasons. The first reason being that there's a 60-foot right-of-way out there currently, which these top rows of pictures is the frontage of 2000 Chestnut Lane, and the 60-foot right-of-way essentially extends to right about this tree line right here. And given how much room we've got there and kind of the flat nature of the area along the front here, we believe we can fit that sidewalk in with minimal impacts to 2000 Chestnut Lane. The other concerns we ran into were ADA and PRO-WAG guidelines and compliance. And PRO-WAG is the Public Right-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines, essentially saying that any handicapped individuals must be able to traverse this pedestrian route. This must be an accessible pedestrian route in accordance with ADA and PRO-WAG standards. And those standards essentially require a direct, immediate pedestrian route as much as feasibly possible to allow any handicapped individuals to get from A to B as quickly and efficiently as possible without any obstructions. With that as well, there are some slopes, whether that's running slopes or cross slopes that need to be met as well. This bottom row's pictures kind of show, well, let me take a step back, I'm sorry. The Pulte development is installing an asphalt path that would allow a bypass around this unincorporated parcel, 2000 Chestnut Lane. Okay. That asphalt path would provide a bypass. However, it would add about a third of a mile to the pedestrian route. And also, there's no public access easement over it. So given that, I don't think that's a viable option, given how long it prolongs the pedestrian route. And additionally, these bottom rows of pictures... Kind of show, this is where it would connect, that asphalt path would connect at Chestnut Lane. You can kind of see how steep that slope is right there, where it would connect to Chestnut Lane. So given those surface level evaluations, I don't believe this would be a viable pedestrian route. This asphalt path seems more of a community amenity for that Pulte development rather than a viable pedestrian route, public pedestrian route. And one last piece of evaluation that we noticed as well is that the sidewalk is going to be installed along Chestnut Lane. This Pulte development will install sidewalk up to each property line of 2000 Chestnut Lane. And so if we didn't, If we did bypass, if there was a viable option to bypass, we believe that pedestrians would still probably just create informal paths along 2000 Chestnut Lane, similar to what we see at the intersection of Potter Road on the west side of Potter Road there. So that obviously raises vehicular and pedestrian safety concerns. The second piece of feedback we got was relying on development to fill in some of the sidewalk gaps along this corridor here. And after coordinating with Indian Trail and our planning team, we haven't received any inquiries to fill in a lot of these sidewalk gaps or any developments that would likely fill in a lot of these sidewalk gaps, specifically here at the corners. And after discussing with Indian Trail and our planning team further, a lot of these gaps on the interior corridor here, on the middle of the corridor here, that is pretty established single-family residential. So the odds of redevelopment coming in there and giving us the opportunity to fill in those gaps is pretty slim, in our opinion. And the last piece of feedback that we got on Chestnut Lane was, is it possible to reduce the scope a little bit? And with that, we got direction to coordinate with Indian Trail about adding a pedestrian crossing right here at Courtyards at Chestnut Lane and kind of completing the project east. And I think this map demonstrates that that would largely create an Indian Trail project. We would have that crossing at Courtyards at Chestnut, and then everything east is pretty much in Indian Trail's jurisdiction. So after coordinating with Indian Trail on that, they essentially said that. This corridor is lower priority in their pedestrian plan. So if we were to just limit our scope to that, that would limit their ability to be able to appropriate funds to fill in the sidewalk gaps to the east of here. So in short, the project would likely not be done east of here if we limited our scope to just that crossing at Courtyards at Chestnut. Now, I know I've kind of ran through a lot of information, so I can take a pause or keep going. If there's any questions, keep going. Perfect. So just a reminder as well of what the cost estimates look like. These are for both projects, and these are if we funded them with 100% local funding, stall installers, no CRTPO funding. This is what those numbers would look like. with CRTPO funding. And the caveat with CRTPO funding is that, yes, we would likely save about $187,000 for both projects. However, the projects would likely not be delivered until 2033 at the earliest. And that's if we get the CARPO funding. So some big ifs there. And so with that, I can open it up to questions. But again, ultimately, staff is requesting a decision on whether or not to pursue any of these projects and really a decision on the funding source for each project, whether that's local funding or CRTPO. And pending the council's decision, we would take that feedback and go back to Indian Trail and let them know of the decisions and coordinate with them further.

What did you say you're putting over the 12-mile creek?

That would be a boardwalk.

Just a flat?

Yes. It would be, yep, a boardwalk going east and west here.

The option with the card potential funding, and that's not a given, right? That's a potential. We would submit for it. So that's 2033. What is the time frame if it was all local funding?

We believe that with local funding, we would anticipate a year for design, a year for right-of-way acquisition, and then a year for construction. So we believe this would be done around 2030.

Kevin, this is my district, so I'll speak for just a moment. I think the very far end by the roundabout likely will be developed. That's owned by J.Q. Freeman. that one parcel. So we could consider whether or not we would do that or not to save money. It would be nice to complete the roundabout, but I'm not sure that that would be a good use of funds. So that would be something you could chop off, perhaps, and save some money. I think since the rest of this has been in our Greenway plan for a very long time, and it makes sense that Indian Trail wouldn't do it, just the eastern part, you'd be connecting Colonel Beatty Park. with significant neighborhoods up that way, I could see some good utilization of it. It's a very expensive project, and I think we prioritized this corridor over the hospital area corridor at our last meeting, so I'd be in favor of pursuing it to some degree. I am interested in what you said about the 60-foot right-of-way at the unincorporated parcel, what that would do to his tree line. And if I heard you correctly, it would be a minimal disruption to the existing screening of his property. I'd be curious to learn more about that. But it's a big need, connecting sidewalks, particularly over 12 Montcreek. I'd be in favor of pursuing it. And now, this is where I'll ask the staff, remind me, we set aside some capital funds, but was this a partial set aside, and we would, or did we set aside enough money to take care of this?

We did not set aside enough money to take care of this fully, but I think there's about $3,000 in that new general fund capital fund project.

Of our 775 estimate, yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's a big spend, and this is all in one district. And I'll be honest, one of my concerns is how much utilization will it get in the next several years. But it's a big part of our Greenway plan, and I think there would be people who would very easily, not the least of which would be our new neighborhood, Chestnut, Epcon at Chestnut there, and the folks at Elmbrook across the street. They could go east or west to the park or to Austin Village. So I'm in favor of continuing the conversation, if that's what you're asking. And using local funds, not cart bow from an inflation standpoint.

I'm in the same boat.

Are you saying you prefer this over the one by the hospital?

Yes.

Yeah. That's an industrial sort of corridor there.

We could argue that you've got two activity centers with a hospital and a Carolina Courts sports facility. I just don't see a lot of synergy of people walking. So I had to choose. I would choose selfishly the District 6 section.

I don't think it's selfish. I think it's a wise choice.

When I ride bikes, I can say that the chestnut side of the universe sees more walking than I'll say down towards the hospital side of the house. I mean, that's today, but because a lot of that's wooded area.

What do you need tonight? Just

So ultimately, it sounds like we're almost there in that we've kind of got general agreement that we want to pursue the Chestnut Lane project with local dollars, if I'm understanding correctly.

And is it, do you think it's accurate to say that the 150 in the state budget would be able to go toward this or no?

That's a total separate discussion because we have a lot of capital. This is one of the options.

But it would be possible. Sure. Okay, that was what I'm asking.

So what's Indian Trail going to do? They want to know what we're going to do before they decide? Yes, ma'am.

Yes, ma'am. So at this point, given if council does go in that direction, I would go back to Indian Trail, essentially say we're on board with this Chestnut Lane project with local dollars, get it done sooner than later, and then their engineer would go back to their town council for their feedback and or approval, and then we'll kind of take it from there.

I say I'm on board. I mean, I think it would be great.

Could we just go to the overlay that shows town versus... it does look like at least on this the indian trail has more of the sidewalk so i that was just by one so i guess concern is 50 50 split when it looks like it's really 60 40. so some unique factors uh site factors kind of played into it breaking down

We're coincidentally 50-50. Yes, they're funding the boardwalk, which is a huge expense, but there's some pretty significant slopes right here along this gap that we would be funding as well. So it does, all things considered on the ground, it does come out to just about 50-50.

And this would just be us pooling the money together, right? So because... As you mentioned, the one development is going to put in a sidewalk, and that's an Indian Trail, so they won't actually have to pay for that portion.

Correct. And the gaps that I've identified here, take that into consideration.

Okay. That sidewalk's complete. Oh, it is? Yeah. Yeah, so that portion's complete.

Do we need a motion, Mr. Mayor?

Probably need a consensus. Yeah, I think so, yeah. General direction?

Yeah.

And if I'm not mistaken, I think we got it. I think you do have it. Thank you. Thank you all. Appreciate it.

Next up is the Lake Drive Bridge, the only bridge in town that we own.

Yeah. So I passed around, I had some, the updated proposal passed around that came in to me on Friday afternoon. And throughout that, I highlighted the changes that occurred from the agenda packet, what we see in the agenda packet, to this new proposal. And to take a step back and kind of introduce the project, our one, as Mayor mentioned, our one bridge here in town in Fairfield Plantation, it recently got inspected by NCDOT, and it was found that the bridge is, it's not, immediate safety concern, but it is something that we need to start planning for for a replacement. It's three five-foot corrugated metal pipes that have pretty much completely rusted out. The headwall is starting to crack. So again, no immediate safety concern, but we do need to replace that sooner than later and the report that NCDOT gave us recommended have it completed in two years. And so with that, we coordinated with McAdams, who is one of our on-call consultants, and met them out on site and had them put together this proposal for us for a fave one, which is essentially the hydraulic study, the... the pre-plan before we could put some final design plans together and get permitting and approval through the appropriate agencies. And so with this, a survey would be done, hydrologic study. This is a massive drainage area that's coming in here, so it's a pretty significant scope, and there's a ton of water that's coming through this, which is why that's reflected in the price, which is why it is a very pricey project.

Is that over the Goose Creek? This feeds down into...

Yes, this would be Goose Creek Watershed. Boxes over and goes through the divide. Yep, yep. Yes, sir, exactly. And so essentially this is phase one. Phase two would be the final permitting and design. So phase one we kind of get to get a preliminary cost estimate. get all the information gathered so we can put a final design together. You know, how big do these pipes need to be? Can we even put pipes in here? Do we need to put a box culvert in? And kind of the ins and outs of what goes into the final design. Phase two would be later this fiscal year, which would be the final design, which we would coordinate with FEMA. USACE, make sure we're going through the appropriate agencies to get this approved and cross our T's and dot our I's with those agencies. And then we would look for phase three, which would be the construction phase. And that we would look to see that in FY2028. So really, this is just the beginning piece that would allow us to creep into that final design. And The reason I wanted to pull this from the agenda is because, as I mentioned, we got an updated scope, and I'll just highlight some of the changes. They decreased after meeting on site. They decreased some of the survey costs by about $7,000. However, there was some unknowns that I didn't have in the original proposal that were finally worked out. That ultimately is wetland delineation, doing soil sampling, making sure we have everything properly located and the extents of everything, streams, wetlands, so USACE knows what impacts we are making, if any, to these biological areas. then also we have to perform a no-rice study, which I originally intended to be in phase two. However, given working with FEMA, the federal agency, we probably... should do this in phase one. It's something that needs to happen no matter what, but getting it done and getting that ball rolling sooner than later is probably better for time circumstances. Can you explain what that is? A no-rise evaluation is essentially a study of, because this is in a special flood hazard area identified by FEMA. And so what we would have to do is show, okay, what we're proposing, how is that affecting people upstream and downstream? of this bridge and basically showing that we're not changing any impacts. We're making things better and things of that nature. It's really just the FEMA sign-off of that. Thank you. Making sure we're not impacting anybody negatively. And if it is, notifying them for their FEMA flood insurance purposes. And so the ultimate ask tonight is to request council's approval. Now, I know this This updated scope is 94,500, but for just contingency purpose, I would request a budget of $100,000 for this phase one approval. And the timeline of completing that would be December 31st, and that would be funded solely through stormwater funds. And I'd be happy to take any questions.

It's in the budget already? It is not budgeted. Is it in stormwater funding can cover that season? Yes, sir.

Out of curiosity, what kind of damage do you think this bridge is going to cost us?

That is totally ballpark.

Totally ballpark.

We'll hold you to it, though. We will not.

I'm getting ready to pull my knife out. We're going to sign it in blood.

We'll know after Christmas. But I think... Gosh, just depending on utilities out there, what we can and can't do. I think the low end would be $750,000. Million and a half at the top. I think at the top end, correct.

The mill's pretty safe right in the middle, I guess.

I guess, correct.

Yeah, I did it. I think I mentioned to several board members in my conversations about 10 years ago in my previous jurisdiction that I was the town manager. We did a not dissimilar sized bridge and it was about half a million dollars.

I'm actually kind of surprised. I was expecting you to come back and say like two and a half, three million dollars, something like that. Please knock on wood.

Just out of curiosity, like where does this fit into the scope of a percentage of the stormwater budget?

So our maintenance and repair budget, I believe our entire operating budget for stormwater is about a million dollars.

Just under.

Just under a million dollars. Our maintenance and repair budget is about 300,000. Somewhere around there. Yeah. So in the grand scheme of things, about 10% for design. However, we would probably have to dip into our reserves for the actual construction piece.

The alternative being not doing it, which is not really.

It's one way in and one way out right there as well, which is another complication here. So, yeah, there's a lot to this one. This is a big one.

So this would have to be like almost like built in phases so that people still had access.

Yeah, after a first glance, we might need to put an open-ended box culvert in instead of putting the three pipes back. And with that, we'd have to do one half of the road first, cover it, and then do the other half. So obviously a lot to work out there, but that's the general thought.

And these improvements last how long?

This would be 100-plus year improvement, yeah.

Yes, so can we set aside stormwater money this year, next year, the following year to set aside so we have the money designated for this when it's time?

So the stormwater fund... It's kind of like a general fund. That money doesn't carry over, but we could create another stormwater capital project fund like we have done this year with the general fund capital project fund, and we could do that. Yes, sir.

Sort of what I was thinking because that capital fund out of the general fund is like we need to do that across the board, and this is outside of the scope of the general stormwater, so I'm going I think we need to talk about that very quickly before this year goes by and do it again next year.

Absolutely.

We might have enough to cover without dipping too much into our reserves. But we know it's common and we know this is a given. I mean, for sure that's got to be done. The sidewalks, much as I like them and want them, those are...

Optional so this is a have to I'll make a motion to approve the up to $100,000. Yes, sir Second all in favor. All right.

That's unanimous. Thank you, Kevin Next up Brad pickleball courts.

I'll be quick just a resident called and asked what our Ordinances are on noise related to pickleball courts. I think This resident meant buffering from residences because of the noise pickleball calls. Some of you on this committee have been working with pickleball courts in some neighborhoods. So I think this is more of a proactive question from a resident who does not have a pickleball court in his or her neighborhood. So I would just simply just ask council to ask our planning staff to come back to us in a meeting down the road with some suggested language about location in a pickleball court from a noise perspective. That's all. I don't need a presentation.

So do you need a consensus just to direct staff? Yeah. Everybody okay with directing staff to come back with? Yes. Max, how long do you think that'll take?

and I'll bring it to Planning Board next week. Thank you. August, before you see it. Great. Thank you.

Next up, Brad again.

Did we get a lot of calls on that, Alex? On whatever our side?

I'd say yes and no. What I mean by that is, I think when we, Council Member Vander Root and I had a really good conversation, and when I first brought up the issue, told him that we had already kind of begun on a draft, His response was the right one. I thought we were going to kind of let the HOAs kind of manage it. And at first, it was just kind of maybe one pickleball court. But as we've seen pickleball increase in popularity, and we've seen all the issues that have kind of come with it, I believe there's value in having the HOA manage some of the rules surrounding the pickleball. But as a town, what I would suggest is we probably need to come up with some common rules, especially when it comes to making sure the pickleball courts aren't right up next beside residences, things like that. Because I think a lot of the complaints we get that pickleball tends to be... have a different noise impact than tennis, right? You know, a lot more frequent cadence of the hitting. It's a little bit different as compared to tennis, things like that. So we could do with the value in having the tennis setting the floor as far as rules go. Because if we don't, I think we're gonna continue to get complaints. And we would have likely wished we had acted now.

I would correct that anything we would enact would not be retroactive to existing pickleball courts.

Well, if there was a noise ordinance, and Mr. Shawn, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe the noise ordinance would be retroactive.

But certain locations and things like that would not. Exactly. Yes, sir.

Our resident pickleball expert said that there is potentially some new equipment that's being rolled out that does make it a little, different types of balls, different types of rackets that will, that tend to make it a little bit quieter.

All right, now Brad, carpo item. Thank you, this should be quick. I passed out to you, and the request is for the board to endorse a new MOU that has an edit, one edit only. It was endorsed by the board at last meeting. and every member jurisdiction is required to adopt it as well. The change is related to this. One voting member is the Metropolitan Transit Authority, MTA, with the passage of the PAVE Act, which is the one cent sales tax in Mecklenburg County for roads and light rail and transportation. A new body has been constituted called the Metropolitan Public, Mecklenburg Public Transportation MPTA. The M is either Mecklenburg or Metropolitan. I don't really remember. So they will be replacing the MTC, which is going away. So this MOU is just simply replacing MTC with MPTA. And we need to have that done fairly quickly so we can be poised to receive a new voting member in the coming months. That's really all that we're endorsing tonight. So every other jurisdiction is doing this at their next meeting.

Thank you.

Your action needed for tonight is?

The same.

That's this, yes.

Right, but it's not going away.

Correct. CRTPO is not going away. A member's changing.

Just a consensus to go ahead with this?

Let's take a vote. All in favor of? I'll sign the motion. I'll make a motion to approve. A second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Hey, that brings us up to a closed session pursuant to NCGS 143-318.11a6. Need a motion.

I move that we go into closed session pursuant to North Carolina General Statute 143-318.11a6. Second. All in favor? Aye.

All right, let's go. Thanks, everybody. Thank you all.