Town Council - Regular Meeting

Are we recording? We're good?

Before we start, I'm going to turn it over to our manager for a special announcement, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. My name, if you don't know me, is Alex Sewell. I'm the Stallings Town Manager. And I wanted to share some difficult news. Since our last meeting, one of our town employees and Parks and Rec teammates, Kyle Haught, passed away unexpectedly. It was a shock to all of us. And honestly, we're all still grieving. Kyle was just such a wonderful person. And I don't want to pretend to be able to sum up Kyle in just a few sound bites, but a couple things really stood out to me when it comes to Kyle. The first was just his gentle nature, his kindness. The second was his humor. You know, some people try to be funny by making fun of others, by vulgarity. But Kyle was just naturally funny. He could make this water bottle funny. He could make this ceiling tile funny, this pen funny, right? And I think when you're like that, when you have that personality, people are naturally drawn to you. So, it's a big loss. We'll miss Kyle, and we're still honestly just processing. Eunice and I were talking earlier today about how, you know, we see pieces of Kyle everywhere throughout the office and where we go, which I know if you've lost a loved one, you kind of experience it at the time. So, Kyle leaves behind a wonderful family, a wonderful wife, two very young daughters. His wife asked us to thank the staff and the council for your support during this time. And with that being said, you know, Parks and Rec Department are very tight, very close-knit. In some cases, the relationship with Kyle goes back not just a couple years, but decades. So not only do we want to support Kyle's family during this time, We also grieve with Kyle's family as well. So with that being said, I appreciate the opportunity. Let's all have about 30 seconds moment of science in honor of Kyle's memory.

Thanks, Alex. Join me in prayer, and then we'll do our Pledge of Allegiance, and then we'll start the meeting. Father, thanks for the ability to gather here tonight among friends and citizens in our community. We first want to just thank you for Kyle's life, and we ask your blessings on his wife and two little girls. Wrap your arms around them, and may we in some way as a town do the same. As we meet tonight, Father, give us wisdom, and may we treat each other well. In Christ's name I pray, amen. Amen.

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

Well, good evening, everyone. Mayor Scholl is out of town. He was attending a family wedding this week in Pennsylvania. He'll be back tomorrow. I'll run the meeting tonight in his absence. So I'll call the meeting to order, August 10th, 2026, city council, excuse me, town council business meeting. We'll open the public forum where we have four speakers. I'll call you in order. I assume this is the order in which you signed up. We'll start with Joe Horvath, then we'll follow it by Glenn Watson. Welcome, John.

Appreciate it. And start off by expressing my condolences to you all for the loss of your colleague. Sounds like he was quite a man. And so that's very unfortunate and hate to hear that. I do want to particularly address two things that were somewhat surprising to me for this agenda. And that's the proposals to, in my opinion, limit, potentially limit public input as well as get information. Information, as you guys should know by now, given some of the things I've notified you about, been almost impossible to find this all stems in my case and or in much of the case from the Stevens Village project so when I met with you guys for the first time really in January the loan resident attending your five-plus hour meeting with an agenda that had three items one was basically opening discussion adjournment That's the kind of information we're getting proactively. But it was interesting to me that you said you wanted to prioritize communications, but yet we've not seen anything related to that. I also hear often, not necessarily to me, but others, hey, we're glad you attended. We're glad you came, spoke your mind. Citizen engagement is critical. You cannot mean that truthfully and vote in favor of either of the two proposals to limit public comment and formalize and normalize charging people for information that has been almost impossible to get. Without public records requests, we wouldn't know things like what the developer of Stevens Village put in his own TTM and TIA. This was noticeably absent from Max Hajong's materials that he presented to us multiple times. What this is is the average PMQ that we'll see at Shantamara. We don't have PMQs today. That would have been helpful information. We didn't know that. What we also know is that 1% should never have been accepted as the growth rate. We know through a public information request to NCDOT that Kevin Parker knew at the same time frame that 2% was a standard. In this very document that the developer provided, the developer himself or his engineering firm admits 2% is the standard, but can we use 1% because you let us do it a couple years ago? So when you factor in 2%, that average starts looking like this. It matches the high of the developer's 1%. And then when you also factor in 2%, that's the average. This is the high. It extends past Shantamara. So now there's going to be a PMQ that we don't have today that extends past our neighborhood. Key information. that would have been greatly appreciated before the decision was made. But when you make a decision that a lot of us are scratching our heads about, naturally we're going to say, what went into that? This is us digging up. And again, if you guys... If there was a situation that forced you into it, let us know. If it was a mistake, let us know that, too. If it was you just absolutely agree with it, provide the rationale in a plausible way. So I guess it's just frustrating that the first three folks here don't live in this town, and the planning director doesn't live in this town.

May I interrupt you? Three and a half minutes, 340. I've given you a lecture time, so you'll wrap it up.

I'll wrap it up. We're paying a lot of money. for seven people to make decisions that don't have to live with the repercussions. Paying over a million dollars, they should be spending that time to make proposals that safeguard us, not fight us. That's it.

Thank you. Mr. Watson. He'll be followed by Tom Twitchell.

Hello. Please forgive me for reading from my screen. A lot to go through. My name is William Glenn Watson. I live at 726 Donovan Court. I'm asking the council tonight not to approve the proposed public comment revisions of public records special service charge policy. I understand the concerns behind both proposals. Meetings need to be orderly and unusually large records requests can sometimes consume staff time. But that solution should not create new barriers between citizens and their government. The public comment proposal limits comments to 30 minutes, requires speakers to register before the meeting begins, and restricts things such as name-calling and personal attacks. Thirty minutes may be enough on normal evenings, but when a major development, tax issues, or controversial decisions bring 20 or 30 residents here, Public participation should not become less important simply because more people want to participate. I support civility. Threats and actual disruption should not be tolerated, but citizens also have the right to strongly criticize the decisions and conduct of elected officials. Terms such as personal attacks are subjective. Government should be extremely cautious about giving itself the authority to decide when uncomfortable criticism crosses that line. I have a similar concern with the proposed public records policy. After four cumulative staff hours per month, citizens could be charged $60 or $85 per hour with 50% deposit required before work begins. Separate requests involving the same or related subject matter may also be combined. But what does that mean? word related mean. A citizen investigating a town expenditure development decision or contract may need several requests simply because they don't know how the town organizes its records. Access to public information should not depend on a citizen's ability to pay. These policies address different issues, but they raise the same fundamental question. Are we making it easier for citizens to participate in their government or harder? Public participation takes time. Public records consume resources. Criticism can be uncomfortable. But those are normal costs of transparent, accountable government. I respectfully ask the council to send both policies back for further review. Focus meeting rules on actual disruption, provide flexibility and large numbers of citizens want to speak and make records fees remain truly exceptional. Transparency should not depend on whether a citizen has enough time, arrives early enough, expresses criticism carefully enough, or has enough money to pay to access public records. We should encourage greater participation, not discourage it. I urge you to not approve these policies. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Watson.

Mr. Twitchell, followed by Ms. Lindsey.

Evening, counsel. Tom Twitchell, 910 Bailey Court. A couple of things that are coming up on the agenda tonight, looking at recreational facilities, a proposal that was put forward by the planning board, and I'm hoping that you will approve it with all the language that's currently included and not add additional addendums, with the exception of one. I think there is an opportunity to address retroactive mediation, not enforcing the standards that you're considering applying, but to have some sort of mediation to rectify the the destruction of quiet enjoyment of residents that have been impacted by facilities that have been installed without these particular ordinances in place. The other thing I wanted to address has already been addressed by the other two speakers, and that is the agenda item. It's the last one on the night, which kind of bothers me that it would be the last one. It doesn't look like there's a specific opportunity for public comments, which I think is somewhat ironic. There's 17,000 people that live in Stallings. You all know that. You all have a responsibility for transparency and for appropriate representation of the people that live in the municipality. Instituting a change in the public comments and the time and the duration of which those would be presented by well-spoken, properly behaved town members, it's not appropriate. There's a lack of transparency. We have a couple dozen people out of the 17,000 that live in Stallings here tonight. That alone is an indication that there is a transparency failure in terms of having the majority of the people that you represent not knowing that some of their rights for public address and public hearing are potentially going to be limited when you're done tonight. I want you to all remember that that transparency is something that you wanted before you accepted a position on the town council, is something that you actually swore an oath to uphold and to represent, and that you have not only a town rule or standard to meet, but you also have an ethical and moral standard of your own to meet in those respects as well. We deserve accurate representation. I think I've made that clear. What we're not looking for is something that is clearly not transparent, potentially disingenuous. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Twitchell. Ms. Lindsay.

Hello, thanks. Jeannie Lindsay, I live in Stallings. Thank you for taking my comments and I would agree with the speakers so far and would like to add that I'd like to request, again, we've been trying since the beginning of the year to request a meeting with NCDOT and staff and town officials and representatives. I think that would be especially important to go over the changes that are gonna be made in both Idlewild and Lawyers Corridor. And so I'd like to see that meeting put in place as soon as possible. For one example is to have discussions with them about the need for a traffic signal at the corner of Chattamara and Stevens Mill, which now isn't possible because another one has been approved in April. So that's one thing that I would like to have the council consider and then also if this loophole hasn't already been Closed I'd like to see the council consider Not allowing developers to clear land until they actually have water and sewer allotment And I would like to yield any of my time if anybody else would like to speak any extra.

Thank you Thank You miss Lindsay Sure

Speaking of the traffic signal, as you'll recall, many of us asked for an updated TIA, and the planning board requested that as well. That did not happen, but we did request NCDOT do a traffic signal warrant there. They found that, in fact, today it does justify a signal at that place. Had the developer been made to do an update at TIA, since it was two and a half years old, they would have found the same thing, and they would have been on the hook. Now we have to wait for enough crashes to justify taxpayers funding the solution. We could have had the developer had to do that. You have an army of people. Use us. We're doing the legwork for you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks, everyone. That will conclude public comment. We'll move next to consent agenda. May I have a motion to approve? Glenn, I'm sorry, you're a public hearing for the particular item. We'll talk about this in just a moment. We'll talk about the difference in public comment and public hearing, but thank you. We got you.

Mr. Mayor Pretem, I'd like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. I'll second.

Motion made, second given. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, thank you. Reports, the mayor's not here. He has no report. Any reports from town council members? We'll start with Mr. Ayers at the end.

I do not.

No, sir, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I've got a few things. Still working with town staff and residents of Hunley Creek and Willowbrook to ensure that their yards are repaired as work is done right away in their yards for fiber installation. So we're still making progress on that. Today was communicating with one of the contractors who's going to be out tomorrow, hopefully finishing up the last of one of their lists to get things done because that has been a disruptive process. I've also asked staff, as an addendum to that, to the engineering staff to consider with the town's encroachment agreements, which are basically when a fiber company or any utility comes in to do that, it's a standard agreement, but to include something like a sandwich board outside of each neighborhood that would have the contact information for the contractor on that project so that people would have an idea of who to contact if something does go wrong, not to necessarily want them to not reach out to the town, but also to know who the person is doing that. And lastly, since we only meet twice in the month of July and August combined, in late July, I saw that the, as many other people did as well, saw that the trees were in the footprint of the Stinson Farms property were being cleared, reached out to town staff. They let me know that that was done prematurely because all those permits had not yet been received from the state to be able to clear that space. And so that's from the Stinson Farms project from 2021, not from Stevens Village, but just wanted to share that for awareness. So that has been put on hold until they have all of their permits squared away from the state. Thank you.

John.

Nothing, Mayor Perkins.

Lori.

Well, all I would, sorry.

I know we have a lot of complaints. I have a lot of complaints about Kinetic and Google and tearing up people's lawns, but I do want to say, too, something that happened that was good. One gentleman in my neighborhood had his mailbox kicked over by whoever, neither wants to claim responsibility, but they were down there, I informed them on a Thursday and they were down there that day and put the mailbox upright just temporarily and then the following Tuesday they came and gave them a new mailbox. So I'm not trying to stick up for Kinetic, but they did something. And then another neighbor had a huge hole in our road. I mean, it was our road at the end of their driveway. And it was, where's Kevin?

He's up tonight.

And it was pretty deep, and they're just putting stones in the, the owner is just putting stones in there. And they went out and they fixed it. As soon as they found out about it, they fixed it. So that's all I have to say. I have a lot of complaints about them, about the Kinetic and Google. That's it.

Thank you. Town Manager, any report from you?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. Just a couple brief reports. First is the routine budget line item transfers list, submitting that just for information purposes. And the second thing I wanted to note is, obviously, one of the big issues that I heard mentioned a couple times, and it's something that we as staff on an operations level deal with quite a bit, is the installation of fiber within our community. Under the U.S. Court of Appeals, the court has determined that under the Federal Communications Act, fiber does have the right to install an existing electrical easement, so the town can't stop these fiber providers from coming in. However, we do have some, we are able to basically help field complaints, get people to the right people within the fiber companies, and do what we can the town to help people out as best we can and really one thing we've noticed that the recent large-scale fiber installations have highlighted the town's existing flat fee for accroachment agreements don't adequately cover the town's time when it comes to review coordination inspection and And follow-up, it's required for those right-of-way encroachments for the fiber companies. So in the coming month, likely in September, I've been working with our town attorney, Ms. Cox, as well as our town engineer, Mr. Parker, and we're going to be bringing to you a fee adjustment for those kinds of uses, so. Wanted to give you a heads up on that and that concludes My report. Thank you, sir.

Yeah, Alex. Can I ask you a quick question? I've had a couple of folks come to me and asked how they can determine whether or not Placement of equipment actually is in the right-of-way. We've had a couple of houses that have hedges at our bushes that are close up to the road and so they've installed boxes what feels to be very far back from the edge of the road. What would be the appropriate procedure to determine whether or not that box has been placed outside of an encroachment? Would that...

That's a really good question. So typically when it's, and I'm guessing this isn't still there, but typically when they come in and install a lot of those things, they call 811, and they have a lot of utility markings. They can come show up with stakes and flags, or they can show up with spray-painted lines of different colors. So that's one way to tell if it's close to that. If you've got an individual situation, if you just email me and I can get it to the right folks and we can figure out how to help them.

Yeah, in this particular case, all the lines were where I would normally think, somewhere around, you know, six to eight feet within the yard. Yes, sir. And then the cable company actually is like 16 feet into the yard. Wow. Yeah, so it kind of felt like it was, it's very far into the yard as far as where it should be.

Okay, I'll make a note. Yeah, just email me the specific. I'd be happy to try to help those folks out. Okay.

All right, thanks everyone for those reports. We'll move to agenda approval. Before we approve the agenda, let me make one comment. I talked to many of you today, and I think our speakers will be pleased to hear them. I'll recommend removing item number 9A. A couple reasons for that. This is the one dealing with public address to city council, excuse me, town council. Understand this was a, Priority not asked for by our council. It was staff doing a good job of bringing us best practice information from the School of Government. That may not be satisfactory to most, but let me just make a quick distinction here on a couple points. I chair the Charlotte Regional Transportation Board Every month I have a meeting. We limit public comment to 20 minutes, 10 speakers max. That may seem unfair. However, there's a difference in public comment and public hearings. Many of you know this. I'll just repeat what you already know. A public hearing is related to a particular issue. We'll have one in just a moment and Glenda will speak. Those are unlimited. There is no time limit allowed. What we were Presented with tonight is the opening public comment where we would like to move sometimes forward with the agenda if we had. The reason we're gonna pull it from the agenda is we don't need that in our town right now. We don't have lines of speakers speaking. I went back through our records and looked at the three most contentious issues I've seen in this town for seven years. I've been on the council seven. Well, the one preceding me was an apartment complex in my community. For the two, Stinson Farms had 10 speakers. out of public comment. The most recent one, Stevens Village, had nine. We don't have 30 speakers wanting to sign up and speak, so I don't think this policy is ready for us now. There may be a time when we might disagree about how often we should lead to public comment limitations, move those to public hearings, but I hope you hear that distinction. Public comment is supposed to be general and We would like to put a time on that at some point if we ever have a demand. Public hearings are issue specific. We would not limit those because those are agenda items, agenda specific. There are other things that none of the council members loved about the policy. And for that reason, I'm going to recommend we pull that particular item. I do want to keep 9b. We want to discuss that tonight. That's an important one for us. Any other additions to the agenda or subtractions? If not, I'll take a motion to approve the agenda as amended.

Mayor Pro Tem, I would, since we do have people in attendance, request removing 9B up. I think we could have that as 4A, because it does sound like a number of people are here.

Very good. So we have a motion from Mr. Graham, in addition to mine, to move item 9B, it would become a new 4A. We'll do that after the Pickleball Recreational Facilities. Any objection to that from any council member? No. The rest of it seems to be in-house kind of stuff, which folks are welcome to stay, of course. All right, so we've got, can you make that a motion?

Yeah, I move. that we approve the agenda with item 9A removed for a later date, or maybe never, and then item 9B moved to a new 4A with the rest of the agenda as presented.

Yeah, second.

We got a second from Lori.

All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. Here we go. Staff will jockey around the items tonight, but we're going to move next to item What was 9B, public records request special assessment? Ms. Nichols. Attorney Cox. Thank you. Oh, I see it right here. My fault. Please.

Sorry, aren't we doing four?

I thought we were doing public hearing first.

Oh, I'm sorry. I did get ahead of myself. Give you time to prep. Pickleball. Pickleball. Text amendment 9B. 260701, Recreational Facilities and Community Amenities Text Amendment. Let me first open the public hearing. We'll have information from staff, and then we'll have Ms. Ray. You can speak, and then we'll have discussion. Welcome, Mr. Shawn.

Hello, counsel. Let me pull up. All right. Hello, council. So this is text amendment TX 260701 regarding recreational facilities and community amenities. So council requested staff to research establishing development standards for pickleball courts. As we researched that request, we found that there was an issue more broad than pickleball. Our ordinance has some standards for traditional recreational facilities, but it doesn't have consistent standards or framework for many of the recreational facilities and amenities that we're seeing today, like pickleball courts. So rather than create a regulation for just one use, we looked at the opportunity to develop a broader set of standards for multiple uses. We have limited standards, I just read this, I just didn't move the slide. Pickleball is not specifically addressed in our ordinance at all. It's not even addressed whatsoever. So when we looked at amending the ordinance, we are replacing swim and tennis club with recreational facilities and community amenities. It applies consistent set of standards across all the applicable zoning districts and establishes clarifying requirements for expansion for new facilities and specific standards for outdoor pickleball courts. These are the major standards I wanted to highlight in the text amendment. So the minimum site area for any of these facilities would be two acres, unless it was built as part of a major site plan, like a new neighborhood. They could go under the minimum standards for acreage, but they would have to still meet the distancing requirements. We're now making the standard separation 50 feet for all recreational facilities. And I'll list the recreational facilities here. These are... Pickleball courts, which have different standards, tennis courts, basketball courts, athletic fields, clubhouses, community centers, community swimming pools, community playgrounds, dog parks, and other recreational buildings and facilities. For pickleball, specifically, there's a 300-foot separation or a 160-foot separation with a type A 40-foot 90% opaque buffer. We're also requesting that pickleball hours be posted and be between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. Lighting, so no pickleball courts shall be eliminated. And then they all, all these uses have to be go through minor, at least minor site development plan review and receive zoning compliance inspection. So I did walk the pickleball court, our park, and observe the pickleball courts multiple times, and I wanted to show you some examples. From the front door of Town Hall, that's 360 foot separation. You can still hear the pickleball, but it's not consistent hearing it all day long. And I talked to the people that work in the windows closest to the pickleball courts at Town Hall, and they cannot hear the pickleball from inside. This is 50 feet from the fence line for the pickleball courts. As you can see, this will be the standard separation for any other recreational facility. This is 100 foot distance. You can still hear the pickleball pretty clearly. This is 140 foot distance. It starts to dissipate a little bit. But at 300 feet, that's when you really start not hearing the pickleball court noise as consistently. So that's why we have that 300 foot standard.

This was you measuring and walking and hearing with your ears, no sound meter or anything like that, right?

I used a sound meter, just a clear day, and staff went out multiple days.

Okay. So obviously this means, based off this ordinance, I mean, our pickleball courts are definitely closer to Parkside than what we would normally allow. Oh, I mean, this is my next slide.

Okay.

Okay, so Parkside has a – I measured on the aerial. I didn't physically measure it because there are trees out there and a fence line. But it's 13 feet, according to Google Earth, away from the residential zoning, from fence line to the residential zoning. But from the distance from the Parkside home boundary from fence line to the closest fence line is 140 feet.

I don't know the opacity of the... Are you talking about Parkside, that neighborhood?

Next to our Stallings Park Pickleball Courts, yes. I don't know the exact opacity of that tree line.

You said 140 feet?

Yes, from fence lane to fence lane, which is in the second picture. Planning Board recommended approval with the following modifications. They wanted to change the start time that's posted for pickleball courts from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. The reason we chose 7 a.m. originally is that matches our noise ordinance, but they recommended moving it to 8 a.m., so we changed the text amendment as such. And they also wanted to increase the setback option from 140 feet to 160 feet, which still includes that type A buffer. So ultimately, staff recommends approval of TX 260701. It provides consistent standards for all recreational facilities, clear expectations for staff to present to people who are building these facilities, and enforcement as well for these facilities. One thing I forgot to mention was for these facilities, we treat them as accessory structures, and they can be up to five feet away from any property line currently.

From where? Five feet away from where?

Property lines, regardless of the zoning. Inside your property line, you could put it up to five feet from the edge of the property.

Yeah.

So we may have some questions, but let's hear a speaker. Ms. Ray, would you come? Thank you.

If you'll bear with me, I'm Glenda Ray. My husband and I have lived in the Shana Mara neighborhood for 26 years. Pickleball has been a two-year-plus, very heartfelt battle for us. During these 26 years, we have lived peacefully. Alongside our community swimming pool and tennis courts, in fact, our family plays racquet sports. So I want to be very clear, we are not opposed to recreation and we are not opposed to pickleball. What we are asking is for reasonable protection for homeowners when pickleball courts are constructed immediately adjacent to existing homes. In our case, these courts were built approximately 25 feet from our property line and only 100 feet from our home. Matt Dillard did those measurements for me. The pickleball noise is totally different from the tennis ball noise. The repetitive sharp popping sound travels into our home, and we can hear it in the middle of our house with the doors and windows closed. When we are outside, it can dominate what we hear in our own backyard. This simply isn't our perception. Pickleball acoustics have become a recognized planning issue around the country. Even USA Pickleball has developed programs specifically addressing pickleball noise and proper facility design. Professional acoustic guidance has recommended against placing open-air pickleball courts within 100 feet of residential property. Unfortunately, none of those considerations were given to us. Our HOA constructed these courts without a vote of the homeowners and without meaningful consultation with the homeowners that surround the courts and live closest to the courts. For 26 years, we've had no issues. The difference isn't recreation. The difference is the location and type of noise. Once courts like these are built, the burden falls on the neighboring homeowner to live with the consequences. This is why the standards before you really matter. I don't want this to happen to anybody else. I appreciate the planning board's thoughtful consideration of this issue, and I respectfully ask the town council to support reasonable development standards for that create appropriate separation between pickleball courts and existing homes. We can support recreation by protecting people's ability to peacefully enjoy their homes. These two things do not have to be in conflict.

Thank you.

And I ask that you accept what Max is presenting as is without any changes. It will not be retroactive to what we are continuing to deal with, but it will prevent the lights from going up in my backyard. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Yes, please approach, Mr. Twitchell. I was going to say a public comment. Public hearing, this is the time for that. So if you didn't sign up, please come on up if you'd like to speak. Yes, sir.

The Rays are neighbors of ours. They live across the street from us in the cul-de-sac. And I can vouch for the fact they're good people. Their disposition is not to create problems or to make life difficult for others. Their property value, the property value of the people that live to the right of them, the property value of the people to the left, have both been negatively impacted by the pickleball courts that she's talking about. And I really encourage you to look at a way of mediating courts that have already gone into an installation and have already been completed because what's happened there is egregious. It not only violated the current ordinance for sports facilities being located within a property line, but the behavior that's occurred there, the allocating of funds by the HOA, which was not approved by the people in the community, and the fact that they did not get proper permitting before they installed, that they have actually been shut down by the county and required to come back and correct some of those issues, The fact that the light switches that automatically turn off at a certain hour have been broken into numerous times and accessed by people in the community. The profanity, the loud noise of the pickleball. If you've never played pickleball or been close to a court, it's very invasive when you're outdoors. When I stand out on my front porch across the street, I don't know what the distance is. It's got to be at least 150, maybe 200 feet. I can hear it clearly. And when somebody's cussing on that court, I can hear them. So that's something that I really think they ought to take a look at. I know that it's not supposed to be retroactive, but I think that there is a way to mediate the problems that have occurred prior to these new policies and standards being adopted. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, counsel, we'll take some questions. I'll just, I wouldn't expect our attorney to have an answer tonight, nor is it probably her purview, but I would ask the manager and the attorney to kind of think through that idea and give us a memo in the next couple weeks. Fair enough. In terms of retroactive? Mr. Twitchell, I think, has asked for mediation. I'll put it this way. What, if any, role can the town, legal or otherwise, or ordinance bring to bear to help mediate conflict in a private neighborhood where an HOA has done something homeowners don't agree with.

Well, Mr. Richardson, I can share with you that Councilman Vandery and I did actually have a meeting with all but one member of the Shenamara HOA relaying the requests from Mr. and Mrs. Ray about their property. We emphasized the fact that we were there to attempt to share their concerns because they felt as though they were not well heard by the HOA. And I would not say that those items were well received. So we have attempted to do that, not in a way to say you must do X, Y, and Z, but more to say we're here as your neighbors, and we want to make sure that everybody's heard. So Ms. Cox and I have communicated about that quite a bit, of trying to figure out a way that we could solve it, and I don't know that we really came to a great resolution.

Okay. Maybe fresh eyes after this conversation could help. Sure. Yeah, of course. Please. The noise...

Might be a consideration as far as the noise ordinance.

Yeah, those are the kind of things we ought to be thoughtful about. Okay. Yes, I don't know. Good question.

Okay. And actually, even now, they've changed the lights on the tennis court, so we're already getting spillover on the tennis court lights. And just to echo what Tom said, the HOA installed lights on the pickleball court. without a permit and getting it approved and apparently you all made them take those lights down in order to get the certificate of occupancy to open the courts. But the courts were open from actually before the final surfaces went on the courts. Those courts were being used and the lights were on until 10 o'clock at night. I furnished many pictures to our HOA of the court lights and kids sitting in the middle of the court treating it as McDonald's play place versus our backyard. So I would appreciate those considerations.

Very good. So it's tricky, as you're thinking, it's tricky at private HOA and town government, but let us do our work to kind of think through, unless anyone has a comment tonight that would be helpful on this side of the table.

Hey, Wick. Just one thing. You're on that side of the table. Please go ahead. Obviously, we have on our parks and rec an individual who has been captain of the local pickleball community. And he did say that there are also equipment changes that are in the pipeline, too. So that might be something we could look at, too.

Okay.

Thank you.

So let's move back to the ordinance now that's before us, recommended by the planning board. Questions? Comments?

I have a question for Max. On things like hours of operation, what does enforcement of that look like, especially like on weekends when we do not have a code enforcement officer on duty?

Yeah, so it really just depends on the specific operation. So what it would be is complaint-driven.

All right.

So we'd have to observe the, let's say the noise level. So police may get involved during that to help document so that code enforcement can then have the documentation and send violation notices.

That is kind of my concern since you mentioned the police that I don't want to put our police in a position where they're managing pickleball. I think the police have more important public safety issues to care of and I just you know want to make sure we're using their time wisely especially if it's you know an HOA you know managed facility so like where's the line between where the town's responsibility starts and the HOA's ends and you know vice versa so we only have one code enforcement officer they work normal business hours so we basically be provided specific

proper documentation so that we can address it. So we would have to rely on videos, document, like people have documenting complaints to us and police observation.

I think Chief Franks might want to mention.

Do you mind walking up so the folks watching at home can hear you?

the noise ordinance is something that's enforceable by the police and it's, it normally is complaint driven. So if we get those calls, they will go out and investigate that. And it's really, if it's a disturbing at a certain, we have particular hours, but if it's something that's ongoing or continuous, but normally we, we start with a warning and, and say, hey, we've got this complaint. Can you try to modify what's going on? If that doesn't work and we have to come back, then they can move to a citation. But yeah, normally we work in conjunction with code enforcement.

And as a noise ordinance, is it decibel-based, or is it the nature of the noise can be considered as well?

It doesn't have to be decibel-based. There is a specification in there for decibel, but it's really any noise that's creating a disruption or disturbance at the moment. So we don't have to have a loud stereo and say, oh, this is 50 decibels. If we can hear it from outside your house or we can hear it from walking up the street, we know that can be construed as a loud disturbing noise. So pickleball would be a little bit different, but it would be one of those that we try to get voluntary compliance first.

Okay.

Thank you, Chief.

One more time, please. Yes. No, I appreciate you. I think we're all on the same spot, but keep going. Yeah.

I would like to see that end time changed to 8 p.m., and I will say that I have, Max will tell you, I have furnished pictures and recordings, and we have reported the late night lights and the noise on the carts, but the feedback that I got from Matt was that it was not enforceable because the lights were not spilling over. Okay. But I have... reported those things. But I would like to see that end time change to 8 p.m. I mean, even if you change it to 8 p.m., we still hear it during the dinner hour. Okay.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate you. Okay. Question. Ms. Wadowitz.

Max, can you tell us what the Type A buffer looks like?

Yeah. So that's a 40-foot wide high-density screening buffer that that has a minimum of 90% opacity at full growth. So you can't see through 90% of it. So that would include an evergreen tree rate of eight evergreen trees per 100 linear feet, four canopy trees per 100 linear feet, 10 understory trees, and 33 shrubs. And at the time of zoning compliance inspection with our ordinance now that includes our inspection, those plants would have to be in place.

So they'd have to be full grown?

No, they would not have to be full grown, but they would have to be planted. The buffer is required to be 90% opaque at full growth, but not at the time of installation. Okay.

So that probably takes care of the visual, but does this buffer take care of the audible?

So this is our most intense buffer that we have in our ordinance.

Right.

So I can't 100% guarantee that it will take care of the audible, but this is the buffer standard that we have in our ordinance that's the most strict.

I don't know. I'm just not sure. I don't believe that. 40 feet isn't so bad, but that this is going to really... 160 feet with this 40-foot installation.

Think about another 160-foot distance. So this is 140 feet. Imagine 40 feet of plantings as well, and then over time it will be at full growth. offering the fence line with the pickleball courts that you can see it, but it's hard to see in this picture. But in person, you can see the fence. But just imagine 40 feet of plantings.

Yeah, I'm not concerned about the visual. I mean, they're just, you know, courts.

I'm just showing you the distance as well. Just think of another 20 feet back. I just don't have a picture at 160 feet specifically.

So are you at the neighbor's yard? The residential line?

I was walking in the park. This is a picture from the park.

Oh, from the park. Okay. And the neighbors are back behind that.

Yeah, to the left of this image, this is where Parkside is, where the fence line is. That's the limits of Stallings Park.

Yeah.

So, Max, it's 300 feet without a Type A barrier or 140 plus a 40-foot barrier?

Yeah, 160 now with planning of a recommendation.

160 plus, okay, so 200.

No, it's 160 including the 40 feet.

So what discussion did the planning board have about the time? So the time they amended the start time, but what about the ending time?

They did not discuss the ending in detail, but they did want to change the beginning time from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. I just, I don't remember the specific conversation. I kind of focused more on the morning pickleball.

So obviously the setbacks would not apply to existing facilities, but would the hours of operation apply to existing facilities, or would this only be going forward with newly constructed facilities?

Going forward with newly constructed facilities.

So it would not affect the Shattamare situation at all, other than it would prevent, like, expansion of that facility, correct? Yeah, and lighting is considered expansion.

That's something that counties takes care of, the lighting permit and the lighting installation inspections. Okay. Yeah, this is the county.

Thank you. More questions? Let me go ahead and close the public hearing. I should have done that a moment ago so we can get to vote when we're ready. Go ahead. Okay.

Just to clarify, part of the answer you gave to Lori, it's not required at the time of planning, but, I mean, if you plant an oak tree, it's going to take 30 years to get fully grown. Is there any type of timeline for it to become that 80% opaque tree?

We don't currently have a timeline of when these trees should be full grown. The planting species list changes from our urban forester annually.

So, I mean, somebody could buy a house, live there their whole life, die practically, and the type A buffer would never be fully grown. Potentially.

Hypothetically. Hypothetically. Okay. That's not the intent of the ordinance. Well, I mean, but if it is... So that would affect, if you wanted to do standards for exact tree growth, we would have to put those in the ordinance separately.

Yeah. So let me just make a recommendation that we take a step in the right direction. There are some questions, right? The buffer is always an issue with development and recreation. And the type A buffer includes more than just one single tree. There's shrubbery and all that stuff that are faster growing. This is about noise. It's not about sight, right? Because 50 feet is the standard for basketball and tennis. I understood you correctly.

In this ordinance. Currently, it doesn't exist.

Right. So we're more than six times the distance required. So it's a noise thing. I would just recommend there are some good questions, but do we have any more questions beyond that? I think we should be ready to vote on this. It feels like...

I HAVE A QUESTION AND FIRST I HAVE A KNIT ON THE ARTICLE 3 DEFINITION RECREATIONAL FACILITY CHANGING INCLUDING TO INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO BEFORE ATHLETIC COURTS AND THEN WE HAVE POOL LS SO I THINK IT JUST NEEDS A CONNECTION.

THERE'S A GAP. MAYBE POOLS. JUST LIKE A TYPO. Sorry, I didn't catch that earlier. No, it's okay. Thank you.

The question I have is around enforcement and we say you have a hypothetical situation of a community. They put the sign out that says no pickleball past 9 o'clock or 8 o'clock, whatever we go with. And that consistently is being violated. I understand we'd have code enforcement and or police out there and potentially issuing citations to individuals, but at any point would we go to HOA or to develop or to say you you got to do more Well, that's who would be getting the fines is the HOA it is.

Oh, sorry Yeah, because it wouldn't be up to an individual pop individual property owner That would be surrounded by it But if whoever owns the pickleball courts themselves, which is usually the HOA and this ordinance is specifically for community amenities not private I Mean it doesn't enforce the 50-foot distancing standard with private but enforcement and It's for community amenities.

No, that's good to hear. Other questions?

Motion from anybody? My only other question, just for the council, is between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., and if anyone feels strongly one way or the other on that.

I think there was a request to move it to 8 p.m.

Okay, now it's summer, and it's whatever time it is, and it's still light out at 8 p.m. 9 p.m., it won't be light out winter, summer, fall. So I would say 8 p.m. because there's no lighting. So it's gonna be pretty close to, you know, if somebody stays for another half an hour or whatever sunset is, you know, that's how they're gonna be violating the ordinance. Because who's going to play pickleball in the dark? Can you play pickleball in the dark? No.

They turn on the tennis court lights and play by the tennis court lights on the pickleball court. What? They turn on the tennis court lights and play pickleball by the tennis court lights.

Yeah. Right. They're cracking. So I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other. I do think that this doesn't apply to the existing problem in Sean Amar, correct? toward 9 p.m. only because the planning boards approved it at 9 p.m. I don't know what other thought went into that.

So the hours are specifically matching our current ordinance, NOAA's ordinance and the code of ordinance. Our pickleball courts here at the town park say dawn to dusk, but that's harder to enforce.

Okay. So, yeah, I understand. So I don't feel strongly about one or the other. I'm just making the point that 8 p.m., 9 p.m., not a big difference if dinner is the most noisy hour. And it doesn't affect Shawna Marr's community. It's not like there's a bigger issue out there in that neighborhood than just the time. I'm concerned about other community facilities. If they have an appropriate buffer, if the noise isn't impacting a residential life, I'd like it to be as long as it could be.

And I also think it would avoid confusion on having different, you know, something that doesn't match the current noise ordinance. It would be better to keep them synced up.

Okay.

Would this apply to EPCON on lawyers that's being built?

You mean Greenway? Areas on the Greenway that are currently being built?

Yeah, whatever one. Yeah, there's three on it. No, they currently have approved plan sets.

Okay.

So, I mean, really, this is an ordinance. I APPRECIATE THE ORDINANCE, I APPROVE OF IT, BUT IT MIGHT BE SOLVING VERY FEW INSTANCES OTHER THAN MODIFICATIONS. SO THAT'S WHEN THIS WOULD OPEN IT UP FOR LIKE SHANAMARA.

CORRECT. LIKE IF THEY WANTED TO CONVERT LIKE A TENNIS COURT TO PICKABLE COURTS, THEY'D HAVE TO THEN FOLLOW THE ORDINANCE.

Well, in some neighborhoods like mine, we don't have a pickleball court. A resident who brought this to our attention lives in a fairly large neighborhood off Stevens Mill. They don't have a pickleball court. They're considering it. So I think this is sort of a, you're right, but there could be instances where this could be helpful. All right, I think we're done with comments. May I have a motion from one of our council members?

I don't know, I just, I don't know how to fix it, but I'm just concerned about, you know, I got online and checked with my AI consultant, and they said it's all around the country. It's big neighbors are fighting with neighbors about it, and I just don't know what the answer is. I'm not sure about that buffer. BECAUSE I DON'T THINK IT'S GOING TO BUFFER THE NOISE. I DON'T KNOW.

ANYBODY WANT TO MAKE A MOTION? SO SINCE IT'S GOING TO APPLY TO FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS AND BECAUSE I THINK IT'S A SEPARATE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION, WE CAN POTENTIALLY REVISIT IT LATER, I WOULD APPROVE, I WOULD MOVE TO APPROVE THE TEXT AMENDMENT TX26.07.01 AS PRESENTED WITH THE MINOR CORRECTION TO ARTICLE 3 DEFINITION RECREATIONAL FACILITY AND say move moving the closure of the tennis court or the pickleball court to 8 p.m. right I Wasn't in favor of that, but I'm fine with nine.

I'm fine.

Yeah Is there a second second assistant with the got a motion we got a second many more discussion All right. Let's have a vote all in favor. Please signify by saying aye aye any opposed aye

We need a motion on the consistency.

Yeah, so that passes. Lori, did you abstain?

What?

Did you abstain? I didn't hear you vote.

Aye. For the record. Because I don't know what the solution is.

I'd like to make a motion to find that TX26.07.01 is both consistent and reasonable with the town's comprehensive land use plan.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Ray and everyone. Tom, thank you for speaking. Next up, item number 4A now, public records request special assessment. Ms. Cox.

Good evening. I provided a memo in your packet along with the proposed special service charge to give some background information as to why I think this is necessary. Over the last few months in particular, there have been a huge increase increase in both the types of public records requests we're receiving the frequency and just the sheer amount of volume and time it is taking staff to compile these records North Carolina general statute 132-6 point B allows us to charge a special service charge when it uses a and extensive use of information technology resources or extensive clerical or supervisory assistance. We've tried to charge the last few months. We've not been successful with collecting any funds in doing that, so I think having a policy that's uniform fills in that gap for the town. What's important though is that the first four hours per month, we're not gonna charge you for it. We understand providing records is a duty of local government. We are not trying to shield away from that duty. But we have one clerk who's the records custodian, and the town does not have any administrative assistance. Individuals that write are paid lesser than some of our department heads to retrieve these records. And recently, a lot of the records are REQUEST FOR ALL EMAILS TO AND FROM THE MAYOR, ALL COMMUNICATION. THE FIRST REQUEST WAS APRIL 10TH THROUGH THE 30TH. IT TOOK OVER FOUR HOURS OF STAFF TIME AND IT WAS almost 400 emails to review. And in that review, there are certain things we as a town could be liable if we just sent all the emails without reviewing them. There could be confidential personnel information. There could be negotiations with economic development. ACCOUNT NUMBERS, TRADE SECRETS, CLOSED SESSION INFORMATION, INFORMATION REGARDING MINORS, BILLING INFORMATION. THERE'S A LOT OF INFORMATION THAT IS NOT A PUBLIC RECORD UNDER STATUTE, AND SO WE CAN'T JUST ASK ONE OF YOU TO FORWARD US ALL YOUR EMAILS AND JUST FORWARD THEM ON. IT'S NOT THAT EASY. SOMEONE HAS TO GO THROUGH, REVIEW THEM, AND REDACT THE INFORMATION THAT WE CANNOT TURN OVER. There is one typo in the policy under the definition section and two actual costs. It states and does not include any cost the town would not have incurred. It should read would have incurred.

I'm sorry, where is that, Melanie?

That is on section two, the third bullet point, actual cost. ACTUAL COST MEANS FOR PURPOSES OF ROUTINE DUPLICATION THE DIRECT CHARGEABLE COST OF REPRODUCTION AS DETERMINED UNDER GENERALLY ACCEPTED ACCOUNTING PRINCIPLES AND DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY COST THE TOWN WOULD HAVE INCURRED BUT FOR THE REQUEST. And so in determining what this hourly rate should be, we looked at what the requests are that we've received as of late, and those are emails to and from the town manager, department heads and so we looked at both the clerk's hourly rate including all benefits for compensation including the town manager and various department heads and this hourly rate is a significant decrease from what there's actual charges are but the 60 and 85 were just a number that I thought we could definitely support based on the expenses that were incurring. For the month of, was it May, it was over six hours, and that was just for one person. If you're asking, if a requester's asking for emails to and from for three or four different town employees. I mean, that's easily 18, 20 hours, and it's keeping our staff from doing the jobs that they're hired to do, you know, and what's in their job description. Four hours, we understand that's reasonable. Anything above that, we think, is excessive.

What is the legislation? I'm trying to find the words that it uses. Does it say, what's the word it uses to talk about what would be too much that you might then trigger some reimbursement of staff time?

The law, Mr. Richardson, is NCGS 132-6.2.

What's the word it uses? Excessive?

Excessive, yeah. I can tell you exactly what it says.

Mr. Horvath, excuse me, one of our speakers tonight mentioned that he has sent some of these in. Do we have more than one outstanding person who has submitted a request? Or are we really talking about our speakers tonight? Sorry, I don't call you by name.

Right. I mean, over the last, what, 15 years, the clerk and I have worked together. There have been periods of time, typically, where someone might have a big request, but it's usually related to one particular project or one particular ordinance. And so we, and a lot of times we can narrow the request by asking for keywords, and that significantly reduces the information that we're looking for if we can use those keywords. In this situation, we've asked, can we narrow this request, right? And the response has been, no, I want all the documents. So we've had some bigger ones in the past, but usually you give them the documents and that's the end of it. This case, we give documents and then the next month, instead of for one person, it's now three employees. Ask for one person's salary, then it's four and five. It's a snowball and it keeps growing and growing and growing and it's making it difficult for staff to get other work done. Under the policy in state law, you cannot charge for attorney time in reviewing that. So there's a significant amount of time that the taxpayers are all paying for me to review this information. that you all can't get back from this special surcharge. But in 132-6.2 , it states, if the request is such as to require extensive use of information technology resources or extensive clerical or supervisory assistance by personnel of the agency involved, Or if producing the record in a medium requested results in greater use of information technology resources than that established by the agency for reproduction of the volume of information requested, then the agency may charge, in addition to the actual cost of duplication, a special surcharge which shall be reasonable and shall be based on the actual cost incurred for such extensive use of resources or labor costs for the personnel providing the service.

I mean, it goes on. So, I have one more question, then I'll toss it to others who might want to, but talk about the expectations from the statute on the timeliness of response. I could argue that a requester could have four hours of research time a month, or whatever the right number is we decide on, and every month we could be sending information. It may not satisfy the person's request and timeliness, but is there a timeliness feature that the state would require us to give certain information by a certain amount of time? Can the requester make a, in other words, a I need this by next Friday?

I mean, they can make that request, but all the statute says is that reasonable and as prompt as possible. So we're under a duty to provide this information as quickly as possible. Does that mean that department heads or whoever's asked for that information is supposed to stop working on all the other projects and all the other town duties they have? Absolutely not. I think because there's no case law interpreting, you know, what is prompt or what is reasonable, they're all very case specific. As long as the individual's dedicating, you know, whether it's an hour a week or, you know, two hours a week, that we could defend that. And of course, depending on the side of jurisdiction, it's completely different, right? There's state agencies and municipalities that have departments that this is what they do. They're set up to do this day in and day out. And so they have the personnel and they expect this and their budget covers for that. Town managers told you guys multiple times that we run a very lean ship. And so we just don't have extra personnel that have hours and hours to make this their focus right now.

Okay, questions from council members at all, if you have them? I just have a question on how do our rates, the proposed rates, compare to our neighboring municipalities? Do we have an idea?

Not really. Indian Trail is going to be suggesting that they adopt a very similar policy. Their policy that's posted right now probably is 10 years old. I think someone quoted $18 an hour or something like that. I don't think they have any staff that make $18 an hour. So that information was based on information from a long time ago. Union County might be $40 an hour. It is. I'm trying to think of some other ones, I mean, do I think that the 1685 is on the higher end? Absolutely. But when we looked at the hourly rates and you're looking at the low end of 77 to $105 an hour, the 1685 is still significantly less than that. But I mean, if you all wanted to support 50 or a different amount, that would be completely fine. I just, looking at the actual cost is how we came up with those numbers.

Is the having it split between different categories of cost, would that make it more difficult for staff to produce these estimates? Would it be easier if we just had a flat rate that covered whatever employee happens to be doing it?

I don't think so because I think when we get the request, we look at what they're asking for and then based on doing this previously, how much time do you think it's, you know, you ask the employee, how much time do you think it's going to take for you to go through, you know, all of these emails?

And is the four hours a pretty common threshold that would trigger this that's used by other accounts? I think so.

Yeah, I think so.

Does the, in the review of any type of documents or emails, I know you mentioned that your time can't be charged for. Does that include, because I know Ms. Nichols as the clerk has to review them as well, what's the delineation of, you know, who's looking at the document, who's making redactions or deciding that this will not be part of the responsive records because your time can't be charged for, but if the redaction is done by the clerk, how does that go into accounting for the time that's being charged?

Typically how it works and how we've done it before is they go into one like email account and then Ms. Nichols will flag any of those that she has a question about that she thinks might need to be redacted. So then I'm reviewing just those that potentially have an issue. Does that answer your question? I think so, so it's... And then I'll email back and say, the email, you know, from June 30th, you need to redact the third paragraph starting with this, ending with this, right? I give instructions on what needs to be redacted, or, you know, you can't turn this email over at all, the date, and identify it that way.

So Ms. Nichols' time does go into the accumulation of hours, but yours doesn't in that regard?

Correct, yes. Ms. Nichols' time absolutely does, because she spent... Six hours, one month, four and a half. The four and a, well, a little less than four and a half was just April 10th through April 30th for the mayor.

What is, Ms. Nichols, what is the process of, given that we don't have an in-house IT person, of going back and getting in, you know, you mentioned going back 10 years in some cases, of getting those emails and what that process is like?

I, we have a IT vendor who handles all of our IT. So I have to make the request of our IT vendor to pull a certain individual's emails to and from for a certain date range. Once they are able to do that, those emails are dumped into a folder, if you will, in an email account that then I can go review. But that is not instantaneous. They are not full-time staff for us. They are our vendor. Now, is it usually done, once I make the request, is it usually done in a week or two? Absolutely. But they're not here on staff.

So there is a turnaround time to it?

For the IT vendor, absolutely.

Yeah.

Yes, ma'am.

Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, I'm looking just in a quick research of earlier today and earlier this week of looking at what other municipalities, whether it's counties or towns, I feel like our service fee is well above what I've seen from other places. So I'm of the mind of taking a step back from this and looking at where we stand and doing a further look of what comparable government entities, where to say, if it's Mecklenburg County, that may not be a fair comparison because of the staff that they have to be able to do it, but municipalities of similar sizes to us and what their service fees are, because it's a balance. The best way I can think of it is Paying for trash pickup. We all get one bin per week. But if you want more to dispose of, you've got to go to the dump to be able to do that and pay your fair share of being able to do that. But I'd like it to be something that's not necessarily so cost prohibitive to make somebody say, well, I'm just going to give up on this because it's way out of my range to be able to do that.

Can I respond to that?

Of course.

I think you might find that a lot of municipalities don't have a policy on it. The statute allows them to do it. So when you have a situation where it comes up, that's beyond what they normally are used to seeing in terms of public records request, then they might charge. But, you know, I represent four other towns and what we're seeing in Stallings is unlike anything I've seen from any of those other towns for the last 15 years.

Mike, can I ask you a quick question real quick? I mean, these are the actual costs that it's costing us. I mean, it's not a fee like we're charging $25 for a permit fee. It's an actual cost. So I guess I'm trying to understand kind of where your question's coming from on how it relates to other municipalities if this is an actual cost.

because from just what I've seen of like ours is three, four times higher than other places. And again, that's a quick glance, but the state has an excess of 500 municipalities. So I'm saying rather than make an action tonight to further assess where ours fit in line with things.

Okay. I'm just trying to understand kind of, I mean, It's not a fee. I mean, you know where I'm coming from.

Sure. But like for instance, if it's a planning or zoning fee, do those costs necessarily align with all of the staff time to be able to account for the work that goes into those things? Like that's not an exact measure either.

That's right. I mean, in this particular case, I thought that you've done the homework on how much time and staff time it takes. And that's where these numbers came from.

Correct, because some of those other municipalities, you might have administrative assistance in the various departments. And so that is going to drive that hourly rate much lower. But I mean, we just don't have that.

Okay, so we've got some thoughts on the table about revisiting this. Let me ask one question. Why does this, Mr. Twitchell asked the question, why does this not require a public hearing? What kind of, is this a policy?

This is a policy, correct.

I think it's important. I heard y'all, this doesn't feel good because we're charging for information that a citizen has requested and would be doing so in perpetuity if they exceeded four hours. But I'm also hearing there's a huge volume of work that our staff would do to satisfy this individual's request. So we've got to find a balance. Your tax dollars, mine, shouldn't be spent to have our clerk or anyone else stop doing their day job to fulfill a request. However, there ought to be some transparency in our work, and I get that. We're not there tonight, probably. And I know, Joe, you want to speak. Hold off. Let's talk after the meeting. But... That's the dilemma we hear tonight. I've heard 15, 18, 20 hours, six, eight, four people's emails back 10 years. That's pretty excessive.

Not 10 years.

Okay, I'm sorry.

No, I was giving an example that 10 years ago we might have gotten like one big request, right? But we provide the information, that's the end of it. Okay, I thought it hurt someone to say 10 years of research. Yeah, I misspoke then. That's not the situation we're dealing with here. Okay. Because it's just repetitive over and over and over again.

So here's where I am. I'm fully supportive of some policy that allows us to recoup some staff time for unreasonable and excessive uses of staff time for a public record, be it the media or be it an individual outside of our town or a citizen in our town. I'M THERE. I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT THE TIME LIMIT IS AND THEN THE CHARGE WOULD BE. IF IT'S A COVER YOUR COST, I'M FINE WITH THAT, BUT WE NEED TO DECIDE THAT. ANYBODY ELSE HAVE ANY THOUGHTS?

CAN I ADD ONE OTHER THING? IF THE REQUESTER OBJECTS TO THE FEE, THEY GO TO THE STATE INFORMATION THERE'S A MEDIATION PROCESS WITH THE STATE INFORMATION OFFICER. SO THERE'S A NEUTRAL THIRD PARTY THAT CAN HELP MEDIATE AND SAY YES, THIS FEE IS EXCESSIVE OR NO, THIS FEE IS NOT EXCESSIVE. I JUST WANTED TO POINT THAT OUT THAT THAT'S IN THE POLICY AND IN THE STATUTE AS WELL.

Is there one? Mr. Graham, we haven't heard from Graham yet. Then we'll come back to you, Steve.

All right. So, I mean, I've done, looked into a number of towns and counties Just off the top of my head, Boone, Franklin, Stanley, Union County, as mentioned. So first, the four hours seems very much in line with what everyone else has. I saw one that was actually three hours, but four hours. Because initially when I read that, I was like, I wonder if that's too low. but seeing everyone else, I think that is reasonable, and it is only in a month, so it's not four hours per year. So I would be in favor of the four hours. The fee, again, it's kind of all over the place. There's a number of counties and municipalities that are actually silent on what the actual fee would be. They just say it will be a special service charge and leave it at that. Union County being $40 and I think Stanley was down at like $18 an hour, but it also looked like their fee schedule may be very old. I understand what our staff time is and I appreciate using the amounts and actually the amounts you came up with are even below what their time really is. That said, I mean, I would be in favor of dropping it down to $40 just to be in line with Union County. I think if that's what's been established in the county, then no need to deviate because in my mind, we're all one big happy family. But one thing I did see is there's a number of municipalities and counties that also set when a deposit is, or upfront payment would be required. Some set it as low as $25. Others did, I think one did 500. Actually, I think the University of North Carolina at Charlotte might have been $500. But I would like to see when does that deposit threshold come into play. I would say if you're at... maybe $500 start for the deposit. If it's less than that, then... Or even $400. Maybe there's some reasonable amount to say this is when we'd actually require a deposit, but I'm also fine with just requiring a deposit up front. My only concern with that is just if we estimate and we estimated wrong... on overestimated and refunding. And I know we have a mechanism for doing that, but. maybe set a very low threshold. All right, Steve, Mr. Hirsch.

Yeah, I would just like to talk about the expanded scope of this. I know that certain municipalities and counties have started to get requests from political groups and also social groups and also even companies driving large requests So is it possible to have, I mean, higher fees for those external entities versus internal entities? And can I explain how that might work? Because I think, you know, we've heard some where people are just wanting, you know, blasted municipalities with just requests that they don't really have any type of focus and it's difficult to get focus. Yeah.

I don't think we can distinguish between the types of people that are asking for the documents. I think there would be some due process and other violations by doing that. There have been situations where we've gotten some kind of unusual requests, but because both Ms. Nichols and I both are on listserv for local government lawyers and Clerk listservs, you hear people chiming in about those, and a lot of times they've just been bots. So we haven't had to respond at all. Okay. So that hasn't taken up a huge amount of our time yet because they've not been individuals or groups that we've had to respond to.

So what, just real quick, when you say it's a bot and you don't have to respond, it's not an official public records request? I'll give you an example.

The UNC School of Government identified one request that was being made of all towns in North Carolina with fictitious news outlets, and they, their IT facility, or actually traced that back to Switzerland where it was a bot. But there are things like that when we get those types of requests that we have no idea who they're coming from. We usually can either check with our other municipalities in North Carolina. There's a way I can do that or with the school of government and they can tell us if they've seen this or if this is legit.

Okay. I KNOW WE HAD SPOKEN A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THAT, SO I JUST WANTED TO SEE WHAT THOSE ANSWERS WERE.

I JUST THINK THE REASON WE'RE IN THIS, DOING THIS, IS BECAUSE OF THE MASSIVENESS OF THIS REQUEST. I MEAN, WE, LIKE MS. COX HAS ALLUDED TO, I used to do some of the FOIL requests, and it usually takes somebody two or three hours, and this is just absolutely ridiculous, and that's why it's a little bit confusing. Well, it's confusing for us. I think they understand it better than we do now, but in looking at other towns, I don't know how you could compare it to any other town that I've ever seen or worked with, because I've never seen anything this massive and somebody's emails and you gotta go back through them. It's just, it's so confusing and complicated that we have to have something in place that, so that they can say, okay, this is the law, this is what the policy is now of this town. And it's right there in black and white. Hi.

I'm sorry to interrupt you.

That's okay.

By looking at you. I'm sorry. I thought you were done. So here's where we are. There's general support I'm hearing for the policy chains. There are some questions about both cost and duration of the free period. as well as the deposit threshold. So is anybody ready to make a motion tonight and muster three or four votes to get it passed tonight? I'm happy to entertain that motion.

Sounds like there's still some questions outstanding.

Okay. So we agree to just defer it. We don't meet in August again, so this would be an item that comes back in the September time frame. How does that affect the work you're doing now?

I mean, we provided an estimate for one of them. It was supposed to be closer to, I think, 69, and we reduced it to 5,000 and requested 50% deposit before we start pulling those documents. We've not gotten that deposit, so we're not pulling those documents.

So you're acting under the authority, not of a council policy, but of the statute. Correct. Manager's discretion or something like that.

Correct.

Okay, so this policy will help later, but you can defer a month and it'll be a stasis unless the petitioner puts a deposit down.

For that large request, yes, sir.

Okay, let's do that. Let's hold for a month and ask staff to come back with some additional thoughts. I would encourage you all to send emails to the council office manager with your thoughts and help him craft a new policy if we need to do that by the next September.

Next meeting is the 14th.

14th. This may extend to the second meeting of September. I don't really know. Wait. This is the first meeting in August, so we should probably see this back in a month. Right. Yeah. You good with that?

I'm good.

All right. Do we need to make a motion on that or just? Do I need a motion on that? No? Okay, good. Let's move on. So we're past that part of the agenda. Now we are at item number five, engineering items. Justin Russell accepting some streets and a couple of neighborhoods. Thank you. Welcome.

Evening, Council. I have two community acceptance requests. We'll go with the first one, Southstone from Pulte. They have requested that the town take over the right-of-way, which includes the stormwater, the sidewalks, the roads, the streetlights, and including with the streetlights is the utility bill for those streetlights, as the town pays for the streetlights. With Southstone, that comes out to be 1.896 miles to what would be added to our inventory. Pulte has worked with the town staff and has completed all the required criteria, so staff requests that council accept these roadways.

All right, we've got a request from staff to approve the infrastructure acceptance for Southstone subdivision. Do I have a motion to do so?

Can I ask one quick question? I promise it'll be quick.

Motion. Let's get a motion second, and then we'll ask some questions. Can we do them separately or together? I think we'll do them.

We can do them. I don't know how we do it. Give us the next one, too. Okay. We also have Courtyards at Lawyers from Epcon. So it's the same. They requested that town take over the right-of-way, so it's included. Again, it's the stormwater, the roads, the sidewalk, the streetlights, and their utility bill for those lights. Their number comes out to be 1.43 miles, and they have also worked with staff and completed all the required criteria. So we request you accept these mileages as well.

All right, since this is council policy, let's get a motion, then a second, then we'll have a question, then we'll vote.

I'll move that we accept the Southstone subdivision and the Courtyards at Lawyer subdivision, accept their infrastructure and roads.

You have a second? I'll second. Okay, any questions?

Yeah, just real quick. Obviously, in the considered agenda, we voted tonight to move forward with... Yeah, a reassessment of all the roads. When we pull these roads in, do they come in with a, what is it, a PCI? Are we established on them?

So part of this, the new survey, we actually included all the private roads that we will soon take in, so that way we'll have a PC number this fall for those private roads, which also helps us to tell the developers, hey, you know, we've done a study on these roads. We need you to fix them before you hand them over to us.

Justin, I know that the last item with the courtyards at Lawyers was the handicap ramps to be ADA accessible. What were kind of the last punch list items for Southstone that needed to be completed?

Actually, Southstone, I've worked with them from start to finish, and they were all pretty completed. Maybe some stormwater infrastructure fixes, but that has gone very smoothly. That was a normal process. Okay, thanks.

Any more questions? Just one. Both of these, the roads that we were accepting and the infrastructure, these were items which, when we approved the development, we approved it with an understanding that these roads would come into the town. Yes, sir. That these would not be private. Because I just want to make that clear for those four people who might be listening online and in public right now, that we're not accepting private roads that should have been private, and now we're taking on the costs. We knew when we approved it. Yes, sir.

Okay. All right, we've got a motion and a second. Any more questions? All right, all in favor say aye. Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you, Justin.

Item number six, splash pad design contract. Ms. Eunice Donnelly is here with us. Thank you. Hi.

Hello. Good afternoon, council. Thank you guys so much for bearing with us at the Parks Department. It's been a crazy week, but we appreciate all your prayers and thoughts, and we're just a big family, so we really do appreciate everything that you guys are kind of throwing our way. So with that aside, Splash Pad Fun. I know you guys love to hear about this one. I feel like it's been... A few months, we're finally making some legway with the project. However, the first step is the design phase, and with the extensive cost, it does have to come in front of council for you guys to approve moving forward. Fortunately, I have Nick Lowe here with McAdams to answer any questions that you guys might have in regards to the contract. Pretty much everything in here we have to do to move forward, but I do want to just kind of break it apart for you guys, because for me there was kind of some questions that you guys might have about what's in there. So just to get started, in the memo I kind of broke it down, and I'll pull that up here. I feel like I haven't talked to you guys in forever. with the prices right here. So I think the most important piece of this, the surveying services, while this is so high, Kevin Parker, our town engineer, he recommended that we go ahead and get the whole park surveyed while they're doing this project. However, that is not necessary to move forward. So if the council did decide to kind of save some funds, that would actually take this $3,970 down to $5,400 to just get the area surveyed that we need to move forward. So I want to make that very clear that the other items below, we don't really have any wiggle room on that to move forward with this project. However, if we were to only get that .55 acres surveyed, that would bring this 105 down to a little over $71,000 to move forward with just the design concept. And I just want to relay that we have to design, review, permit, bid, construction, inspection, turn on. Can you say that again? Yeah, I was about to say, I was like, I'm trying to remember it.

I have two questions. Yeah, of course. So serving just the .55 acres, if you were to serve the rest of the park, what is the benefit of doing that?

Yeah, of course. So the benefit would for us essentially to have it in our back pocket if we wanted to move forward with changing any other areas in the park. If you ask me today, Eunice, what does that look like? It's honestly a big question mark. It's just something that we would already have done if you guys said, hey, could you look into adding this here? Can we change out this amenity? We would already have that done. They're already out there. So this would pretty much last us. And I mean, I can let Nick speak on this. a while.

Yeah. Is there an expiration date on that?

And Nick, do you have anything to say?

As long as there's no changes to the site, it's just, we're picking up the survey or if any utilities were to change, you know, you've talked about all the utilities in the right away, but usually typically that's good until you decide to do something with it.

So when you say changes to the site, do you mean like the physical structures or topography?

It could be topography from erosion. Like, say, I want to put more pickleball courts over there. Say that's ten years from now. We'd want to just make sure where you put them that the topography in that area is still the same because the land can erode or trees can fall. There's just things with nature that can happen or added utilities. But it's typically good for a long time, especially if it's with the same consultant. Sometimes other consultants don't like other surveys.

It's like when you go to a new dentist and they want new x-rays. You got it. That's exactly right.

But that's the big difference in the price is 10 acres versus half an acre. We only need half an acre to get it permitted. Okay.

So my daughter, who's now 22, grew up in this park, you know, since she was a toddler. And I've seen many changes and evolutions of this park. Have there not been previous surveys done with all the other previous upgrades?

We haven't had to with existing amenities. So this is the first time we're actually adding a physical structure since I've been here. I don't know if, as far as 2012 when the park went into its second phase.

Yes, so the only, I think, structures we've added have been shades, I believe. And I don't believe those would require a survey. Okay.

So, like I said, I wish Kevin was here. I think this was him being just a little proactive. However, again, not necessary. And if the town is wanting to save some money, I think that's probably a good spot to do it.

I know the answer is it depends because there's so much fluctuation in construction. But... If we approve it as is at 105, does that still keep you in track with the budget line item that we approved earlier this year?

Yeah, Nick, can you promise me that? However, after talking with Nick and his team, it seems like knock on wood, as long as they don't go out there and anything's crazy or something extreme happens, I still feel like we're in a very good spot with what was budgeted from council to move forward with this project.

And I would see the only risk with that is some surprise from Union County with permitting. Sometimes they'll read it a different way and interpret something that probably wasn't planned for. That's the only real risk is through the permit process, something getting added.

One quick question. What's the advantage of, say, serving at the whole park now versus, say... another acre, acre and a half if we did something in the future. Is it cheaper to do it this way?

I believe cost, Kevin's reasoning was probably they're going to continue to increase. It's going to continue to get more expensive. So while they were already out there performing the service to just get the whole park done. However, like I said, Not a necessity. I really just care about the half acre, to be honest, to get this building done. Because we're already, just for transparency purposes, we are right on track. I would be thrilled of this opened Memorial weekend.

So for those who don't know what we're talking about, I bet there's some. It's a required chemical shed to service the splash pad, the water feature in our park, which has been a nice feature for decades, but we removed the stone circle, what do you call it, balls? The spheres, yes, sir. The spheres, spheres, because they were a hazard and we didn't have replacements, so we got rid of those. So the question is, do we just mix the splash pad all together? The community generally thinks the splash pad's a good idea, but we've gotta have a new chemical storage shed. That's what we're talking about. We're not adding amenities, we're adding a necessity by the county. Okay.

So, stepping back, did we, just to confirm, for this project, did we bid it out to McAdams? Or, I mean, did we, it was an open bidding and McAdams came in and bid for it?

Yep, so McAdams is our on-call consultants for this, and it... justified all of our bidding requirements for this project. Yep, great question.

And then, so you said for the items that we've done recently in the park, the upgrades and repairs we've done, we haven't had a survey? Correct, correct.

Because a lot of the stuff that we're doing with this, we're having to change out plumbing, electrical. So that's kind of why we need this done. It has to be done. Okay. We tried to kind of go a separate way. However, the county excitedly told me no. So we are here now.

What would the next step in the process be after this?

So after this, we give the green flag to McAdams. They start doing what is said in this contract. Sorry, you could probably go into the schedule more so.

No, sorry. I just meant like everything you've given us here is done. Then after this contract is completed, what happens after that?

So basically this contract is for design and permitting, and if you all wanted us to help with construction administration, that would be a change order to this to see if you needed the help or not. But after this contract, it would be putting it out to bid and getting it built. So our hope is to get through permitting. We're hoping it would be early next year just because when you start permitting, get into November, December, everybody's gone. So hopefully we've got permit in place January, get the bid out in January, February, and then we can – get that built and open for Memorial Day is our goal. But for lack of a better term, do you serve as like a GC in that regard? No, we don't serve as a GC. We're design consultants, so we make sure the GC builds it correctly. Gotcha. It would be the next contract. So once we get what the exact construction documents are, then we can quote whether you want us to help or not or if you've got internal PMs. Thank you.

And typically what I've seen is pretty much go the route where they oversight with this, a project for such a small

Okay, so you've got a decision to make another question.

Oh, no, I was gonna make a motion. Please do I would move Approval of the McAdams proposal. However, I would Do it with the limited survey. I just don't see a need for the full survey at this time and this project came at us Unexpectedly and at five hundred thousand dollars. It's quite a serious shock so I would Move approval, limited survey, save $34,000.

Do we have a second? Second. Yeah, motion, second. Any discussion?

Just what, so what would the, it would subtract how much from the total cost?

The final cost would be $71,180. $74,000. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome.

All right, motion, second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right, any opposed, no.

Thank you, council.

Erin, we have a community committee application from Mr. Bruce Harapchio. Help me with the last name. Is it here?

I'll help you with his last name.

Oh, that's who you are.

I was wondering who you were.

Sorry for the name.

If you choose to appoint him, his expiration date would be 3-31-28, and then that committee would be full once again.

Hi, welcome. Could you introduce yourself to us real quick? Yeah, I'm Bruce Arapsio. I'm glad to be here tonight, and it helps to place a face with a name. So I appreciate you all considering me for being part of the Citizens Committee, and I'm a proud resident of Stallings, live on Stevens Mill Road, and I just hope to contribute to the Citizens Committee with giving ideas, input. perspective, vision, and maybe from a grassroots citizens perspective. But yeah, I hope to cover any issues, including safety, healthy growth for our community, economic development, responsible spending, and just overall quality of life. I'm a strong believer in that. And Stallings already has it, but let's improve it even more. Let's work towards making this a world-class community that we could all live in. I'm proud of it, and we consider ourselves lifers, you know, so we're here to stay, and we're not going anywhere, and I'd like to really contribute to the well-being of our community. Appreciate y'all, your consideration. Thanks. Thank you.

Any questions? We're good? Awesome. May I have a motion? And include in your motion the termination date of 331-2028.

I move that we approve, wait, what's his name? Horatio.

I'm first generation American, so my dad never changed his name at the border, Ellis Island. It's Horatio, Ukrainian, very Ukrainian. Horatio, just as a spell, no silent letters.

For the community committee, With the expiration date of 30-31. 3-31.

March 31st. Okay, I'm sorry. 2028.

I don't know what I'm talking about here.

We jointly make that motion.

I'll second that.

All right, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed, leave the room. All right. All right, one more easy thing to talk about. Something no other community is talking about. E-bike information. Chiefs.

So you're going to start pit moving, pit maneuvers?

I was going to say I have just a short 50-slide PowerPoint.

You all know better than that. How many slides per second?

I believe it was late spring you all had asked for us to look into e-bikes and scooters and come back with some information on that. So I'm ready to do that tonight. There's what we're going to talk about tonight. But just to get started, e-bikes, Melanie provided a very nice PowerPoint a few months ago that had a lot of definitions. But an e-bike really is a bicycle with two or three wheels. Operable pedals for human propulsion with an electric motor is no larger than 750 watts and cannot exceed 20 miles an hour. A personal conveyance is an electric device, whether human or electric, that's not an e-bike. So a scooter, skateboard, some of those hoverboards. So it's just kind of all other electric devices that sit out there. Complaint history. We look back five years. 27 complaints to the Stallings Police Department in the last five years, 13 complaints since January of 2025, and that averages out to less than one call over the past two years involving any bike or scooter. We talked about, and to back up here for a minute, I do think there was one call just in the last week that was of significance in a northern neighborhood on the north side of the town. We had a seven-year-old who ran through a stop sign on a scooter and hit the side of a car. was not hurt, had a helmet on, but the driver of the car was on the through fair, had every right to be driving the speed, and this person ran through a stop sign that was there. which kind of goes into the options. I think that was one of the things we've talked about. I think Matthews, Mint Hill, Monroe have all enacted e-bike scooter ordinances. I know Indian Trails had the conversation. But the few things that I want to propose to bring to the council is we can continue with our current practice. E-bikes and scooters are already banned on the parks and the greenways. There are statutes. North Carolina General Statute addresses e-bikes. So there's a certain set of statutes we could enforce there. But the issue we run into there is anybody that's under the age of 16, if you're going to cite, you're going to cite through as a juvenile delinquent. So it's going to go through Department of Juvenile Justice. It's not just a traffic ticket. 16 and above would get a traffic ticket. We could just respond to calls as they come out. As you saw, we had 13 calls. Police get called. We'll go out there and address it and see what we can do to mitigate. We can create a town ordinance. That gives us the ability to have a little more regulatory authority, but it limits us to parks, greenways, town streets, and town sidewalks, specifically town streets and sidewalks, NCDOT roads. I defer to Melanie, but there's some nuances how we can enforce that and how we can work with our ordinance on DOT roads, NCDOT roads. Third option would be an educational campaign. The police department has the traffic education safety team. We've already gone out for bicycles. We host bike rodeos. We worked with the parks to get a grant for helmets and gave out helmets to all the kids that attended. Our officers went through a little safety town with them. We can focus on applicable laws, safe driving, particularly talking with parents. I think a lot of this is important with parental involvement. Those are the three options. My recommendation is that you allow us to try to hit the town with a comprehensive educational approach. It's not just... We did some videos earlier in the year, if you recall. We did some e-bike and some golf cart safety PSA videos that we post on our social media. This would be a little more intense, focusing specific neighborhoods and going to talk to HOAs and those sorts of things. It'd be much more intense than just some... comedic videos that had a point to them. And then we can look. We can measure and monitor. We can come back and evaluate complaints. We can evaluate traffic accidents, any enforcement action we have to take, and any community feedback. And if we see that it didn't work and that our educational campaign was not as successful as we would have liked, then we can come back. I figure we can come back and have that discussion about a town ordinance. And that's what I've got. And I've got any questions for you all?

Yeah, so thank you for this and putting all this together. Really do appreciate it. I assume other town, other police forces are also hot topic probably. And in talking with them at other towns, has it come up that whether or not this has been the frequency of these events and these negative instances have been due to the summer or Has it been studied throughout the year?

It's really, I think this really kind of spiked around Christmas time when people started getting e-bikes and scooters at Christmas. I mean, again, anecdotally, as I drive around town after Christmas, I saw kids, Harris Teeter on their e-bikes and scooters cruising around. I saw one the other day in the store with his e-bike, which I was like, I'm not sure Harris Teeter really wants them in the store. But yeah, I think schools are getting ready to start. I mean, some schools have already started. I think we'll see a decrease soon. those numbers but particularly that's a perfect time for us to start educating and getting information out to students and parents to backtrack at the end of the school year we drafted a letter just kind of a some safety tips for e-bikes and scooters and we had it it was directed only to Stallings Elementary but they did put it in their their school newsletter for us when it so it went out to all the families we're gonna try to take every approach to hit as many people as we can, or reach as many people as we can.

Can you, just in like two or three sentences, just kind of, what kind of issues, kind of summary of issues that we're seeing?

For us, it's mostly getting calls where people are saying kids are riding on these devices recklessly. Some of these things look like, not having a radar gun, they look like they're going pretty fast, but 20 miles an hour can look pretty fast. Again, perfect example, the child went right through the stop sign. Seven, eight years old, you're not thinking, oh, stop, I need to come to a complete stop and make sure that I can look both ways. you know, in residential neighborhoods, that's what kids often do. So I think it's important for us to be able to get out and talk to the kids and talk to the parents and say, hey, remember the rules of the road. Let's start talking about it early.

So I saw the 750-watt threshold. Do the officers in the field have any way to determine if it's compliant with that?

That is a very good question, and the manager and I talked about that this afternoon. I would not be able to tell you Unless someone gets a multimeter out and evaluates at 750 watts, I would say the officers would work on the assumption that if it's an e-bike, it doesn't exceed the 750 watt. But maybe Melanie, not to put you on the spot, but I know you've had other interactions with this. I don't know. Has that come up in any other communities?

It has not. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, an e-bike is, most people just assume. And that would be what we'd operate off of, yes.

So you want these to be on the road, not on the sidewalk?

Quite honestly, personally, I think that... As long as you're not obstructing pedestrian traffic, you're safer on the sidewalk than you are on the road. Now, we have a, you know, our ordinance, perfect example, our golf cart ordinance, which I know we're not talking about golf carts, but it's silent on what can you be on a sidewalk or not. It just says... If you're on the roadway, you must meet these requirements. You must stay to the right. You must have all this safety equipment. But occasionally we do see golf carts on the sidewalk. I think it's going to be very situational. If you're on Stevens Mill Road and you're 10 years old, as a parent, I'm not going to want you driving on Stevens Mill. I'd much rather have you on the sidewalk.

So you have to, if you're on the road, Like bikes, I don't know, I don't think I ever knew that they were never thought about. You have to stop at stop signs or, you know, yield or whatever.

Bikes, e-bikes, they all have to obey. If you're in the street, you're supposed to obey the rules of the road. I mean, similar, you know, most people, the younger generation don't remember the hand signals because they don't teach the stop left, right type thing, you know.

BUT THOSE ARE GOING TO BE IN YOUR INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS, RIGHT?

WE'LL MAKE A SPECIAL SECTION.

IS IT FEASIBLE, WHEN I READ THIS, MY THOUGHT WAS, BECAUSE I KNOW YOU HAD DONE THOSE VIDEOS EARLIER IN THE SPRING, IS IT FEASIBLE TO HAVE YOUR COMMUNITY RESOURCE OFFICER, NOW THAT WE DO HAVE THE LIST OF EVERY HOA CONTACT, TO PROACTIVELY REACH OUT TO ALL THOSE COMMUNITIES AND SAY WE'RE AVAILABLE? We'd love to come talk to you and set up meeting times because I feel like if we don't do that, it could very easily go by the wayside.

Absolutely. And if that's the direction you guide us to say this education campaign's direction, then that would be part of the plan. Yeah, we would... I've already started talking... just to kind of get our ducks in a row. I've already started talking to the officers that are in charge of these programs to say, hey, this might be coming down the pipe, so let's start thinking how we want to approach this. So that would absolutely be one of our necessary routes to go.

Is there, you said we saw a spike after Christmas. Is there potentially any tie-in with any type of Christmas activities that we kind of promote this? I mean, something to think about.

And that's completely anecdotal. That is what I observed as I'm driving from point A to point B around town. I would imagine, you know, with the park, we have worked in bicycle safety with some of the events the parks has put on. We've partnered with them and did a safety outreach program. So we can always figure out a way to make something fit. Yeah, I think so.

Hey, you're a police officer. surveying things, looking. That seems to be a top priority for you guys.

So I think this is good, Chief. It's almost 9 o'clock, so let's wrap this up, if you don't mind.

I know you don't mind. Yes, sir.

I'll note this. I think the City Council of Charlotte's dealing with this right now, and it's more of a definitional thing, and what's a bike, what's a new bike, all that kind of stuff. So I would just encourage you to follow them and continue the educational program and let someone else's hard work and resources, as we talked about resources in a small town, are lacking. Let their work inform sort of our ordinances. That's what I would do.

I would move to follow that educational route and... see what comes out of the NC legislature as well.

I'd like to ask as well, per my suggestion earlier, that we are proactive from the police department to reach out to every HOA within the town, if that's amenable to the council.

I think this is direction, a motion I don't think we need necessarily, or did we?

Consensus, I guess.

Yeah. It didn't call for a motion. No, it didn't. Possible action. So the action is do all that. Thank you. Very good. I move for adjournment. Motion made to adjourn. Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you guys for being here, everybody.