Town Council - Regular Meeting

for an invocation for our September 14th Town Council meeting.

Lord, we just thank you for this opportunity to serve the citizens of Stallings. I'll ask that you just give us wisdom and just help us to serve with a, just with a heart of service, Lord, and that we would be open to listening to the public, Lord, and that we would make wise decisions. I ask that you would just bless these proceedings. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Amen.

All right, call this meeting to order, and we'll start our evening off with public comments. We have two folks that signed up ahead of time. Arthur Kramer. Three folks. Arthur, come on up to the podium.

Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you. Good evening. My name is Arthur Kramer. I live at 616 Tullamore Court in Shawna Morrow. And I'm here to ask the council to reconsider the recently passed complete prohibition on lighting for pickleball courts. I happen to love pickleball. It's a great sport for me. You may not know this, but I'm a senior citizen, and it keeps me active, keeps me out of the house, keeps me social, and I get some exercise from it. So I was happy to see that Lieutenant Stallings agreed with me and in their own words in the town's fiscal year of 2024-2025 annual report dated September 18th and presented to council at its September 22nd meeting its parks and recreation said the transition to pickleball has been a huge success creating new recreational opportunities and drawing strong interest from local residents. The town also reported that pickleball enhanced community use of an existing facility without requiring significant new construction. So I agree, Pickleball brings neighbors together, it encourages exercise, provides recreation for residents of different ages and abilities. This is why this new regulation is difficult to understand. Stallings permits Pickleball until nine o'clock, but prohibits the lighting needed to play safely after sunset. During fall and winter, darkness arrives several hours before nine o'clock. Working residents may come home and find that an amenity they paid for is effectively unavailable. We're not asking to play later. We accept the 9 o'clock p.m. cutoff. Stalling's existing ordinance already contemplates lighted tennis courts and residential developments. It requires separation from neighboring properties and full cutoff fixtures. In communities where existing tennis courts are converted to pickleball, the lights and surrounding homes have not moved. Only the lines on the courts and the activity have changed. Why can lighting be reasonably regulated for tennis courts but completely prohibited for pickleball courts? Neighboring municipalities have found reasonable solutions. Indian Trail constructed eight dedicated pickleball courts with lighting, Matthews permits recreational lighting with buffering and a 10 o'clock p.m. cutoff, and Monroe regulates outdoor court lighting through shielding, glare controls, and directional fixtures. Minn Hill also uses lighting for municipal recreational facilities. I also would ask the council to consider how these restrictions affect new developments, such as the boardwalk village installings. HOAs and land planners have made promises to their future homebuyers, and these will affect them greatly. If they were consulted, what concerns did they raise? But this extends beyond me and my family. A petition asking Stallings to reconsider the pickleball regulations has already received nearly 100 signatures. That response demonstrates that residents want a more balanced solution one that protects neighboring properties without making community amenities unusable after dark. We're not asking for unrestricted lighting. Require professionally designed, fully shielded LED fixtures. Require a plan that limits light on reaching neighborhood properties. Put the lights on an automatic timer that shut off exactly at 9 o'clock. If noise is a concern, regulate the noise. And if light spill is a concern, regulate the light. But prohibiting lighting does not stop pickleball during the approved hours. It only makes the courts less safe and less usable. Stallings called pickleball a huge success. We're asking the town's regulations to support that success. Tonight, I respectfully ask council to recognize the nearly 100 residents who have signed the petition and direct staff to draft an amendment allowing properly designed pickleball court lighting during the already approved hours of play. We're not asking for another minute of pickleball. We're simply asking to see the ball during the minutes already allowed. Thank you. Thank you very much. I have, if I can give to the clerk how the other towns handle this. Yes, please.

Thank you. Next up, Joe Horvath.

All right, I'll try to keep this brief. I think he went over three, so if I go over, give me some grace. We're here tonight because you guys are going to vote on it. I'm going to walk out as soon as I'm done talking because I'm not going to listen to the dog and pony show again. The fact that you guys have a website that you insist on as the primary communications vehicle, and it went eight years, starting this year, without any kind of analytics. David, I'm talking, this is your town. Alex, you run this town. And you guys didn't know that, and a communications, glowing overview of communications was given in April. showing how great that was. That wasn't even a footnote. That should have been the lead slide that you guys, no one here, no one doing the job, looked at the communications website, said, if this is supposed to be our primary way of communicating, and by God, we're not going to grow that sunshine list beyond 45, then how do you do that? How does no one here ask, how is our primary website communications channel performing? And then when I can't find TIAs, the transportation department should have that. The engineering department should have that on deck. All TIAs. It took him two months to find 11 of 15 that I requested. And then when I wanted to find out how has the planning board voted and how have you guys voted in lockstep with that, I knew what the answer was. It was 100%. 28 out of 28. But I couldn't find that on my own. I tried. And you guys want to sit here tonight and say that we're the ones generating garbage that you guys have to collect? Come on. This is, you guys, seriously, look at yourselves. Look in the mirror for one second and realize that maybe, just maybe, the people that are getting paid $170, and that's what you're going to base these rates on tonight, $200, $200, all a year, about a million bucks a year, maybe they should be doing a little bit more on the front end to ensure that we have proper access to information that you guys are using to make money. critical decisions. By the way, Art, I looked today, Shannon Mora is off 12% since you guys voted for this proper, for Stevens Village. Off 12% from the rest of 28104. And I'm not saying Stevens Village caused that directly, but the timing is very coincidental. So these aren't things that Joe Horvath's sitting around nitpicking about. These are critical pieces of information, Steve, and I've done my homework. Did you know there's two websites right now? Google it. See what the first result is. The town has two live websites right now. Which one do we go to for information? Aaron, which one? I mean, come on, guys. This is silly that you guys are sitting here going to, and don't do the thing that I know you're going to do, which is we'll give them a 50% discount or we'll give them some, whatever. Just charge us the full rate. We'll get that information that you guys overlooked through NCDOT and other public places that will give it to us. All those emails that show what you guys knew at the time that you won't address at all.

So think about that.

I don't want to rebuttal. You never rebut, ever.

We don't. Have a good day. Next up, Karen Knutson.

Me again. I'm back. I brought a couple neighbors this time. Back again about the yard damage from the kinetic dig, and then I'm going to add to it, we still aren't fixed. Now we're working through, Mike's been helping us out, work through trying to get kinetic to provide in writing what a compensation claim process looks like because we're discovering now because of the drought people weren't checking their irrigation systems when kinetic finished up, we're finding issues with the irrigation systems. Kinetic doesn't want to be charged for damage they didn't do, which is completely understandable, but we have homeowners that want their irrigation fixed in the event it was on Kinetic. So they're being asked to pay for analysis and repair costs and things like that. And we finally, I think just last week or earlier this week, I'm getting back from vacation, just got a response from Kinetic about what that process looks like. So we're still doing battle with that. Additionally, I just wanted to mention we have now, I just had my entire front yard dug up by Spectrum, burying a neighbor's cable. So The damaged kinetic has never been fixed. It's just straw and dry dirt, and now my entire front yard got dug up. And that's just a one single home repair. So they didn't mark my yard except for water. I had to go out and use a Spanish app to try to talk to the gentlemen who were digging because they were digging right where all my cable and my neighbor's cable is in my yard with a ditch which, trying to talk to them about not cutting my internet that day. And now we're finding yellow flags down Willowbrook today for marking gas so we don't know what else is coming. So nobody's reached out to us. But this is ongoing with this internet provider damage and I don't know if there's any ruling or regulations or code or anything around my recent situation with Spectrum where they've dug down a couple neighbor's yards to bury someone's cable, but they did a tremendous amount of damage to my yard. So it just seems like it's compounding.

Are you planning on sticking around?

Yeah.

Thank you. I will. Item five tonight should be of some interest to you.

Okay, good deal. Thank you. Very much appreciated.

Thanks, Karen. Thank you. All right, anybody else that forgot to sign up want to speak? All right, that concludes our public comments for tonight. Next up is a consent agenda.

Mayor, I'll move approval of the consent agenda.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

All right, that's unanimous. Next up, reports. REPORT FROM THE MAYOR, ME. NOTHING REALLY. WENT TO A LEGISLATIVE EVENT OVER AT THE SPCC WITH THE COUNTY REPORT FROM THE COUNTY MANAGER THROUGH THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. THAT WAS PRETTY INTERESTING AND INFORMATIVE. AND THAT'S ABOUT IT FOR ME STARTING OVER WITH STEVEN.

I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TONIGHT, SIR.

Nothing, Mayor. A couple things. Ms. Knutson just mentioned one of the things that's been ongoing for several months, so it was good to at least get to the right person within the company who we hope will be able to further the process of providing the claims process. I will continue to be at that because I was raised by a mother who did not let any customer service complaint go, and I've inherited that trait. So look out. On the north side of town, I don't know how many folks use what was Collins Cleaners and the Stevens Mill Shopping Plaza. They went out of business, but they've been replaced by Elite Cleaners. It was just by there today. It looks like they're open, so that was good news to see. And then within the last couple weeks, Novant has also opened their new medical office in that same plaza as well. That was the new building that you might have seen going up on Stevens Mill Road. was just in there the other day. It's very nice. So they just relocated across the parking lot from there. And then not to steal Mr. Richardson's thunder, but a couple of us, Alex, Chief Franks, myself, and Mr. Richardson were on Thursday at the groundbreaking for the new Atrium West Hospital building that'll be here in town. And it's some of the greatest shoveling of dirt that I've ever seen done by our Mayor Pro Tem. So thank you, Mr. Mayor.

You're welcome. Thank you. John.

Nothing to nightmare.

Brad.

I was going to talk about atrium, but Mike did a great job, so I won't belabor that. I don't remember, and I was afraid you were going to ask. I'm pretty sure it's 45. 45 new beds is what I was thinking. That's what I'm thinking. The other thing I'll report, next Wednesday night, you guys know I'm your representative of the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization, CRTPO. It's been in the news a lot. It'll be in the news a lot in the next seven or eight days. We have a vote scheduled next Wednesday evening. I happen to chair the group this year. It's been a very uncomfortable but rewarding experience to sort of watch what's happening behind the scenes. As a reminder, our position for decades, well, let me not exaggerate, more than a decade has been in support of a managed lanes delivery of I-77 improvements. Managed lanes is, engineers speak perhaps for toll lanes that are dynamic, that go up and down depending on sort of the usage. There's been a lot of controversy around the I-77 North managed lanes projects. This one is filled with a lot of political intrigue as well as the state has gotten involved and introduced penalty provisions or so for those municipalities who once voted for it, subsequently changed their vote. which happened in May. We were not in that group, I'll remind you. My hope is that we'll have a cordial meeting. Good things will happen. Municipalities will vote. Our vote will remain to support an MOU with NCDOT that would allow the delivery of the toll lanes. That's the only way the road gets built in my opinion So if you feel differently, please let me know before next Wednesday, and do we have we have one vote we have one vote Yep, it's a per capita vase weighted voting which complicates things the city of Charlotte for good reason has 31 vote to our one So it's an interesting weighted vote a math that will take place next Wednesday night It should be close unless Charlotte changes their vote They were negative after a decade of being in support. So it's intriguing. Just Google it, read the news, you'll see where we are.

Lori?

Nothing.

All right. Town manager and town departments. Alex?

Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to submit the budget line item transfers form for August. Also, I'd like to ask Ms. Donnelly to come up here and give us an update on... Our exciting event, Stallings Fest, it's coming this Saturday, or this whole weekend, excuse me. You look really tall tonight.

Thanks for noticing. He saw me change them before I came out here. So, good afternoon, council. Just an update, Stallings Fest is this weekend. This is the first weekend that we're actually doing a kickoff concert. The 50th, we had that, but that was just kind of a little extra in honor of the 50th year. It was so well received. We've decided to just always have a two-day Stalin's Fest moving forward. So on Friday, we will have Gump Fiction. It's a 90s cover band from 6 to 9. We're really excited. I would come at 7.30 after their first break when it is not 95 degrees outside. It'll be shaded. I promise it'll be nice. But if you want to come out at 6, we will be there enjoying. It's going to be really good weather all weekend. Stay hydrated starting now if you are coming. And then on Saturday, we will be out there from 11 to 4. We'll have live performances from local karate groups, local dance team. We have a country artist who I believe... lives in town, which is really cool. That was just kind of like a small tidbit. Didn't even know she grew up here. So we're really excited. We have a lot of fun stuff coming. Sounds Fest is one of our big ones we've been putting on for years. And our staff has always done just such an amazing job. Not just park staff, the whole town helps us. Police, admin. everybody kind of hops in and helps us. So we're really excited. If you have questions, please call me, email me, reach out, or I'm here too if you have any on the top of your mind. But we're just, we're really excited to go out and celebrate Stallings this weekend. So thank you. I hope to see you all there.

I appreciate you not referring to the 90s as classic music.

It is, though. It is. It is classic.

If you'd like to feel better, should we call it ancient? Is that what you were looking for? Now, as I understand, is this a time where it's permitted to pet a police dog this weekend?

Ooh.

It's going to be there, right?

Yeah.

It's a look but don't touch.

Yeah, I think it's a look but don't touch. Maybe like from, oh, yeah. I wouldn't touch, but, you know, that's up to me. Maybe ask Chief. He might let you do something. But I think I'll pass. Yeah.

Hand retrieval might be optional.

But this will be the first year. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up because we're not doing the K-9. This year, we're going to try something new, and it's going to be a little more interactive. We'll have a police car actually in the park with the canine team. So kids will actually get to come up, see the dogs, see what they do on a little bit more of a personal basis rather than a 20, 30-minute show. They're going to be around at the event all day. So we're really excited and appreciate Chief for kind of letting us make that switch this year. We're pumped for that. So we just appreciate all you guys do, and we're just excited to celebrate you. So thank you all so much.

I saw what you do with the pump thing there because you want the pump track.

Okay Anything else Alex No, sir. Thank you All right agenda approval and start off with one move item Fiber installation concerns. I would like to move that to 5a since that falls right underneath that discussion of almost the same thing. And state capital funds, I'd like that pulled. That was sort of not meant to go on the council agenda. It was meant to go something that we need to discuss with staff to figure out where we should put that money before we discuss it. So capital wise. So I'd like those two changes myself.

Mayor, I'm I also spoke to you, and I spoke to Mr. Cousins earlier. The communications plan, while it is important, and Mike has done a good job of putting together some thoughts, I haven't had a lot of time to review it. I also received an email from a citizen this evening that was well written. I haven't had time to study it. I would like to discuss this. I wonder, Mike, if you'd be okay if we move this to October, four weeks from now. I understand the managers received your comments. with him and there's some conversation about staff resources I feel like that might be better after we have a discussion about the public records request kind of take these one at a time is that okay with you yeah I'd like everybody to have adequate time to to be able to look at that so that's okay yeah so that I would like to remove 7b if the council is okay with that any other changes additions changes to the agenda

I MOVE THAT WE APPROVE THE AGENDA AS WRITTEN, BUT MOVING THE DISCUSSION A, FIBER INSTALLATION CONCERNS, TO 5A, AND ELIMINATING THE COUNCIL DISCUSSIONS COMMUNICATIONS PLAN AND THE STATE CAPITAL FUNDS.

OKAY. DO WE HAVE A MOTION? I'LL SECOND. WE HAVE A SECOND. ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. GOOD DEAL. All right, so item seven is basically eliminated, and 5A is talk fiber. All right, next up, public records request special assessment, which was recessed from 8-10. Let's continue that discussion tonight. Melanie, would you like to lead off, or somebody that was here?

Sure, I mean, I'm happy to answer any other questions. You all have my memo. There was one change, a red line change, that's marked in front of you, just removing that language.

I don't have a... Could you just provide sort of the context and background? I've got some comments, but I'd rather you set up why we're doing this.

Sure, sure. The reason why we're doing this is because... I WOULD SAY THE LAST SIX MONTHS OR SO, MORE SO THAN, GOSH, I'VE BEEN HERE 16, 17 YEARS, WE'VE SEEN A TREMENDOUS INFLUX IN PUBLIC RECORDS REQUESTS. AND THEY'RE VERY GENERAL IN NATURE, NOT NECESSARILY SPECIFIC TO ONE DEVELOPMENT OR ONE PROJECT, AND THEY'RE CONSUMING AN EXTRAORDINARY AMOUNT OF TIME FROM STAFF, BECAUSE WHEN YOU'RE HAVING A REQUEST FOR EMAILS, TEXT MESSAGES, YOU KNOW, DOCUMENTS, PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING THAT'S COMING OUT FROM THE TOWN, WHETHER IT'S EMAILS FROM THE MANAGER, THE ENGINEER, TOWN PLANNER, I mean, you can just imagine how many emails they get on any given day. So, when you get an open request and it's not narrowly tailored to one specific project or topic, so we can have our IT person kind of run a search, then we're in a position where we have so much information to review.

Can you tell us what's the timeframe for this? The request for information covers what time range?

Some of them have covered a couple days. Some of them have covered months. Some of them have been outstanding, like I want this every single month.

And going back to 10 years?

I don't remember. Was there one for 10 years?

Oh.

Oh yeah, the traffic, yeah, the TIAs, yeah, I'm sorry, it's been a while.

This is deep stuff.

Right, no, it's a lot of information.

It's an incredibly amount, a huge amount.

Yeah, and you have to be really careful because there could be an email that's about a certain topic and it might have some personnel information in there. And if the town intentionally releases personnel information, or anyone does, right, that's protected information that's confidential not to be released, that's a misdemeanor. So this is not something that we can take lightly and just say, okay, here's everything, go through it, because there's a lot of protected information that we cannot turn over, and that does not constitute a public record, and legal implications if we do. So when he spoke tonight, I mean...

He made it sound like we're not providing that, but it sounds like a lot of the processing comes from the email requests and the text messages and things like that there. Is that a true statement?

I mean, I think all of the TIAs that we had access to, those were all provided.

That's correct, yeah. And a lot of them are not digital, so we had to go through and sort through all of our development boxes and weed through all of those. That's why it took it.

So there is a digitizing part of this? Yes. Okay. Okay. All right. That helps.

Right. I mean, plenty of information has been turned over, and we've not collected any money yet. We've sent quotes for funds, and they've not been received. So we've kind of hit the pause button on some of these requests.

Okay.

But we're still answering questions. We're still responding to things that are, you know, that don't take a crazy amount of time.

Right. Right.

I mean, we're all here to provide documents and to provide records. No one's trying to hide the ball. No one's trying to hide anything. But when it gets to the point that it looks like we almost need to hire two, three, four full-time individuals to gather and go through all this stuff, I mean, you don't want one person to monopolize all of the town and put us in a position that we're not able to do other town duties and town work.

So I've got some remarks I've prepared, if that's okay. They're long, but I wanted to do this because I chaired the last meeting the mayor, I think, was traveling. I asked Mr. Horvath, well, I think I asked the council, and I think we all agreed Mr. Horvath admitted and said so proudly that I think he's the one person that has made this request. We don't have many more. I first met Mr. Horvath at our retreat earlier this year, and I learned he was a communication professional. So I get this. This is personal to him and not personal, and this is professional to him. Let me put it that way. So I get the frustration of a town's communication system that may not be what he thinks it should be or maybe what some of us might think it should be and some of what staff might think it ought to be. So given that, I want to understand and acknowledge the feelings Joe has. On the other hand, I do have issues with Joe's use of our data and then how it's costing us from a time perspective, not just in gathering the information, but in potentially refuting some of the claims that are made after he receives the information. So that's kind of what I want to focus just a few minutes on. I'll try to be brief since he's not here. It's not fair, obviously, but I'll be glad to talk with him afterwards. So let me just real quick. We know public records are essential to transparent government. They can be used in ways, and I think that's why the general statutes allow us to charge money based upon some reasonable cost. for collection of data that is above and beyond what is reasonable. We've defined, by the way, folks, reasonable as four hours a month. I think if we had four hours a month, it would probably suffice for our town for decades, absent this one request for multiple hours of work. I'm not angry. I'm disappointed. I guess I'm too old. I told the mayor I'm too old to be angry about the words. I'm disappointed, and I think there's a solution that we can work together on. As I look at the use of some information, it bothers me. It costs real time and real money. Every hour that our staff is working to satisfy these requests is an hour that they're not working to deal with issues in the town, to deal with issues on my end of town. These are issues that are most frequently centered on Stevens Mill, Stevens Village. So I think it's a bad use of our time. Let me walk through a few examples of how I think that the information drawn from public records has been interpreted in ways that make this discussion just necessary. I think we have to set some costs for the use of the volume of requests because they're causing us time on the front end, they're causing us time on the back end of trying to refute some of the claims. Here's one. And most of these, by the way, relate to the Stevens Village project. This is where we first met Mr. Horvath and some of the community members who weren't pleased with the conditional zoning out there. The claim was that the town should have required a second traffic impact analysis for Stevens Village. The accusation was that we failed to follow our own policy. Our policy allowed a technical amendment to that TIA when the project changes, and that's what happened. the revised project reduced traffic significantly because commercial square footage was cut. This wasn't, folks, a situation where the developer increased traffic and we let them get away with it. We ignored it. It was the opposite. The revised project generated less traffic. Importantly, and this often isn't mentioned, I haven't seen it anywhere in public publication, is that even though the project will generate less traffic. The developer stuck to and agreed to build the improvements that were tied to the higher traffic numbers. We didn't reduce their obligations. We didn't relax requirements. We protected the public. That's what I believe the record shows. The next claim that resulted from a public records request, and I don't think he found this from us. I think he says we used the wrong background traffic growth rate. The argument is that a 1 percent rate was too low, and I wanted to kind of share what I found this weekend. First, the question is, is 1 percent reasonable as a baseline for growth in a traffic impact analysis? I reviewed five TIAs from Matthews. Joe's got a point, by the way, staff. You can't find our TIAs easily online. I don't think you find them online. Matthews you can easily find them so I'll give credit to Matthews and I'll say Joe's correct Indian Trail though I couldn't find any of theirs so my research was limited to the few that I know our town did and the Matthews did but of the six that I pulled from Matthews back to that one percent is it reasonable only one used something other than one percent as a background traffic growth number that was on Independence Boulevard that kind of makes sense we've used one percent for most of ours I think we used two percent for the one in our community down by Weddington Road and And I think that was because an interstate exchange was probably getting ready to open that was going to move traffic. That's reasonable to me. So, it feels like 1 percent is acceptable for background growth, especially given some context I'll share in just a moment. But first, let me just share the one that stuck out to me the most. Mr. Horvath suggested we use something greater than 1, maybe even up to 4, 5, or 6 percent. He said the growth along Stevens Mill was 6.2 percent average annually for 10 years. Completely accurate, but it's misleading. It inflated the numbers because between 2015 and 2016, that traffic number grew 52 percent. Fifty-two percent in one year. So, if I'm reviewing data and I'm trying to do it honestly, I'm going to ask a couple questions and you would do the same, I think. What caused that? This is Stevens Mill, by the way, from Idyllwild to Lawyers, the area that we're studying. What caused that? 2015 to 2016. And then should we use that number? Well, what caused it was two neighborhoods that opened up, Chrismark, the enclaves, and what's the other one? Southstone, I believe. With entrances and exits. Southstone only onto Stevens Mill Road. I think the enclaves has another exit, but it's a little further away. That's what caused the big jump. So the question is, should you use a 52% increase in your 10-year average annual to generate TIA background growth? The answer is certainly not. If you remove it, what would it be? My numbers say 1.7% over 10 years, maybe two if you take out the COVID year, which showed a drop in traffic. So I don't think it was, I think it was disingenuous, perhaps, to use a larger number in his argument. Here's the other thing. The 1% probably wouldn't be sufficient, except our town engineer in all of our hearings shared with that it's 1% plus. What's the plus? The plus is all of the traffic from approved developments in the area, not just our town, but towns nearby. So it included the Cadia project and the traffic from, the future traffic from the Cadia project in Matthews. It included future traffic from area apartments. It included future traffic from Stinson Farms, an enormous development. It included future traffic from Stallings Farms, a residential development of Stevens Mill and Stallings. So 1% plus all those others give us probably a fairly good, accurate background base for our TIA. And I know this is mind-numbing, so forgive me. I'll move on. He agreed, and I agree, that the best practice, according to this data, is to use recent data. But if we use recent data from 2021 to 2025, the number of cars on Stevens Mill Road grew during that five-year time period, just that stretch, out of all the large, by 77 cars. 77 daily trips, I should say. That's negligible. It means there's a flat growth rate for those five years. So I think the 1% as a baseline is fair. Let me move quickly to the planning board. I think it was referenced tonight. The planning board did vote to deny that project, but if you look at the record and listen to the recording, you'll understand why. Their discussion focused on buffering, building height, whether the TIA had been updated, and this technical memorandum that we chose to use by policy was sufficient. Several members in the meeting wanted to defer the decision to a later date, but they could not. There's a clock that runs with canceled meetings and planning board reviews, and they had run out of time. They had to act that night. So if given the choice, they would have deferred it. You can look at the minutes and see that, or excuse me, the recording and see that. Their denial was driven by some unresolved questions and the inability to defer, not by this broader list of deviations that were cited afterwards. So Let me move quickly. The most disappointing things I've noticed is just personal attacks on our staff. I've seen this before. I've been in government longer than I should admit, but personal attacks fall easily to slough off in the moment. Over time, create a demoralized staff that goes and seeks work elsewhere. So there's a real cost to our town when a clerk, when a manager from a licensed professional engineer says I could go do this somewhere else without the hassle it doesn't absolve them from poor work in fact we should hold them to a really high standard but some of the language is used to demoralize particularly our town engineer who's a professional certified engineer is disappointing to me and there is a cost to that I would submit finally to residents who may see claims, particularly about issues of land development, just pause. These are complex, really difficult. You can't put sound bites out there and really grab the whole point. I would encourage folks in Shana Mara, and particularly where most of the hotspot right now in our community is, is to lean into your reps. You guys are blessed with two reps on our board John and Mike that are relatively new to the board but have been so good at community impact and community involvement, community communication. And then you've got the mayor sitting to my right that lives in the neighborhood as well. So I would encourage you to lean into them. Finally, we have one citizen who understandably raises concern. He has every right to do so. I think his concerns are based on a misreading of the data, misinterpreting the methodology of TIAs and just incomplete context. I don't think we can run a town that way. We've got two outcomes. He may recognize and withdraw or pare down his request that allow him to get more information quicker. or he may pursue and continue and double down on these concerns. Not knowing which direction that will take, I think we have no other options but to adopt a policy. I would support the manager and attorney's recommendation that it be based on hours of staff at those hourly rates, recovering their time, anything above the four hours, and that's what I would recommend tonight we do. I'm sorry for going on. That concludes my remarks, but I don't think we have another choice in this matter.

Thank you, Brad. I really appreciate the amount of time you spent on your weekend to jump in here and counter the ridiculousness of numbers that we've been pushed at. I appreciate it. Any other questions?

THOUGHTS ON THE CONTINUED DISCUSSION, OR SHALL WE GO FOR A VOTE ON THE... WELL, SO IF NOBODY'S PAYING FOR THIS, ARE THE TAXPAYERS PAYING FOR IT?

YES, UNTIL THEY HIT THAT THRESHOLD. IF WE APPROVE THIS, WE'LL BE AT A THRESHOLD.

YEAH, SO THAT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE.

ARE YOU ASKING THE CURRENT PENDING REQUEST, WOULD IT BE DONE WITHOUT A FEE? Is that your question?

I thought you said that he hasn't paid.

Right, on one of the, there's been so many, but one of the requests, it was every single email to and from Alex, Max, and the mayor, is that right?

The mayor's previous two, I mean.

Right, right, all of them. And so we figured out based on, We pulled the mayor's for a portion of, was it April? April. And we figured out how much time was spent just on April, knowing that Alex has a lot more emails, right, coming in and out of his office. Same with Max. Not that the mayor doesn't, but just. I don't. Right. I mean, the volume is that much greater. And so we calculated, we estimated and still cut it down significantly. and he hasn't paid anything. So we've not pulled those documents, if that's what you're asking.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. This policy requests a 50% deposit before we spend all the time pulling the documents because we don't want to be in a position where we've pulled all the documents and then the fee never gets paid.

All right. Okay. All right.

Got it.

I, Mr. Mayor, I'd just like to follow up on what Mr. Richardson said and with gratitude say thank you for the kind words that you said about myself and Mr. Van Der Riet. And to anybody here, anybody who will watch this tonight or watch it in the future, is that if you do see something on social media, on the internet, This is just kind of a general skepticism, which you should have of people who are elected. I think that's fair. But if you have a question about something or you see something that says, that doesn't sound right, come ask us. Please ask us. That's what we're here for. And I'm happy to go to the ends of the earth to track down information. And to help set the record straight on things, that's what we're elected to do. We're here to help. And so I want to make that clear that there has been a lot of information that is of half truth. And I'm happy to help people find what the truth is. To go back to our discussion last month as well, you know, followed up with the town attorney that I get as well. a cost recovery method, which would be the cost per hour for the employees who have to do this work. Again, if you compare us to other municipalities or other larger organizations like Union County or Mecklenburg County, we do not have lower paid administrative assistance on staff to be able to do this kind of work, which is why the cost is higher as proposed. And I think from a larger scope as well, Mr. Horvath's comment earlier about trash was in reference to something that I had written in an email a couple of months ago or a couple of weeks ago, trying to make the comparison perhaps clumsily about Paying your own way that if you know the town of Stallings covers your trash pickup fee every week But if you have more than what fits in your can you take it to the dump and you pay extra for that You have a right to access Documents that are in the public record however Every right that we have comes with constraints. Your First Amendment right is not unlimited. Your Second Amendment right is not unlimited. And I think the same applies here, that you or anyone, any individual or any entity, because groups submit public records requests all the time that don't not people aren't always aware of them you don't have the ability to shut down the business of the town for one request we're a small and a lean operation so I think this is a fair balance of again when I invite people to ask us questions that's the way to come find answers to things and there are smaller requests all the time that I've talked to Ms. Nichols about that come and go and that are fairly routine but one that requires ten years of emails I think that is presented as, well, the town wants to charge us $30,000 for this records request. Well, why is that? Because it's an extremely voluminous one and it shouldn't give any entity or individual the ability to stop the business of the town to be able to do that without paying your fair share, paying your own way.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

Graham? Man, I'm a waste. Somebody's got to pay for it and I don't feel like it should be the burden to go back to... that the Stallings taxpayer in general, it should be, the burden should lay with the person or entity that is requesting it. And we did talk a little bit about how more and more social groups and political groups are starting to ask for public records. And I think that while we are talking about ONE PARTICULAR SET OF REQUESTS, I COULD ALSO SEE, IT SEEMS LIKE THOSE TYPE OF EXTERNAL ENTITIES ARE ALSO GROWING IN POPULARITY, AND THIS WOULD ALSO PROTECT US FROM THAT, BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE THE STALLINGS TAXPAYER PAYING FOR GROUPS THAT DON'T EVEN RESIDE IN STATUS SILENCE. SO THERE YOU GO. THAT'S MY TWO SENDS. GOOD POINTS. GRAHAM, ANYTHING?

YEAH, I JUST, AHEAD OF My vote, which will be for adopting this policy, I wanted to be clear on my reasoning, and that is not a response to a specific individual's request. I do want that to be made clear on my end. This is just doing the research on what other towns do, what some of the neighboring counties do as well, and even including some of the public universities around here. This is common practice to have a policy where if you are requesting an excessive, not an excessive, but a massive amount of information that will take up staff time that you would be charged for this. I think that's reasonable. I think that we would all agree that that's something It balances the citizen's right to have access to information with also maintaining lean government that is not having this wasting money and hiring staff willy-nilly to sit around and potentially address these concerns later on. So I think that this policy is good for that. It aligns with what other cities, towns, counties have. So I have no objection to that. I think Melanie has laid it out very well why our amount is what it is. I would also point out this amount still does not come out to what an hourly rate what an employee would make per hour. So we're still below that amount, even if you say, well, $60 an hour, that seems excessive. That's actually less. And we could, under this North Carolina statute, per my reading, go all the way up to whatever that staff figure is. So I do support this. I just wanted to, on my end, be clear. I think this came about because a request but I don't I'm not voting because of that request itself I think that this is actually good policy going forward for future and and aligns us with other municipalities thank you before we I call for a vote I have a question of Melanie does this in any way

take into cost of living expenses, raises? I mean, this is current for this year, and it's already below what it actually should be. Is there a way to take, does this take into consideration future rates, or do we have to revisit this every so often and revalue the numbers?

We would have to revisit it.

All right. Do you recommend that versus an automatic raise? keeping up with?

Mayor, wouldn't it show up in our annual adoption of the budget and fee schedule? I would say it would. It would?

Then this is good.

Mayor, I would like to make a brief comment if I could. Oh, I'm sorry.

That's okay. That's all right.

I do want to circle back to something that Mr. Richardson said about how easy it was to find the TIAs on the Matthews site, and I would want to encourage us to pursue making things more accessible that are clearly public documents that don't need legal review for redaction of personnel issues or other confidential information, so that proactively we could you know, make that easy to find for the public and not have to take up staff time going forward.

Thank you very much. All right. Ready for a motion?

Yeah, Mayor, I'll make the motion to approve the public records request and special service charge policy adopted pursuant to NCGS 132.1 and 132.62. Thank you.

I will second. All right. All in favor? Aye. That's unanimous. Thank you all. Next up, encroachment agreement ordinance and fee schedule updates. Kevin, you are up.

Good evening, Council. Here tonight to propose a change to our encroachment agreement ordinance and fee structure. So a little background on this is currently we have one right-of-way encroachment agreement fee. It's just a flat $100 fee regardless of size, scope, or complexity of projects working within our right-of-way, establishing anything within our right-of-way. And as of late, we've received an influx of very large scale projects running through entire subdivisions, whether it's broadband or whether it's water and sewer projects from the county. These projects have not only taken up a significant amount of time for reviews, but there's also been a lot of construction coordination, inspections, resident coordination, fielding questions, and redirecting them to the appropriate avenues. One example was a subdivision. Fiber came through and... installed about 8,000 linear feet of fiber, and the staff was just encumbered for weeks with working through resident concerns, construction issues, fielding questions associated with that. And it took well over 30 hours of staff time coordinating these encroachment agreements. And so that... It doesn't necessarily seem equitable that a project of that scale is paying $100 flat fee, whereas somebody just installing a non-standard sign, a planter, something unique that's a spot installation, easy to review, is paying that same fee. Staff is proposing a change to our encroachment agreement fee schedule in that we'd like to establish two encroachment agreements, one minor, and that will remain that $100 fee, and then major encroachment agreements where there's a base fee of $1,000 for a major encroachment agreement, and if that project expands. linear feet, then there will be an additional 37 cents per linear foot charge as well. So for instance, that example I provided earlier, the 8,000 linear feet of fiber that came through, they would be paying $1,000 and then 37 cents per linear foot on top of that. So I believe that would be, with the $1,000 base fee, a little over $4,000 for that one specific instance. Okay. And also we would take a look at roadway crossings and cuts if they're going to be cutting into our infrastructure. And we know that we'd like that to be compensated as well. And One thing I do want to point out is that this is not revenue generating. This is truly just accounting for staff time that we've had infield examples of and experiences with to facilitate these encroachment agreements and these larger scale projects. And so the requested action tonight is requesting council to approve the ordinance, the encroachment agreement ordinance, establishing this fee and this fee schedule. And with that, I'd be happy to take any questions.

It's kind of side-related to the issues that are going on with some of our fiber companies. Does having, I mean, if they have to come to us and get, this is what they have to pay before they get the permit, right? Correct. Okay. Before we would even review their plans. So... If a company comes to us and they have outstanding issues from a different project, are you into this permitting? Or could it figure into it?

So, meaning a subdivision, they're not getting their issues corrected?

Right. I mean, I think you've got one up here. It's a fee for restoration and security bond. So, I guess my question would be is, like, can getting that secondary, a second permit be held up if they've still got restitution that still needs to be made for a previous work effort?

Yes. And have we looked, have we done any of that? We have, uh, we have been holding up, uh, these encroachment agreements, making sure that, now sometimes there's retroactive concerns that happen after the fact that we're not aware of, but for the most part, we've been only allowing one or two at a time, and we're making sure they're through each subdivision as is, all concerns are addressed, all concerns that we're aware of are addressed, and we feel comfortable with allowing them to move further through the town. So at a staff level, we are holding them up.

I might have more questions for him later offline, but that's it for now.

Kevin, in addition to like the fees that we're charging, is it reasonable? Could we require them to put up like a sign with contact information in a neighborhood as they go into that neighborhood with a QR code or something so we're not put in the position of saying, we understand, but it's not, the town doesn't have authority over this, but, you know, That way they can have a way of communicating directly with the company ahead of time before we're reacting to it.

Yes, sir. As a part of our major encroachment agreement, we are requiring... all that notification up front, meeting with HOAs, residents, providing A-frame signs with QR codes or other contact information. Great recommendation by Councilman Cousins over there. So we are requiring that and have been doing a lot better with that as well prior to adopting this ordinance and fee schedule. So obviously things are much smoother now. I think... Word is getting out there, but we're still running into hiccups here and there. But to answer your question, yes, sir, we will be increasing the notification requirements.

I know you can't predict the future, but I was thinking about this where in my neighborhood, they came through and they did four or five streets, I think, with Google Fiber. And I don't know how these networks work, but let's say a provider- comes through or has already come through, but they've only done a certain number of streets, might we expect them to come back? Do they have to do every street in a neighborhood to say, we serve this neighborhood? Or can they do four or five streets? And is there a way to connect and have all the neighborhood have access?

That's a very good question. I can't answer that 100%, but my understanding is they're installing the main lines, their main conduit, and then they branch off of that accordingly. So That said, they would need to run lines along presumably every single street at some point to be able to say they fully service every single property in that subdivision.

So has there been an instance where a company has come through and they've done a portion of a neighborhood and then come back to do more?

I don't know that off the top of my head. I would assume so. Sometimes they just like to get their infrastructure started in the neighborhood and then come back and finish it later. I would imagine... Private property owner inquiries drive that as well. We want Google Fiber in our neighborhood. We live at the front of the subdivision. Can you get it to us type stuff? So I can't say for sure, but presumably, yes.

I have a question on Section 4A as well, where the project is submitted, you review it, or Justin reviews it. And you have the ability to deny it, but as I understand it and perhaps this is a question for Miss Cox You know, what are what is the the mechanism by which the town has the ability to say no to this? Which my understanding is that it's rather limited It's very limited.

We only have 30 days to make a decision and and all they have to include on their application is the identity of the applicant and any contractors, the type of installation, and related facilities to be installed, the proposed construction timeline, and the location or address of the proposed construction installation. A city may deny an application that fails to meet these guidelines, and then they can cure it, and we only have 10 days to respond to curing it. but we can't require anything else.

But it's not discretionary to be able to say no. Basically, for the folks who are here not knowing the information that you know, why, because of legal precedent, is there not the discretion to say no?

Because there's a North Carolina general statute, 168-296.1, that discusses broad brand deployment, and it severely, severely ties our hands in what we can do.

And another question about bonds, too, which I think is perhaps more item 5A, but can you explain, Kevin, what the purpose of that bond is and in what case would it be able to be called by the town?

The bond would, well, first, we would request a bond or require a bond, excuse me, if we know they're gonna be damaging town-owned infrastructure. So if we know they're gonna be making a roadway cut, that's at least a decent amount, a decent size that would warrant a bond, we would require a bond, because we can quantify that, we can calculate that. Some of these fiber companies that go in, they damage our infrastructure, but it's not on the plans, it's not called out, so we can't bond hypotheticals, if that makes sense. And so, Situation where we know they're going to be working and damaging our infrastructure. We would require a bond We would quantify it. We can calculate a cost associated with that for restoring it back to our standards and if If the company came in damaged our infrastructure and then just decided to move on that's when we would call that bond What are our standards for restoration? our standards for restoration are if Town-owned infrastructure, sidewalks, stormwater infrastructure, roadways, curb and gutter, if that is damaged, because that is town-owned and maintained, we would require that to be restored back to our standards. Landscaping, private irrigation, that's not something, it's in our right-of-way, however, we don't own, operate, or maintain that, so that is considered private property, and landscaping as well is not the responsibility of the town for maintenance, so... Pretty much anything landscaping-wise is not in the town's purview.

So it's the first X feet of my yard from the middle of the road, right? That's the measurement?

From the center of the road, yeah. Typically it's 25 or 30 feet from the center of the road.

Okay. And then another, Section 10 as well, and this may be another question for Ms. Cox. This discusses... PERFORM, OR THERE MAY BE AN ADDITIONAL FEE ON TOP OF THE UPFRONT FEE, DO WE NEED TO REQUIRE A MECHANISM FOR RECOVERING DELINQUENT FUNDS IN TERMS OF IF SOMEONE, THEY'VE ASKED US TO DO EXTRA WORK, THEY HAVEN'T PAID US FOR THAT, DO WE NEED TO LAY OUT IN THERE HOW WE WOULD GO ABOUT RECOVERING THAT MONEY, BECAUSE IT JUST SAYS WE'D SEND THEM A NOTICE, BUT THAT'S LIKE, HEY, YOU OWE ME MONEY, BUT HOW ARE WE ACTUALLY GETTING THAT MONEY IS MY QUESTION.

I MEAN, MOST OF THESE COMPANIES right, have a lot of work to do in the town. And I know they're hiring a lot of subcontractors and aren't staying on top of the subcontractors to make sure that they're doing the work they need to do. But we've not had an issue, and I don't anticipate being an issue of, right, them going bankrupt or not being able to pay.

But if I may, what I have heard from some people is that there will be subsidiary LLCs that are created who then claim Monopoly Man pockets out. I have no money to pay you back for these things. And what is our recourse in that case where it's an LLC that we can't go after because it's a mystery company?

I mean, LLCs get sued all the time.

So I guess what I'm asking is, the question here is, for the case where that does come up, should we put in a measure to say, here's how we're going to get that money? even though it doesn't happen frequently.

I mean, there's so many issues we have right now with the fiber companies. I mean, potentially that could be one that we could address in the future, but right now our focus is on we know that these are concerns and issues, so let's address these first. Because, I mean, we're getting $1,000. Now we should be getting $100. Now we should be getting $4,000. I mean, the statute's pretty clear that we can't require anything else other than what they allow us to do. So I feel like we're kind of, you know, might be pushing the envelope a little bit right now.

Yeah, I'm in favor of the measure. These are just, as I read through it, things that I thought.

Council Member Cousins, what I hear you saying, and you tell me if what I'm saying is accurate, is that it's important to get a bond because sometimes it can be a shell game with all the thieves and business entities, and I get that. I think the challenge with bonds, and there's totally a time and a place, is that, as Kevin indicated, we can't bond out for damages because we don't know what they might be. You know, we don't know what's going to get damaged. When you bond out for, like, for example, a subdivision construction, you're talking about the roads, right, the stormwater infrastructure typically, sidewalks, things that we know it's going to cost this amount to put in. but we don't know what's going to be damaged until it's damaged. And the challenge here, I think, is that the main issue, not the only issue, but the main issue we've had with fiber companies isn't really the damage to town infrastructure. Certainly, we've had cases of it, but it's been more the damage to private property. And I think in that case, I've asked Ms. Cox, and she's educated me that that's not something that a bond can be used to recover, correct?

Correct.

So really when we're talking about bonding, we're talking about things like when we know they're going to cut up the road to make a road crossing and things like that. So in that case, I think the time to administer the bond, it's not non-zero, and it's a good concern But I think, you know, we're talking about if they go belly up, it's probably what, Kevin, if they make a bad road repair, it's what? 500 bucks. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a large amount of money. So your concern is valid, but the liability of the town isn't particularly high there.

Can I ask a clarifying question to Mike's question? My understanding is this only applies to federally recognized communications, right? I mean, these are companies that have gotten, I mean, these laws only apply to very specific companies that have actually been federally recognized as communication companies, right?

They have to go through a pretty strict process

REVIEW TO GET THAT APPROVAL, RIGHT?

FOR BROADBAND DEPLOYMENT?

THAT WAS MY UNDERSTANDING.

THIS APPLIES TO ALL INFRASTRUCTURE, LIKE OUR ENCOURAGEMENT, ANYONE THAT'S COMING INTO OUR RIGHT OF WAY.

YES. I'M MORE TALKING ABOUT THE FIBER COMPANIES AT THE MOMENT. SORRY. BUT I THOUGHT MY UNDERSTANDING WAS AS THOUGH IS THAT THE Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought when we first talked about this that the fiber companies and the broadband companies, they're the ones that are protected by this law. But those broadband companies, they can't. I was under the impression that they couldn't just be Jimmy Bob's broadband. They actually had to be recognized at a federal level as a federal broadband communications company.

That may be accurate and correct. I'm just not aware of that.

Okay. All right.

I'll reserve any future comments for item 5A, so I don't delay the vote any further.

Didn't we just cover 5A also?

No, I have more.

We've got to make sure everybody else gets a turn. Lori, anything?

No, I'm good.

Brad? Kevin, this doesn't apply to town-contracted sidewalk repair, anything like those aren't encroachment agreements. That's different. Correct. So we still have a problem in the community. I think of my neighbor, my neighbors in Callen was struggling with sidewalk repair that we do. And then grass medians are torn up and irrigation system. I think it's the same issue. So there's a related problem here. And I'm hearing you say that if anybody damages someone's sprinkler system, The homeowner is in charge and responsible for contacting the private company and asking for repair. That feels wholly unsatisfactory when we hire somebody to do sidewalk repair on our behalf. It's almost like we're doing it. So why would we put the homeowner... So that's a different discussion. I'll table it for now. It's related, but I want to talk more about that later. I'm good with the policy, though.

Are we ready for a vote on... ENCROACHMENT AGREEMENT ORDINANCE AND FEE SCHEDULE UPDATES.

I'D LIKE TO MAKE A MOTION TO APPROVE THE UPDATED ENCROACHMENT AGREEMENT ORDINANCE AND FEE SCHEDULE.

I'LL SECOND. SECOND. ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU. THAT'S GOOD. 5A, FIBER INSTALLATION CONCERNS. I GUESS SORT OF A CONTINUATION OF WHAT WE WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT.

YES. SO BASICALLY.

LET'S TRY TO KEEP IT A LITTLE CONCISE. DO MY BEST.

I'M A LITTLE NERVOUS IN FRONT OF A MICROPHONE. YOU DON'T EVEN NEED A MICROPHONE. So basically this is I'm just I'm just lobbing the pitch out here and seeing kind of where where everybody wants to go with this Which is the question that Brad just asked is that there is an inherent unfairness in? Saying that we as the town allow private companies to do work, but then the homeowner as some of the folks in attendance here tonight are dealing with of trying to track down a company to say well may have been damaged and they say well you need to pay up front for that and we'll decide later if we want to reimburse you for that you can guess how that probably ends up in a lot of cases and so in discussion with the town attorney she's let me know that there are not any other towns that she has found that use civil penalties it cannot be a criminal penalty but a civil penalty in this case and she's also shared with me that her opinion is that withholding future encroachment approvals due to failure to repair damage is our strongest position And so I understand that, and I understand it gets much more complicated if we choose to move forward with a civil penalty. And so, you know, the town manager made mention to me this morning of perhaps a different option, which may be more effective, actually, in the long run, which may be strength in numbers. Because, Alex, you've shared that your colleagues in similar roles around Union County have experienced this same issue. We're not alone in that. in dealing with difficulty with fiber companies. And so whether it's Stephen or the mayor who have served on WUMA, or I don't know if that's our best option, but whether it's to go to Todd Johnson or to Dean Arp and say, can you help us out here? What can we do in terms of legislation at the state level to be able to strengthen the position of homeowners to be able to have recovery of damages that have been done to their properties? Because right now our options are

limited and the one that we do have is legally precarious so I'd love to know to hear first from the attorney who is hand in the air but also from fellow council members I just wanted to correct one thing you said you said you know we're allowing them to come in like we don't have a choice this is not we're trying to make it as tight as we can but we can't if their application has that information in there we can't say no right and So our hands are definitely tied. And this has been a hot topic in Indian Trail. And at the last meeting, Mayor David Cohn said he called Todd Johnson's office and they were pretty much like, yeah, we're not hearing any complaints about this. You know, we don't think it's an issue. So... Really, I mean, our hands are so tied, right? We only have the power that the state gives us. And because the statutes are so strict, it makes it challenging for us to write ordinances and to explain to homeowners why we can't do anything. I really think putting pressure... NOT PRESSURE, BUT JUST COMMUNICATING TO THE ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES AT THE STATE LEVEL THAT THIS IS A BIG DEAL, AND WE ARE HEARING A LOT OF COMPLAINTS ABOUT THIS. AND MAYBE EVEN IF IT'S A JOINT RESOLUTION BETWEEN MULTIPLE TOWNS THAT MIGHT HAVE A LITTLE MORE TEETH TO IT, THAT IT'S NOT JUST IN ONE COMMUNITY IN STALLINGS, BUT STALLINGS, INDIAN TRAIL, I'M SURE MATTHEWS, MENT HILL, MONROE, EVERYONE IS GOING THROUGH SIMILAR SITUATIONS.

Anybody got any thoughts on how we might proceed with that?

John's just volunteered to bring that to a next meeting.

How gracious, John. Thank you.

John is, just as David said, I just wrote it down and whispered it in my ears. There we go.

I like the joint resolution or a resolution done by the various communities.

Should we also encourage, I mean, My neighborhood, they finished months ago, and we're still having issues. So my question would be, should we encourage some even residents to send emails and things?

Yeah, I mean, absolutely, if the message is that we're not hearing complaints about that, and that's completely different than the local elected officials' experience, then maybe that would be helpful.

One thing, it makes sense for us to form up a letter to them and be able to pass that on to our citizens for moving that up. I'm just thinking out loud. Yeah, if the board would like that, I'd be happy.

happy to draft something i'd be happy to draft a sample resolution for you to consider at our next meeting um a sample letter for y'all to consider or just to take the feedback that i heard tonight and draft something up i think i know my my neighborhood i mean they had a horrible time and then right right after that they were finished uh

We had a second one come through, and so, I mean, I think that would be – I would like to do that. I'd like to see if we can do both.

And sometimes there's, like, five companies, not just one or two, but, you know, four and five companies coming through and doing this.

Yeah, I mean, I guess there's a thought pattern that there is only one phone line and one cable company, and I know that's a monopoly, but at some point it seems a little bit – You know, if you're five years behind the last company, you're probably not going to get that many customers at that point. But anyway.

What I'd suggest is let me draft a letter, and I'll bring it back to the next meeting, and then that can be the main council position on it when we reach out to our elected officials in Raleigh and potentially Washington, because this is a state issue, but it's also a federal issue as well.

Yeah.

Now, We all know that we're more likely to get things done in Raleigh than in Washington. But I do want to point out it's several layers of government.

So the last thing I'll say on this is, again, it's wholly unsatisfactory that the homeowner has to pay. But as explained by attorney, I get it. We're not giving them permission. They're taking their right to dig up our yards. That's not fun. I think if explained well, it's better on the front end. I think I heard the town engineer say there are some required steps, such as meeting with the HOA, meeting with the, I don't know what that looks like, those pre-construction meetings. To me, that's the only opportunity we have. And I would ask you to let me know and let all of us know when there's going to be an installation or a permit in our district. Require them to reach out to the council person. Require them to invite us to the meeting. It feels like there's some communication on the front end about how this works that would not only inform the homeowner, but also put the project manager a little bit on notice that we care about this stuff. So could you do that? It's not a policy step. It's just a practical.

There's a little bit of a timing gap here because what I've seen is the companies will do some communication, but it's already after the lines have been marked. And so it's almost like it's too late because now people are already wanting to know what's going on because now they're seeing 16 different colors in their yard and on the street. And so now it's almost like they're behind the eight ball. So it feels to me like that communication needs to start before marking happens. That's just my two cents.

All right. I do have one question. item on this it they are only allowed to install the lines on what would be in the current easement for uh for these communication lines right that runs through all of our yards they can't just come into any part of our yard they can't go anywhere outside that area so one I think that would be helpful is if we can somehow communicate to people where do you find that information out? Because they haven't come to my yard yet, but that's actually going to be one of the first things when I'm looking out the window. Are you going past where you're supposed to be? I've heard some complaints from you tonight as well. It sounds like they're not necessarily staying within all the easement areas they drove up.

IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD, THEY DROVE A BOAR ACROSS TWO PEOPLE'S YARD. THERE IS NO WAY THAT WAS WITHIN THE EASEMENT BECAUSE IT WAS HALFWAY THROUGH THE FRONT YARD. IT WAS ON TRACK SO IT TORE UP THE ENTIRE YARD AS THEY WENT ACROSS.

I THINK THAT WOULD BE HELPFUL AS IF WE MAYBE GET THAT COMMUNICATION OUT OF HOW DO YOU FIGURE OUT WHAT THAT IS. If they start coming through, and unfortunately it's not a great solution for a resident to say like, oh, now I have to go out and police them, but at least this is where you should probably be looking. Because I'll be honest, I'll be frank, I don't know where to go for that information. I assume based on where Ripple was, this is where the easement is. So if we could somehow communicate that or come up with a way to communicate that or EVEN HOW TO, WHERE DO YOU GO TO GET THAT INFORMATION? THAT WOULD BE HELPFUL.

I THINK ONE OF THE LAST THINGS ON THIS ONE HERE, I WILL SAY, SEVERAL FOLKS ACTUALLY WORK FROM HOME NOW, AND WHEN THEY LOSE POWER OR THEY LOSE INTERNET CAPABILITY, THAT'S ACTUAL PHYSICAL MONEY OUT OF THEIR POCKET. AND SO I ALSO, I'D LIKE TO KNOW A LITTLE BIT MORE, IF POSSIBLE, ABOUT WHAT TYPE OF, YOU KNOW, How do they go about compensation for potential monetary losses when something's damaged like this here? Because I know that a couple of the folks that I know, they pay extra money to have a business line at their house, and those business lines have contractual agreements associated with two of them for lost revenue. I'd like to know maybe a couple of sentences if you know about how that could be handled.

Is that a question now? Or is this kind of a follow-up?

No, no, no, no, no. Just in general.

To address all the questions here?

Like I said, I know several folks that work from home and have businesses that are, you know, online-based. And if they can't get to online, then they're losing revenue. I mean, if you're down two or three days, I mean, that's a lot of revenue to lose.

Steven, I don't know if that's something that the town would get involved with. It sounds more contractual. Maybe attorney general talk to an attorney?

That's kind of what I'm looking for, is just what would be the pursuit that, just some basic information, like what would be the pursuit there?

Yeah, there's two things, without trying to give anybody legal advice. Right, right. Two general areas would be, areas, things come up like that. Attorney General's Office, always a good resource, as well as speaking to an attorney.

Okay.

There's no doubt this whole situation is frustrating for everybody. It's frustrating for us. It's frustrating for the residents. We feel like when we get these calls, our hands are tied. When we, on my end, internally, trying to rework our, with our staff, rework the intake process of concerns when they come in, having a better presence on our website, and doing that and having a better process on our end because the fiber concerns are just getting more and more in volume. So when we do talk to people, what we don't try to do is tell them, It's not our problem. What we try to do is connect them with the right people. Right. There's always more we can and should do. But we try to be empathetic about listening to the concerns, verify them. We track to see if there's or we're going to start really tracking the complaints to see if we can start patterns to see if there's town infrastructure. If there's a safety issue, like there's a big hole in the road or something like that, things that we need to get immediately involved in. But at the end of the day, there are limitations to the town's authority, and that's a reality of the legal landscape we're in right now, and would encourage the board to reach out to our elected officials to try to deal with that.

The last thing I'll say, and I would love for you to move on, this is no action tonight, but we, earlier in the meeting, deferred the communications ideas that Mike had to October We've said several times, and I know Jeannie Lindsey sent us a note before the meeting asking for just conversation about communications. I'd love to include into that some sort of staffing analysis. It feels like the park and recs department communicates out very quickly, easily, and there's a fairly good system. I feel like we're, and again, preaching to the choir here, we don't do a great job of communicating these type of things to our homeowners and neighborhoods, so that's part of that discussion. I would just like to close out this part, if we could, with that. So when we talk about this in October, I'd love to have a who would do that And where is that person sitting now?

Okay.

All righty. Thank you for a good discussion on this. We'll obviously continue it. Moving to the next item on the agenda, CARPO Discretionary Grants Program Project Applications. Kevin? Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, so here tonight to discuss potentially submitting a few pedestrian and bicycle project applications to CRTPO and their discretionary grant program call for projects. So purpose tonight is to introduce the four bike ped projects that we think might be good candidates for consideration, talk through funding strategy and application strategy as well, and then ultimately really open it up for discussion, get council feedback on the projects themselves with the ultimate goal to have a decision by the October 30th deadline. And so a little background and history here. So earlier this summer, this item tonight stems from conversations we had earlier this summer where we introduced potential pedestrian projects on the south side of town here specifically the one that council approved was the the chestnut sidewalk gaps project in partnership with Indian Trail and if I may sidebar really quick an update on that is Indian Trails Council voted to approve that project as well last week so staff is currently in the process of forming an interlocal agreement with Indian Trail to to get that ball and get that project rolling so good news there and That's a great project coming down the line. But during those summer conversations, staff had mentioned that we've got some projects on the north side of town that we thought might be good candidates for consideration for this CRTPO fall call for fall projects. And so that's what we're here tonight to discuss. And those projects, we've got four projects. three segments of the Northern Spine Greenway, and I'll go into details on these segments later, and then a sidewalk connection project along Lawyers Road. So a little more information on CRTPO's call for projects. The call opened about a month ago. There's about $52 million total available, and that's split 80-20 between highway and non-highway projects. So there's really only about $10 million available for bicycle and pedestrian projects, and I've got that highlighted up there because that would be the bucket we'd request funding from. Now, a part of that $10.3 million for non-highway projects, each project can only be awarded up to 25% of that. So the award cap for each project is about $2.6 million. And one major piece of consideration here, is that when you submit an application, you are committing to the local match requirement. 20% is the minimum, but you'll see when we talk through some of the cost estimates how we had to increase our local match to get below the $2.6 million award cap. And so project applications are due at the end of October as well. So jumping to the areas of project consideration here would be along Stevens Mill Road here from Blair Mill Park, which is down here on the bottom left, up to Lawyers Road. And again, we would have three segments. We would submit these projects in three segments, excuse me. And then two sidewalk connections that would tie into the existing sidewalk here at the Lawyers Road roundabout in front of the Emerald Lake subdivision. So the Northern Spine Greenway is the large greenway along Stevens Mill. It derives from our Greenway Master Plan, where we proposed a 14-foot concrete greenway, again, along Stevens Mill Road from Blair Mill Park up to Lawyers Road. As a part of that project we would have a boardwalk crossing over Goose Creek which is right across from the Shadamarra Golf Club, and then we would have a few rapid rectangular flashing beacons those are illuminated pedestrian crossings along the corridor as well at subdivision entrances along that along that corridor and so This Northern Spine Greenway, again, we broke it up into three segments. This is segment A, and there's a lot going on on this slide here. But the reason that there's three options here is this was everything that staff considered as we were coming up with cost estimates to propose a logical pedestrian route in this segment A. So there's a lot of factors to consider here specifically. New Stevens village infrastructure that we could tie in and utilize but also there is a pretty significant Piedmont natural gas high pressure regulator right here that Would be a significant burden to relocate and we would likely have to really relocate that so all things considered That's why we have the green a3 as our recommended LAYOUT FOR THIS SEGMENT A. IT WAS THE MOST COST EFFECTIVE LAYOUT, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. AND THEN THAT WOULD ALSO INCLUDE RFB UP HERE AT DIVIDE DRIVE. SEGMENT B, MUCH SMALLER.

WHICH SIDE OF THE ROAD ARE THOSE SUPPOSED TO BE ON? IT'S HARD TO SEE THEM.

THEY DO CROSS. So the green segment starts, ties into the existing greenway at Blair Mill Park, runs along the front of Vickery, if I can find my mouse, runs along the front of Vickery on the northwest side of Stevens Mill Road, and then there's a new traffic signal proposed with the Stevens Village development, and we would utilize that and provide a crossing to the south side of Stevens Mill and run along the south side of Stevens Mill up to Lawyers Road.

I mean, right there at the Stevens, the cross, no, well, there's a crossing. I mean, there's a, what is a power substation, right?

That's the PNG high pressure regulator station.

Oh, really? Okay, so that's...

There is the giant substation.

That is on the northwest corner.

Right there, yes. So, I mean, it looks like that goes right through there. Is that going to go behind it?

These are approximate limits, so there's plenty of room along the front of that substation. I don't foresee any issues coordinating with Union Power to get a concrete sidewalk along the front of that substation.

It would be a hair-raising experience walking by it, though. It's all good. It's all good.

So moving down the corridor, segment B is the shortest segment but the most expensive due to the fact that we have this Goose Creek crossing here. So this would tie, divide, drive in with the first entrance of Hunley Creek and Fairfield Plantation, and we would seek to install an RRFB at that subdivision entrance as well.

And then is there a sidewalk that starts there?

There is. It's only five feet. Okay. And the issue is I do not believe it is ADA or ProWag compliant. So we would seek to remove that and install something ADA and ProWag compliant.

Okay. I'm just curious as to... I know the punchline to this presentation, so I'm trying to gather it all in.

Kevin, do those beacons, are those the ones where you hit the button and the light goes off, or how do those work?

Yes, sir. You hit the button, and then you have the diamond pedestrian, yellow pedestrian sign with the flashing lights around it. Thanks. Yes, sir. Segment C, and I apologize if this is confusing. We rotated. The map here, so north is facing to the right. We just did that so we could fit this aerial on the slide more conveniently. But ultimately, this is the segment C that would tie in the start off at segment B where that left off at the first subdivision entrances to Fairfield Plantation and Hunley Creek and extend that all the way down to Lawyers Road with two more RRFBs at the last entrance into Hunley Creek. And at the subdivision entrance to Willowbrook.

Isn't that an Indian Trail subdivision across the road, Southstone? That's us. That is us.

Is Southstone along us?

Yes, sir.

But there is Indian Trail along Stevens Mill, just not that high north.

But isn't there a sidewalk most of the way on that one there?

Correct. And that's the one that is not ADA compliant.

But there is there is at least a side.

Yes, sir. Yep. Well used. Yeah, and that's kind of yeah Yes, sir Now Laura's Road sidewalk connectors This project derives from, we get a lot of resident inquiries, specifically from the courtyards at Emerald Lake and the Buckingham subdivisions requesting sidewalk connections that would tie into the existing sidewalk stub here at the roundabout and allow residents from the north side of Lawyers Road to access a pedestrian route that would ultimately get them down to the Stevens Mill Shopping Center. Stevens Mill Crossing, I believe is what it's called, where the Harris Teeter McDonald's is and in theory, can walk south down Stevens Mill Road using that existing sidewalk Councilman Ayers just mentioned.

Kevin, can you? Yes, yeah.

These would be five-foot sidewalk connections, and we would seek to install our RFB at the Buckingham subdivision entrance as well. And this pretty much extends to the town limits. I think the town limits terminate right around here.

Did you say that would be five feet or 14?

That would be five feet. Lawyers Road would be a five-foot sidewalk.

Okay. So like the courtyards on the Greenway is going to have, when it's done, five feet in front of it also?

Yes.

Okay. Yes, that is correct.

That's over here.

So what did you need us to do tonight?

Well, so jumping into the cost estimates, obviously there's a little sticker shock. My approach before estimates was hopefully get a nice project list and maybe some of these would be feasible to fund and submit to CRTPO. However, Looking at some of these project costs and these local matches required to get below that $2.6 million award cap, I just don't recommend submitting full project delivery, meaning starting from engineering and design, seeking funding all the way through construction. And that's what these cost estimates are associated with. One other item I'd like to point out as well is the CRTPO project scoring. These scores are derived through CRTPO. They have a scoring worksheet that provides scores based off numerous factors, whether that's average annual daily traffic on that road to certain demographic factors that are taken into consideration, the amount of destinations that are nearby the proposed project location, All that's taken into consideration and scored. And the higher you are to 100%, the more likely you are to get funding. I did have a conversation with CRTPO and They showed me the list of projects that were submitted and the scores associated with them. And we would likely need to be well above 50% to be competitive with some of the other projects that have been submitted thus far. And so that's one thing to consider when submitting these applications is that we are not as competitive as I would like us to be with some of the other projects that I saw scored at this point.

Mr. Parker, can you share with the board whether if we did apply and get that grant, whether that would commit us to doing the full project?

Yes, sir, it would. So say we did want to submit funding for all the way through construction, we would be required to submit a letter of support or resolution committing to that local match at the time of application submittal.

committing to our local match just for the engineering. Are we talking engineering or are we talking the whole

Not yet. So, again, just to reiterate, given the financial commitment to fully deliver these projects and how these projects score, I don't recommend we go this route at this point. I believe that the alternative strategy might be the best strategy would be requesting funding for preliminary engineering and design first. Obviously, we get back down to that minimum requirement of 20%, and Even if we decided to pursue all projects, that's a much more reasonable local match commitment compared to the $13 million of full construction.

Does this rate us different?

We would not score differently. So that is one piece to consider still as well, is that it doesn't change our competitiveness with the other projects that have been submitted. So in short, it doesn't seem likely that we would get funding if we were just to submit for P&E only.

Is there anything that we can do to change the scoring, or is it based on geography and things that are proximate to the sites that we're looking at?

Advancing the project, meaning getting the design done, makes you score much higher. You have better cost estimates. You know how much right-of-way you're going to need. You actually have a feasible line of construction that is tangible. And that, I think, is the biggest piece that helps move projects forward.

But we couldn't do that until, say, like next year.

We could submit now, and we might be able to get funding. It's just not guaranteed. or we could fund it with just local dollars as well.

I guess I'm not following. My brain's starting to get a little sluggish. Well, I just want to make sure that I understand. You said, I think what I heard you answer Mike's question is that our score would go up if the engineering was done. Correct. But we're not going to finish the engineering between now and October. So are we talking about submitting them again for next year if we did the engineering? I see what you're saying. I apologize for that. Well, I mean, like I said, my brain's starting to get a little fogged over.

That's kind of the chicken and the egg argument that we're faced against here is if we submit applications at this point with no PE completed, Our projects still do not score better, and we're still not as competitive as some of the projects that were submitted. Next year, in their call for projects, it's hard to speak to hypotheticals, but there could be a submission of projects that our projects, as they stand now, could be ranked higher with the new submittals next year.

Kevin, given budgetary restraints, is it just feasible to say that we should submit Segment A, commit to spending 169 of those four? You can't do all this in one cycle anyway. It feels like that would be too much to swallow, but this is getting engineering and design done for Segment A, which is the next link in the chain headed north to get you up to Stevens Village, if I'm not mistaken?

Yes.

Yes, sir. And you get Pete. It's going to be tough to do while they're doing theirs.

But Kevin, it does sound also like that 169 is assuming if we got the funding, which seems like it's not likely, so we're really more looking at the 843 is what we would, in order to improve the future possibility of getting the funding for the actual construction, because it seems like it's not likely that we'd get the CARPO funding for this space. Correct.

I think the purpose of this is to really kind of just show where we stand as it relates to other projects, kind of give you a temperature check on the costs associated with these projects. moving along slowly but surely. Obviously things, again, I had a little sticker shock when I finally put all these cost estimates together. So I think it's really a policy discussion. How do we want to approach these kinds of projects going down the line? Right now it doesn't necessarily seem feasible based on the scoring and finances associated with some of these projects. So That's really kind of the purpose of tonight is to introduce some of these issues that we're seeing firsthand in this early and maybe start thinking of a better approach to getting CARPO funding down the line.

This sounds like this would be a really good topic to bring up either during our retreat or during budget process next spring. We can't afford any of this without... having a plan right we don't have a plan today to go forward on any of this it's nice to look at but we don't have the money in the bank and we don't have a plan so i i would like us to bring this back up at retreat time and see if this is actually a big priority which i think it should i think it is but i'm not gonna speak for all of y'all but let's push it for retreat time and then budget time so we can actually figure out how we're going to fund this.

And I know it's a lot to consider. There's a lot of information, obviously huge financial commitments. So looking at next steps, I didn't know if council wanted to kind of take a step back, sleep on it over the next two weeks, and we can reconvene at the September 28th meeting and make final decisions at that point. Regardless, that would still put us in a good position to meet CRTPO deadlines, but.

It doesn't sound like we're applying this year is what I think the mayor said. Sure. So let's not do anything more.

Your time is, I mean, we're already hearing that your time is very, very tight. Putting this on top that has very little success rate. Likelihood, yes, sir. Let's just take it. It's not a bad idea. It's not, these aren't bad projects. They're just not slamming on us right now and we gotta make a decision. Nah, we don't have the money for it. We'll just wait.

I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT. THE I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT. THE SILVER I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT. THE SILVER LINING I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT.

THE SILVER LINING IS I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT. THE SILVER LINING IS A I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT.

THE SILVER LINING IS A LOT THE SILVER LINING IS A LOT THE SILVER LINING IS A LOT OF THE SILVER LINING IS A LOT OF THE SILVER LINING IS A LOT OF THE LEG WORK THE SILVER LINING IS A LOT OF THE LEG WORK IS THE SILVER LINING IS A LOT OF THE LEG WORK IS DONE. OF THE LEG WORK IS DONE. OF THE LEG WORK IS DONE. We have for both for Segment A and Lawyers Road, two big developments going in. Has that already been factored in, or is there a potential that that would then be factored in later? Those have already been factored in.

Okay. So those two developments, they are mixed-use retail-type developments. But there's also some in the existing corridor as well that were taken into consideration. It's not, segment A got a lot more points for being close to Blair Mill Park, being close to the Greenway at Blair Mill as well. So it wasn't necessarily the development in segment A that caused it to score higher. It was really the amenities that are in close proximity to that proposed segment. It would allow, it would provide a connection to Stallings Elementary, which was highly scored.

finish that off it's very needed area but it's expensive yes yes sir and then isn't stevens village going to put in some i don't know what you probably already know what's going in exactly i believe it's a 10 foot sidewalk okay along their frontage so that would in theory reduce some of the costs of that correct part of it correct yeah but that was already factored in okay

WELL, I MEAN, FACTORED IN FOR STEPHEN THE VILLAGE PARK, BUT WHAT IF WE REVISITED THE WIDTH OF THE REST OF IT? WOULD THAT CHANGE THE COSTING THEN?

NOT AS MUCH AS YOU WOULD THINK. THE MATERIALS REALLY AREN'T THE BIG EXPENSES HERE. it's a lot of the engineering and design right away. Acquisition accounts for 50% of construction costs as well. Um, a lot of unknowns at this point. And I do have an Excel sheet. I was playing around with, with the side of walk widths and it, it didn't move the needle too much. Gotcha. 200, 300,000, which is a lot, but not enough to change, change the decision here.

I know who I'm coming to for a handout, man.

All right, thank you, Kevin. Appreciate your time, discussion, counsel, appreciate it all. That brings us to item eight, adjournment. I'll make a motion. Motion second. Go ahead. Motion made and seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Awesome. Good meeting, folks.

Thank you.