City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone.

Let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day, and thank you for you brought on our community. I pray for the speaker. In their name we pray, amen.

Would you join me? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, the republic for which it stands, and the republic for which it stands.

Amen.

Have a good time tonight. Thank you for coming out. We can be. Came out tonight. First. Didn't have any. All right. Do we have. To accept the agenda.

Don't move.

In a second, any first? All in favor, aye. Motion. All right. Code of Ethics. Through work. Tonight. Three proclamations. Cindy Sutton will present. And then. Annual report. I think. I'm going to first add. American. Meeting. Like I said, this place is full of friends tonight. Thank you all for coming. So this is proclamation for Constitution Week. Whereas, you are a DAR, that's awesome. Whereas, September 17th, 2026 marks the 239th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution of the United States of America by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. And whereas the Constitution laid the foundation for our nation and remains an enduring symbol of liberty, justice, and government under the rule of law, and whereas North Carolina was one of the original 13 states and was represented among the signers of the Constitution by William Blount, Richard Dobbs Spate, and Hugh Williamson, and whereas Constitution Week commemorates the historic events of September 1787 when the Constitution was signed, delivered to Congress, and presented to the people of the newly formed nation. and whereas Public Law 915 provides for the annual designation of September 17th through 23rd as Constitution Week, encouraging citizens to recognize the significance of this historic document in the freedoms, rights, and responsibilities it establishes. Now, therefore, I, J. Douglas Hendricks, Mayor of the City of Statesville, do hereby proclaim September 17th through 23rd, 2026 as Constitution Week in the City of Statesville and encourage all residents to reflect upon the principles established by the Constitution, safeguard the freedoms it guarantees, and continue the work of forming a more perfect union. Thank y'all. Would you like to say, would you like to say anything, anybody? Oh, we gotta get a picture. Amy wasn't here for the pictures. Our second proclamation is for Suicide Prevention Month, which is September 2026. September is recognized as Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, an opportunity to raise awareness about suicide prevention, promote mental health, and encourage individuals and communities to take action And whereas the 2026 theme, Stronger Together, Connect, Support, Prevent, highlights the importance of building meaningful connections, supporting individuals in need and working together to prevent suicide. And whereas suicide is preventable and everyone can play a role in recognizing warning signs, starting conversations about mental health and connecting individuals with appropriate resources and assistance. And whereas the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline provides free confidential support 24 hours a day, seven days a week for individuals experiencing emotional distress, suicidal thoughts or mental health crisis, as well as those concerned about someone else. And whereas the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Be Well Iredale, and other community partners provide education, resources, and support to individuals and families throughout Statesville and Iredale County. And whereas the City of Statesville encourages residents to strengthen connections, support one another, and help create a community where everyone feels safe seeking help. Now, therefore, I, J. Douglas Hendricks, Mayor of the City of Statesville, do hereby proclaim the month of September 2026 as Suicide Prevention Awareness Month in the City of Statesville and encourage all residents to connect, support, and prevent suicide together. Thank you, Susan. Would you like to say a quick word? I'll be right here. Okay, hold my hand.

Thank you all for all that you do for suicide prevention in Statesville. It means a lot to a lot of people. I was at an event yesterday and we have raised a lot of money to help with suicide and all our efforts here in Iredell County. And it just keeps going and going and going. So if you would like to volunteer, please let me know because we really can use some help. Thank you so much.

Wonderful. Our final proclamation is the first to recognize this awesome organization. It's Hispanic Heritage Month, September 15th through October 15th, 2026. Whereas each year from September 15 through October 15, our nation celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month honoring the histories, cultures, traditions, and contributions of people whose roots reach throughout the Hispanic and Latino diaspora and whereas Hispanic and Latino families have become an important part of the history of the story and continued growth in Statesville with Hispanic and Latino residents now representing approximately 15 percent of the city's population nearly one in every seven residents of Statesville Whereas the contributions of Statesville's Hispanic and Latino community can be seen throughout our city in our businesses and workplaces, classrooms and schools, churches, in faith communities, cultural traditions, civic organizations, and in the families who are building their lives here. And whereas Hispanic and Latino entrepreneurs are also part of Statesville's economic story, creating businesses, jobs, and opportunities while adding to the character and vitality of our city, including the growing presence of Hispanic-owned businesses in and around downtown Statesville. And whereas Hispanic Heritage Month gives us an opportunity not only to celebrate culture, food, music, language, and traditions, but also to recognize the hard work, sacrifice, and service of generations of Hispanic and Latino people who have strengthened communities across our nation. And whereas organizations such as ALAS help build bridges, strengthen community connections, celebrate Hispanic and Latino culture, and create spaces where families and individuals can connect, participate, lead, and feel a greater sense of belonging in Statesville. And whereas we recognize the importance of investing in the next generation of Hispanic and Latino leaders, ensuring that our young people can see themselves not only as part of Statesville's present, but as business owners, educators, professionals, public servants, community leaders, and decision makers, shaping its future. Now, therefore, I, J. Douglas Hendricks, Mayor of the City of Statesville, do hereby proclaim September 15th through October 15th, 2026 as Hispanic Heritage Month and commend its observance to all City of Statesville community. Thank you so much. Xochitl. I'm going to ask Soshi Koppelmeyer and Diego to come up. Would you like to say something?

Thank you all. I would just like to invite the community for a celebration on October 3rd at the Unity Center. From 10 to 4, we'll be celebrating Hispanic culture. Ms. Raiz's cultural group and ALAS, as well as the Statesville City Schools, is putting this event on. So we hope to see the community there. It'll be a great time.

Thank y'all.

October 3rd is my birthday, you know.

Okay, Cindy.

Emily, do I just use the? Good evening, Mayor, Council, city staff, constituents. My name is Cindy Sutton, and I am extremely proud to serve as Statesville's Executive Director of the Statesville Tourism Development Authority. I've been in this position for six years now, and tonight we're here to give you a quick look at what visitor-generated dollars accomplished in fiscal 2026 and where we are focused on next. Tell you a little bit about what a Tourism Development Authority is. We are a public authority created to promote travel, tourism, and overnight stays here in Statesville. We have a mission to encourage travelers to stop and stay in the greater Statesville area. I like to tell people that we are the storytellers of Statesville. We turn the people, places, events, history, and experiences of Statesville into reasons to visit, stay overnight, and spend locally. The TDA is a public authority with a simple job. Our work is funded by the 5% occupancy tax paid by visitors in taxable lodging. It is not a local property tax. Before we talk about our accomplishments this year, I want to recognize the volunteer board of directors who govern this authority. If you were here tonight, I know our entire executive board is here and several other board members. Would you please stand and be recognized?

Here we go.

This group has been a pleasure to serve. They bring hospitality, tourism, and community leadership together around one goal, growing overnight visitation and the economic activity it creates throughout Statesville. I'm grateful for their time, their leadership, and their trust. Just wanted to mention that this is our entire board here up on the screen and also on our website. Tourism is a meaningful economic activity. I cannot see that slide. Sorry. Visit North Carolina, the state of North Carolina puts out a report every year and this is a report on 2025 for Iredell County. We had $441 million in total visitor spending, 2,564 direct tourism jobs, $30.57 million in state and local taxes because of this visitation. An estimated $143 in total tax savings per resident in Iredell County because of tourism, which is a 2.8% increase over previous year. And that is double, in Iredell County, we outgrew the whole state by double. That is double the county's growth. And just to look at where visitors are spending money, food and beverage is highest on the list. A fun fact I like to share with people is here in Statesville, North Carolina, we have over 80 now locally owned and operated restaurants, not chains, but all locally owned right here in Statesville. They're spending $140 million annually on food and beverage, then lodging, transportation, recreation, and in our retail stores. One of the moments I'm most proud about this year is when we all came together and celebrated Statesville joining the North Carolina Civil Rights Trail in fiscal 2026. This took the work of all of us to put this request together, and I was proud when we could all come together and celebrate it. This is... This honors, this North Carolina civil rights trail marker honored the 1960 Woolworth sit-ins, and here we're standing out in front of the historic collection right downtown. But most importantly, I wanna say that this is not the end of that story, we have an opportunity to connect the marker to the deeper history of black travel in Statesville, North Carolina. Councilwoman Lisa Pierce and I will continue that work together at the US Civil Rights Trail Conference in Memphis. And I want to thank the board for putting in our budget this year, the funding to be on the National US Trail. I want to talk a minute about the Statesville Event Center. I think I've said thank you a lot, but I want to say it again. We now have a modernized important tourism asset, particularly in growing Monday through Thursday groups in our market. Using $300,000 from occupancy tax in fiscal 2026, the Civic Center was able to do a substantial upgrade to sound and video. We now have ADA compliant touchscreen controls. There's new carpet, new chairs. If you have not been to what we call now the Statesville Event Center, because we are using it to promote events Monday through Thursday, I encourage you to go check it out. It's a great asset and we're very thankful to partner with the city and promote that. Just want to talk a minute about last night in Statesville. Most people do not know that we are home to 20 hotels now, about 1,200 hotel rooms. And in fiscal 26, those hotels generated $27.6 million growth occupancy revenues, which generated $1.38 million in a 5% tax collection that came back to benefit the City of Statesville, including our operations. One thing that I want to talk to you is that short-term rental market is growing in our market. in 2025 by another 13%, but our occupancy in our hotels are only at 54.4% Monday through Thursday, and we have a really great opportunity to grow. The average hotel room rate just January through June 2026 was $100.78, and demand will help us increase that as well. Again, just more data on the opportunity being Monday through Thursday. We, in fiscal 2026, we started doing a lot of learning who comes to State Soul, where they come from, what they do and where they stay. I was really intrigued to learn that our top origin market coming through 2025 into 2026 was the Raleigh-Carrie market. I attribute that to us being such a great business community and business travelers coming here. to do nurture economic development. Then we have Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, traveling through our interstates to other vacation spots, Greensboro High Point and Charlotte Concord. Fun fact, what our visitors experience, the number one visited place in all of Statesville when our visitors come here is Katana Kitchen. And then the Statesville Event Center, which I was really proud to see that number. And then Amalfi's Pizza, Boxcar Grill, Broad Street Burger, and Fresh Chef. Boxcar Grill, and this is historical data of 2025. Boxcar Grill is now closed, but other people were watching this data because we have that huge development of Taco Bells and Dunkin' Donuts and everything else out there. So tourism is watching these developments for the local economy. Just a quick highlight from awareness to overnight stay, we're partnering with advanced travel and tourism to make sure we meet travelers where they are, where they dream, plan, book, and increase awareness and engagement for people choosing Statesville when they're traveling on our interstates. Our marketing is moving travelers deeper into that journey. For the first part of 2026, we kicked off a partnership where we delivered 5.8 million ads. had 98,000 responses and clicks. We had a 1.69 overall click-through rate, which is above the industry average of less than 1%. We had 411 website actions and accommodations. People looking for accommodations in Statesville represented 44% of that paid search. We can track 1,402 direct partner referrals from the first half of 2026 from our website. In growing stateful audience, this paid advertising has also helped with our own local channels. Our social channels had 2.1 million impressions, up 30% over the previous year, had an audience of 18,737, up 11% over previous year. had a high video views mainly coming from Facebook. So this more reach gives Statesville more opportunity to tell its story, keep the destination visible, and bring travelers back to statesvillenc.com to plan their visit. With that, most importantly, our authority is using the highest percent of its budget this year, $125,000 on continued campaign and paid ads. You probably won't see them because you live them, but travelers coming down our interstate, what we're doing is we're specifically geolocating them as they're traveling down 40 and 77 instead of having billboards, we're putting it right in their phone through several channels to say you're stopped for a bite or telling people to get off the interstate here and experience Discover Statesville. Where we're going, our focus going into FY 2027 beyond is to grow overnight visitation specifically and growing that Monday through Thursday demand to grow more occupancy tax for us to reinvest in Statesville. Continue telling more Statesville story, turn all of our marketing into action using real data to see where people are coming from and creating more of that visitation. And we are kicking off our FY 2028 strategic plan for priorities and investments together in partnership with staff and the City of Statesville. Tourism is visitor funded. Its impact belongs to the entire community. We just want to say thank you.

Thank you, Cindy. Great work. jimmy and board thank you they're all doing a great job for our city and um that it's amazing what you've done so far and we can see the future coming at us quickly and thank you for all you're doing to help okay we're going to move into our public comment period for public comment each person who signed up will have three minutes to speak on any topic when you come to the podium please state your name and address first on the list is tamir Mutaka Beer. Yes, thank you for coming up. Next on the list is Robert Bryden, so if you'll be ready.

To the Mayor of Statesville and the City Council. My name is Tamir, Imam Tamir, and imam is equivalent to a Jewish rabbi or a Christian minister. I'm the leader, a spiritual leader of the Islamic community of Statesville. We've been in Statesville quite a while. I'm told at least the late 80s, late 80s or maybe early 90s. But I wanted to cover just a few quick points, and that is, Muslims are part and parcel of America. Okay, I went to school just like everybody else did. I'm 72 years old on the day before yesterday. I've been busy learning what my school didn't teach me. And you should do the same, because we all learn pretty much the same thing. I learned that three million people came from Africa here to be slaves, and one million were Muslims. So that's a part of America. That's part and parcel of America. I learned that Muslims fought in every single war that the United States has had. And if you visit the graveyard, you'll see the names, and you'll see the crescent and the star on the tombstones. When I look at a scale, there's been much more good that the Muslims have done than bad. Every community has people who do things that are not right. And we want to just set the record straight. We don't want confrontation. We just want to have a house of worship and be a positive effect on Statesville. We know what they taught us and we just have to spend a few minutes to learn what they didn't teach us. So the Constitution says we have freedom of religion. We need support. It's sad about the support that we get. Everybody has the same constitution. The state of North Carolina has a constitution. I took the time to look at what it says. And this short statement came from that constitution. It says all persons have a natural and inalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciousness and no human authority shall in any case whatever control or interfere with the rights of conscience. I want you to know We do things here. We don't just sit around. We support the orphans. We pay money to Fifth Street Ministries on a monthly basis. We feed the poor in our community, and we'll continue to do that and continue to be a positive force for Statesville. We want to see a better Statesville just like everybody else. Thank you very kindly.

Thank you, Imam Tamir. Robert Bryden and then Jeff Tucker, please.

Good evening. I'm Robert Bryden. We're at 281 Jomani Loop. Mayor and members of City Council, I'm here tonight because I have a serious concern about the use of flock safety automated license plate reader cameras in Statesville. I want to make something clear at the beginning. I support law enforcement having effective tools to investigate actual crimes, but there is an enormous difference between investigating a suspect and creating a system capable of recording the movements of thousands of ordinary people who are suspected of nothing. These LPRs don't just photograph the license plate. When these cameras operate continuously across the city and surrounding jurisdictions, they can potentially create a record of these vehicles and where they have been and when they were there. I passed two on the way here tonight. That raises serious privacy and Fourth Amendment concerns and questions. I'm gonna ask the council right now to think about how many flock cameras the States will currently operate or have access to. I counted 41, what I could see in the Statesville. How many searches of this system are performed each year? Are officers required to document a legitimate law enforcement purpose before searching someone's vehicle history? Who audits those searches? How often has Statesville's system been accessed by outside agencies and who are those agencies? Can Statesville officers search camera networks belonging to other jurisdictions? Yes. How long is our residents data retained? And most importantly, how would this city council know if this system was being abused like other cities like Morrisville? Those aren't anti-police questions, those are oversight questions and some police departments already have a bad record of that. Technology changes much faster than laws and policies do. A surveillance tool purchased today to solve serious crimes will become something much broader tomorrow unless elected officials establish clear limits. The Fourth Amendment was written because government power requires boundaries. Those principles do not become obsolete simply because surveillance is automated. I am therefore asking Council to require public disclosure of Statesville's policies governing automated license plate readers, regular reporting of how these systems are searched and shared, meaningful auditing of individual searches, and clear consequences for misuse. I am also asking council not to approve any additional funding expansion or renewal of automated license plate reader contracts without publicly examining those safeguards. Finally, I have submitted a public records request to the City of Statesville and the Iredell County Sheriff's Department for the use of these systems going back to 2020. When those records are produced, the data and I aggregate the data, I hope this council will examine that data as much as I and the public will. Public safety matters, but so does the right of the ordinary citizen to travel through their community without being watched. We can protect both, and it's up to you guys to do that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Biden. Mr. Tucker. And next is Emily Bossart, please.

Good evening. My name is Jeff Tucker, and I live at 211 Ashbrook Road. And I was here last month, and I'm back this month. My buddy, I didn't know this guy was gonna speak, but it's kind of along the same lines. I'm asking y'all to put together a county-wide study commission. I'm gonna stand before the county commission tomorrow night and ask them to do the same thing. Because right now we got Iredell County, we got Stateful City, we got Morsel City, we got municipalities. They've all got their own authority. and we have no, we need some county guidelines that's gonna steer us all in the same direction. Right now, we don't have that. Y'all have a six-month moratorium that you put out to gather facts on that. We're going down to five months. We're a month past. So, you know, I look at the Morrisville. Morrisville had a, was gonna put a data center in council of the the council our county stepped in stopped at and 10 days later they showed up here different but we got the data center on us so i asked grok i asked grok i said how many data centers because never know about damage centers how many is in surrounding counties and it turns out we've got in our surrounding counties not and take two or three off i don't have any But we've got a total of 22 data centers, 17 operational and five under construction. And then I said, well, Grok, how many do we have nationwide? Because our government tells us that we're in a race with China and we need these data centers. Well, China's got about 400 data centers. And according to Grok, we've got 3,400 data centers, 378 under construction, and 1,042 in the planning stage. So we need some, we need to look at that and see how that fits into the county and other data centers that's coming. They're all around us. From the surveillance standpoint, two years ago, there was just a pinpoint. If you looked at the country, just a pinpoints around on flock cameras. And now the whole coastlines, all major cities were lit up. It's not a Fourth Amendment yet, but we're headed in that direction as that bill's out, so we need some safety guidelines on that. Tip, I took an oath when we served on the school board together 20 years ago. I didn't serve in the military, but my oath is going to go to my grave. I've got children and grandchildren. It needs transparency. Y'all took an oath to do the same thing. Y'all took an oath to the Constitution. Jeremiah 6.16 says, Thus saith the Lord, Stand in the way and see. Y'all took an oath to stand in the way for us and see. And it says to find the old paths where the good way is and walk therein, and there you'll find rest for your souls. they said we'll not walk in it so i'm praying that we'll we can set this up i'm going to stand before them tomorrow night and ask for this study commission i pray we got five months i pray all the municipalities will come together in this county and let's set some guidelines that everybody can live with and we'll have transparency to know what's going on instead of knowing after the fact thank you mr thank you very much

It's Emily Bossart. Okay, great. And next is Erin Most, please.

Hello, my name is Emily Boss Hart. I am the Community Relations Coordinator for Yorkville Ministry and I'm on the Board of Commissions. I'm the Vice Chair on the Statesville Housing Authority, ISIC. I'm here tonight to talk to you again about the food desert down on the south side. I know that former council member Mr. Foster spoke to you last month about it and I want to continue that conversation because it's still It's still a conversation, especially now that Dollar General is fully closed. There are organizations on the south side and across the city that are still doing the work, boots on the ground, distributing food, talking to folks about what they need, about how we can fill gaps. But one piece of this conversation is still missing, and that's buy-in from the city. I know that Ms. Allison came down last week and visited us at Yolk Fellow and kind of got to know a little bit more about what we do. And we're not the only one who is helping. There's several, too long of a list to go through in three minutes. Yokefellow is essentially at the epicenter of our food desert and within one mile radius of Yokefellow there are 252 SHA-ISIC households. That means that 252 families within a mile radius of Yokefellow are not only receiving housing assistance, they're receiving food assistance. They don't have reliable transportation. They may not have the time in their schedule to come when food banks are open. And so there is a systematic There is a systemic issue that's happening with food insecurity and housing insecurity that nonprofits cannot solve on their own. So this is my invitation to everybody here and anybody who can hear the sound of my voice to come to Yolk Fellow, come visit us, come talk to us about what we do, come meet the folks who come and see us every day. And I also want to invite you folks, leaders of Statesville, to come to the next Statesville Housing Authority Board meeting It is open to the public. If you can't come in person, we can provide a virtual Zoom link for you because we really need to start connecting these conversations so that they're not happening in a vacuum. So thank you for your time, and I'll see you on the south side. What is the meeting? It is the third Tuesday of every month. It's on the Facebook page. Okay, I'm sorry, Tuesday. So it's the third, fourth Tuesday of this month. Fourth Tuesday. But I can send you an email with the exact link since you're not on Facebook.

That'd be great.

Yeah, not a problem. Thank you, Ms. Messard. Thank you.

Thank you.

Erin Mose, please, and then Tamara Roach.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and member of council. My name is Erin Most and I live in Troutman. I was here last month and I supported the data center moratorium and I urge council to apply what was learned from the Compass data center process. Since then, I have reviewed the documents for the rezoning request ZC2513 and ordinance number 2525 for the Stamee Farm Road site. While the rezoning for the Stamee Farm Road has already passed, looking at that finalized ordinance reveals why local municipal rules must be updated during this moratorium. During public hearings, Compass offered comforting promises, strict decibel caps, hydro-treated vegetable oil instead of diesel for over 200 generators, and low building heights. Yet, in the actual text of the ordinance, not one of those operational guarantees was written into law as a binding condition. Not one. Leaving operational promises to administrative staff review creates a major gap in legal enforcement. The technical review committee is authorized to evaluate technical site plans strictly against existing unified development code standards. They do not have the authority to enforce special promises made at a podium if council did not write those conditions directly into the ordinance. Furthermore, official records note that the actual tax revenues and fiscal offsets remain not yet quantified, leaving residential ratepayers exposed to potential system-wide utility upgrade costs. Stamey Farm Road showed us where the cracks in the process are. Now during this moratorium, council has the opportunity to close those cracks before the next application arrives. I am not standing here against this council or against area growth. I am respectfully asking for your leadership to equip city staff and committees with the legal tools that they need. Please make these four action items mandatory additions to the municipal law signed by applicants and attached to every future agreement. One, codified noise and decibel caps. Two, binding water usage limits. Three, independent fiscal impact studies. Four, signed binding exhibits attached directly to the ordinance. Thank you for your time and your leadership.

Thank you, Ms. Most. Tamra. And then Todd Fowler.

good evening mayor and members of city council my name is tamra roach and i am proud to be the executive director of fifth street ministries for nearly four decades fifth street ministries has been part of the safety net of statesville and iredale county many people still think of us simply as the homeless shelter and yes providing a safe place to sleep is an important part of what we do but fifth street today is much more than a shelter Our mission moves beyond shelter to empower people in crisis to rebuild stability and achieve self-sufficiency. Last year alone, 5th Street Ministries served over 2,000 people and provided more than 35,000 nights of shelter, equaling $1.9 million in housing supports. Our domestic violence services served over 1,200 families. We supported over 40 veterans, and our Path Street outreach team connected over 3,400 times with people experiencing homelessness, many of whom were living outside and disconnected from traditional services. Our community kitchen provided over 70,000 meals last year. Those are big numbers, but behind every one of them is a person. When someone is sleeping in a car or in the woods, when a mother and her children are fleeing domestic violence, when an 85-year-old veteran is sleeping in his car in crisis, or when someone is discharged from the hospital or jail with nowhere safe to go, 5th Street is one of the places this community turns to. And that has value not only for the people we serve, but for the city of Statesville. Every night someone is safely sheltered is a night they're not sleeping in a business doorway, a park, a vehicle, or another unsafe location. Every person we connect to housing, employment, benefits, treatment, and other resources has a better opportunity to move out of crisis rather than repeatedly recycling through emergency systems. But we also know that simply managing crisis isn't enough, and we're changing how we do this work. Our focus is increasingly on the pathway from crisis to stability through stronger case management, employment and financial skills, transitional housing, and ultimately permanent housing. Our goal isn't for someone to become better at being homeless. Our goal is for them to stop being homeless. And we're applying that same focus of long-term stability on Fifth Street Ministries ourselves. This past year, we've taken a hard look at our operations. We've reduced expenses, restructured programs, eliminated positions, changed employee benefit contributions, and made difficult decisions about services, including ending our traditional community lunch program. Our strategy isn't simply to ask the community for more money. We're looking at earned income revenue stream where it makes sense, and we're having those that we are working with add and prepare build into Fifth Street Ministries where they can. But Fifth Street Ministries isn't simply a nonprofit that happens to be located in Statesville. We're part of the community infrastructure that Statesville relies upon to respond to homelessness, domestic violence, hunger, veterans in crisis, and people who have nowhere else to turn. And maintaining that infrastructure requires partnership. Thank you.

Todd Fowler, please.

Good evening. Thank you for letting me speak this evening. I see a lot of supporters for Fifth Street Ministries out there. My name is Todd Fowler. I'm the director of philanthropy for Fifth Street Ministries, and we are here just to tell you a little bit about the impact that we've had and how we can continue to give back to our community. The numbers you just heard are important, and I'd like to put a few of them into perspective. Today, the City of Statesville provides annually $10,000 for our benefit for the services that we're providing to our community. We're asking the City Council to increase this annual investment from $10,000 to $45,000, which is considerable. Last fiscal year, Fifth Street Ministries had a $90,000 short funding gap. This is due to grants, which have become less a part of our funding. And to put that into perspective, we were able to raise enough money to fund 352 out of the 365 days, but that left 13 days. And for a shelter that provides these services 24 hours a day, we can't just close. The people that need shelter don't get to choose which day they are homeless. Our request to the city for the $35,000 additional, which is approximately half of the $90,000 funding gap when added to the $10,000 that we already receive, would be impactful. It would be a meaningful addition to what we provide to the community. That additional investment would only be a combined city and county support equal to $70,000, which is less than half of what Union County provides to its I say that not because we need to compare municipalities or shelters or counties, but to show that it is possible. This type of investment is reasonable and achievable. Why does it matter to Statesville? because homelessness isn't a Fifth Street problem. Hunger is not a Fifth Street problem. Housing instability is not a Fifth Street problem. It's a Statesville problem. It's a community problem. And again, I see some wonderful supporters here that believe in the work we're doing, and thank you. And I know you all support us and believe in what we're doing, and thank you. These community challenges, they're felt throughout Statesville. in our neighborhoods, in our businesses, in our emergency services. We're already a significant part of this infrastructure. We're asking for a bit more help so that we can continue working this together because we cannot solve homelessness by ourselves. City Council, the City of Statesville cannot solve this problem by yourselves, but together we can get a whole lot farther. We can get a whole lot farther. We're asking for additional money, but really our goal is a greater Statesville. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Todd. I'd like to thank everyone that came out to take advantage of the public comment period. That's an important part of what we do as a city, and I and the council certainly appreciate that. Okay, we're going to move on into our consent agenda. All of the items below are considered to be routine by city council and be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion on these items unless a council member requests. Item A, consider approving the August 6th, 2026 pre-agenda meeting minutes and the August 10th, 2026 regular meeting minutes. Item B, consider approving budget amendment 2027-05 to facilitate the purchase of a remote controlled mower for the use at the nixon road reservoir item c consider approving the second reading of an ordinance to impose a 180-day moratorium on the acceptance processing and approval of applications for new telecommunications and data centers within the city of states statesville and its extraterritorial zoning jurisdiction pursuant to ncgs160d-107 Item D, consider approving the second reading of an ordinance to amend Article 5, automatic alarm system regulations. Item E is consider approving budget amendment 2027-04 and appropriating insurance proceeds in the amount of $111,430 for repairs to the airport lighting system and perimeter fencing damaged by an aircraft incident on December 18th, 2025. Item F, consider approving work authorization number 30 in the amount of $187,667 for professional services in the construction of an aircraft parking apron for Westar Aviation. Item G is consider passing a resolution to set the public hearing date of October 5th, 2026 for AX26-10, Chapel Road, an annexation request filed by Dr. Mark Misurashi of Harmony Investing LLC for two parcels located at the end of Chapel Road and the Long Beauty Street. Item H is consider approving budget amendment 2027-06, which appropriates fund balance to support the rollover of outstanding purchase orders for contractual obligations and pending capital projects associated with the Cochrane renovation project. Item I is consider authorizing the city manager or his designee to dispose of items declared as surplus in accordance with the North Carolina General Statutes, Chapter 160A, Article 160A-270C. Item J is consider approving the attached resolution opposing the proposed regulatory changes to the Section 106 review process of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. Item K is consider passing a resolution of intent to permanently close the end portion of unopened Dover Road just after the Dover Road and Larkin Commerce Parkway intersection and schedule a public hearing for October 19th, 2026. item l is consider passing a resolution of intent to permanently close the west portion of unopened free nancy avenue and schedule a public hearing for october 19 2026. item m is consider passing a resolution directing the city clerk to investigate a petition of annexation ax26-11 Turnersburg Highway, that's 4th Crescent Place, filed by Jen Johnson of Chick-fil-A for the parcels located along Turnersburg Highway, that's U.S. Highway 21, near 4th Crescent Place. Receive city clerk's certificate of sufficiency and consider passing a resolution fixing a date of October 5, 2026 for a public hearing for the petition of annexation. And item N is consider passing the first reading of an ordinance to establish the Third Creek Sewer Line project fund. I will say that Councilmember Presley has asked to recuse himself from item N and his vote will not count towards item N. M, did I say N? Sorry. That's item M, which is in regards to the Chick-fil-A relocation. Are there any changes to the consent agenda? Okay, hearing none, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

So moved. Second.

We have a first and second. Any additional discussion? Hearing none, We'll have the vote. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Okay. Item 9 is conduct a public hearing and consider passing the first reading of rezoning request ZC26-10, that's 238 Airport Road, Statesville Regional Airport, filed by the City of Statesville for approximately 481.5 acres. I will open the public hearing. Mr. Campbell. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, Council.

Our 10th rezoning case of the year brings us to 238 Airport Road, better known as the Statesville Regional Airport. This request, initiated by city staff, is to rezone 54 parcels, accumulating approximately 481.5 acres. The request is to rezone from City of Statesville residential agriculture, airport zoning, and our 22 City of Statesville heavy industrial. On your screen is a location map indicating the airport's location and approximation to the city limits. Here's a view of the new terminal building from East Aviation Drive. Here's a view from the four most recently acquired properties along Highway 70. Just a little bit of a background check. The airport first started operating as a grass airstrip back during the 1930s. Over time, the airport had acquired properties that were never rezoned from their original pre-airport zoning designation. Rezoning these properties aligns with future development as part of the airport layout plan. on your screen are the current zoning designation of these properties. To the north, we have light industrial, including race shops. To the east, we have a golf course and R20 zoning district. To the west, we have some vacant parcels and single family residences. And to the south, we have more vacant properties and single family residences. During rezoning cases, we do like to inform the council of how many permitted uses would be allowed at a site if rezoned. There are a total of 97 permitted uses in the heavy industrial zoning district, including airports and helipads. Heliports, excuse me. Staff recommends rezoning these parcels to heavy industrial due to the day-to-day nature of the airport operation that include noise, fueling, outdoor storage, and similar intense industrial activities. When we look at rezoning, we compare to the 2045 Land Development Plan, and this plan calls for these parcels to support and employment center and industrial flex, which supports rezoning to heavy industrial. I also wanted to include that the four properties that are located along Hickory Highway are located in the ETJ. Staff has reviewed this request and found that it is consistent with the 2045 land development plan, particularly the section about the airport and I-40 area new development strategic focus area. Therefore, staff and the planning board recommend approval option one in your packets to approve the requested rezoning. And I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Campbell. Any questions for Mr. Campbell? Okay, we'll move on into the public hearing portion. We have one person that signed up to speak. Anson, is it Harrigan? Or Harrison? Okay. Does anyone else care to speak? Okay, I'll call us out of public hearing. Any additional questions from council? Okay, do we have a motion on the rezoning request?

Mr. Mayor, I move to approve option one, approve. The zoning amendment is hereby approved and is consistent with the city's 2045 land development plan, specifically the airport I-40 area new development strategic focus area. The plan supports maximizing the economic development potential of the Statesville Regional Airport and encourages aviation supportive uses. Furthermore, this request is reasonable and in the public interest because rezoning of this site aligns the existing airport helipad use with the appropriate zoning district.

Thank you to have the second. We have a motion and a second any further discussion. All in favor say aye. Any opposed. Motion carries you name and thank you thank you very much thank you Kim. Okay item 10 is conduct a public hearing and consider approving TA 26-06 to amend chapter 20 stormwater and chapter 21 streets and sidewalks article 1 general section 2121 of the Statesville city code in appendix a unified development code article 1 administrative administration section 1.04 responsibilities for application code C. We'll open the public hearing. Randy?

Thank you, Mayor Hendricks. Council? I'm here with a text amendment to amend Chapter 20, Stormwater, Chapter 21, Streets and Sidewalks, and responsibilities of the planning director under Appendix A. Chapter 20 deals with the illicit discharge ordinance and tail ditch policy for stormwater. The tail ditch policy dictates the circumstances that allow city staff to perform work outside the right of way for issues that affect the safety of the roadway. We wanted to address some deficiencies that prevent us from making some repairs to protect the city infrastructure. So current tail ditch maintenance policy requires the city to get a permanent easement from the property owner for maintenance and perpetuity after the repair. And the policy also does not allow us to perform repairs on vacant properties. You're required to have a CO of at least 10 years for a structure prior to applying for this benefit. So staff is proposing that at section 2051 general purpose and completely strike out the requirement for certificate of occupancy on these vacant properties in order to make the repairs. And then under section 2052, there's five different criteria. We wanna strike the one that states have the certificate of occupancy 10 years prior. And just for an example, this is the intersection of Fieldstone Circle and Ashley Place. There's a few catch basins there. They run outside the right-of-way across a vacant property. About 50 feet outside the right-of-way, there's a root ball. Our television policy does not allow us to go off the right-of-way to make that repair due to it being a vacant property. However, large rain events, the road floods makes it unsafe for the citizens. The next part of the tail ditch policy we want to address is the terms and conditions of city participation under section 2053. We would like to change it from a permanent easement to a temporary construction easement and a right of entry agreement to repair the system and leave the responsibility of future maintenance to the property owner as it is currently. This is another example here. There's a root ball about 20 feet outside the right of way. The pipe runs all the way to the end of the driveway on this property beyond the third vehicle. And it doesn't make sense for the city to get a permanent easement and be required for maintenance at that point just to repair the root ball that's 20 feet outside the right of way. Other proposed changes with this text amendment would be moving from chapter 21 streets and sidewalks into chapter 20, the depositing matter and gutters, excuse me, depositing matter in gutters and drainage ways. The stormwater division currently receives all the complaints when people place items aren't supposed to be in the road, blocking ditches, and it would make more sense for the enforcement action to come from chapter 20 in stormwater instead of chapter 21 streets and sidewalks. We're just want to strike it completely from chapter 21 streets and sidewalks and move it into chapter 20 stormwater We'd also like to edit the public works director to city engineer throughout chapter 20 and stormwater and then The final proposed change would be to edit under Appendix A for the responsibilities of the planning director to remove the floodplain administrator as a duty for the planning director. We updated our floodplain ordinance last fall and changed it to the stormwater program manager as the floodplain administrator, so it's just a minor fix in another section of the code where it's located. Questions?

Any questions for Mr. Moore? Thank you. No one signed up for the public hearing, so we'll call this out of public hearing. Questions, anybody? Are we ready?

One question for the city attorney real fast. In one of the changes that says that after the repairs are done, they shall be the responsibility of the property owner following completion of the repair, which makes sense. By us doing the repairs, do we incur any liability for them being done correctly, incorrectly? Would we have any sort of additional liability by us doing those repairs?

I think that we already are doing some of these repairs. We're just not doing them through a right of entry agreement now, correct? We're doing them through the easement process. Is that correct?

That's correct. We would get the permanent easement.

The liability angle does not change. Perfect.

If that's the case, Mr. Mayor, if there's no other discussion, I move to approve the amendment as presented.

Thank you. We have a motion and a second. Any more discussion? There being none, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you very much. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Moore. Okay. Now we're going to move to item 11, that is conduct a public hearing and consider passing the first reading of the rezoning request ZC26-04, that's Wall Street Havenwood subdivision to rezone from light industrial LI district to R5MF CZ, that's high density multifamily residential as a conditional zoning district. I will open the public hearing.

and mr oh miss martin thank you mayor so this um rezoning before you this evening's from smith douglas homes they are requesting three zone from a light industrial district to conditional high density residential district the site is just under 140 acres and it's inside our city limits in ward six The site is bounded to the east by I-77. There's quite a bit of undeveloped or low residential surrounding the property. Just to the north of the site though is a Microtel and Sitco, and then a little south to the site is the Larkin Residential Subdivision. The site is currently comprised of three single family homes. If this is approved this evening, they would be demolished. The site in its current configuration is predominantly undeveloped with fields and wooded areas. The existing zoning in the area is really a mix of your industrial and business districts along the 77 corridor with residential outside of that. Our 2045 Future Land Use Plan shows this property as complete neighborhood two, meaning that it should be predominantly used for single family homes or a mix of housing types. The configuration should include gridded streets that prioritize walking and neighborhood or community parks. Their proposed concept plan is for 302 total lots, a mix of single family homes and duplexes, or 2.17 dwelling units per acre. From a transportation standpoint, they do meet our fire code, but they're gaining their access entirely through Wall Street. They're showing some gridded streets. They have some future steps to the south and east. sidewalks on both sides of the street, a public greenway along the floodplain. And in their list of conditions, they are saying that they will do a TIA and they'll construct mitigations at impact, meaning that they're not planning to do any of those mitigations before the project begins. They are also providing neighborhood scale parks. The parks in green are really benches and grass play areas, and then they're proposing a central pool with cabana. The Technical Review Committee did review the concept plan. It does meet our minimum requirements for approval. We had a community meeting on January 28th. 11 members of the public attended. They had questions about Wall Street's current condition. It is an NCDOT maintained street, and they had some questions about utilities. As this project started moving through our process, the Iredell Economic Development Commission raised concerns about losing this strategic industrial site. They shared that the site was rezoned from residential to industrial in 2022, which was inconsistent with our land use plan at the time. But during this time, our 2045 land use plan was being drafted. And it's really unclear as to why this land use decision was not carried forward and was not adopted in our current land use plan. So I do want to point out that land use plans are not regulatory documents, they are really meant to be a vision, a broad community vision, and serve as guidance for rezoning decisions. So staff, we initially recommended rezoning to residential because that's what our future land use plan says. But when it went before the planning board, they recommended denial four to one. In part, they thought that this is already a low density area. They didn't want to see high density. Some other comments ranged around the idea that they didn't want to lose this industrial site. So after planning board, the developers did try to make some changes to the proposal, specifically the area shown in yellow, they added some pedestrian connections between the open spaces. They also moved the pool to the entrance of the neighborhood. So I'm wrapping up. Really, it's sort of a question of should this be residential or should it be industrial? When I'm looking at the residential considerations, there in reality is only one way in and out of this subdivision. It's through Wall Street. And so for residential properties, a lot of times, at least in planning world, we want multiple ways for folks to deliver the mail, take children on buses to and from, multiple ways for EMS to get in there. they are just going to be limited to one way in and out. They are showing a Wall Street-Barclay Road stub connection across I-77. Our future land use plan, mobility plan shows that connection, so we're glad they're showing it. There's no transportation dollars for us to publicly build that bridge anywhere in the near horizon. The southern stub extensions, if those cross into that industrial zone piece of property, it really ends up becoming a cul-de-sac situation because there's a floodplain there. Also Larkin, which sits to the south, there's no receiving ends for those connections to connect to. There's also sidewalks and greenways that they're proposing, but they don't connect to anything at this time. The greenway dead ends, the sidewalks are just interior. There's no exterior connections for this project. There's minimal buffering against noise along I-77 for these future residents. So it is my professional opinion that this is premature residential development due to these lack of meaningful connections. On the industrial side, Iredell Economic Development Corporation has shared that this is a strategic industrial site. It does have zoning by right light industrial, which allows a business to come in pretty quickly and work with staff. It has direct and convenient access to I-77 and I-40. And with industrial traffic, Do like that one way and you want to make sure your freight trucks are making the most direct route to the interstate as possible. Additionally, the proposals in the past have connected the industrial road to Lanson Drive. So you could have Wall Street as an emergency access or secondary entrance just for employees, but it wouldn't be limited um in the same way it would as residential property so from a professional standpoint this site is ready for industrial development but to conclude our future land use plan says this is a tier one meaning that it's inside the city limits city utilities and services are available and so it's poised for development be that residential or industrial i'm happy to take any questions thank you miss martin

Any questions?

Mr. Mayor, I have a few questions, if I may. Ms. Martin, let's go back to the actual street, Wall Street, because that's one of my concerns too. Can you tell us, will any improvements be made to Wall Street? I think you said it's an NCDOT street, but can you speak to that?

Right, so only where their property is, they would be adding sidewalk curb and gutter within the site.

Up to the top of the site, ma'am?

Correct.

Okay. Now, Iredell County EDC says this is a premium site for industrial development. So I asked the county economic developers for that history. And several years ago, it appears the farm went under contract with a developer proposing 2 million square feet for an industrial development. Do we know anything, and this may be a question for the city manager, do we know anything about the circumstances of why that transaction didn't close?

I could only speculate. At that time, we were seeing a lot of distribution type of rezonings and two of those, this one and one on the north side of town just did not happen. I don't know if that's a change in the market or what the specifics are, but that's kind of what I guess.

Now across the interstate on the east side of 77 is a Larkin Commerce Park with a master plan of almost a thousand acres for industrial development. Do we know how much of that park has actually been developed to date?

We have, to my recollection, we have one major building that is in the park. They've got a million square foot distribution center for Sherwin-Williams, which was part of their expansion project, just actually finished up.

So we have Sherwin-Williams, and I looked it up on the tax map just to put it into perspective. It's about 85 acres, so just about 85 acres of the 1,000 acres have been developed. Is that fair?

I would say yes. There are other sites that have been developed there. And I might be missing one building out there. But yes, I mean, the majority of it has not been done.

And I know that the city has invested millions of dollars in infrastructure in Larkin. Do you know how long we've been working on, like it's 10 or 15 years, I think, isn't it?

Yeah, it's been somewhere 12 or so years when it transitioned from residential, which has been for 20 plus years, to the Commerce Park.

it's taking a long time mr mayor and this is my point this is kind of my last question we just read the glowing annual report from the iredale county edc about how much industrial development's going on in the county but it just seems like that we just have a disconnect that that industrial development is not coming to statesville and i hope it's something that our economic development committee can look at because i think that if this site were such a premium industrial site, it would have already been developed. But those are my questions. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Any further questions for Ms. Martin? Okay, I believe the applicant is actually here and has a presentation.

Excuse me, Mayor, Council, appreciate your time this evening. Appreciate all the people in attendance this evening as well. It's always good to see everyone interested in what's going on. A lot of great things happening here in Statesville. My name's Adam Warman with Smith Douglas Homes. Got Logan Creech as well. He's our entitlement manager. He's the expert in our in-house projects and making sure that they're designed to high quality, high standards. working on the front end with council, with planning staff, with the state, with all the stakeholders. So he does an extremely good job at what he does. Also wanted to let you know that we do have Katie Bradley from the Timmons Group as well as Elizabeth Richard from Kimley Horn. So they're here to answer any technical questions that may come out this evening. A little bit about Smith Douglas Homes. So we're a southeastern builder, so we're focused in the southeast. We've been around for almost 20 years. I'll wait till the siren's in there. We've been around for about 20 years, but our owner, founder, they've been building homes for 40, 50 plus years in the Southeast. They know how to build a quality home. We know how to build these homes so that they're attainable, that they're within reach. We're very proud and prideful of what we do, and we always try to do what we say we're going to do. We always like to be invited back to places like Statesville because we do a good job. We present a very good product at a price that most of the people in the area can afford. What we do is we allow choice in what we offer. We allow those home buyers to pick their lot, pick their elevation, their colors. It's a la carte. So it's based on their need, it's based on our budget. We don't try to get too fancy. We want them to afford their house. We want them to afford the ability to go up into the downtown area and support your great local businesses. I had a great hamburger this evening just up the street. I enjoyed my time there. I think that certain things get lost here with some of these projects that you start to get housing that's out of reach. and they can't afford to support your local businesses. So you're certainly at a crossroads when it comes to more residential, less residential, or more industrial, or how you're going to bring more jobs to the area. But if you can't find those attainably priced homes for the people with the median household incomes here, that's a huge problem. One of the things that we're also very, very happy about is our quality. And really what we have is we have a third party independent group with our guild quality scores. Year to date, 96% approval rating from our home buyers. I think that's pretty phenomenal when you think about it for any industry. But for us to get a 96% of all our home buyers is pretty impressive. And so we hope that we do get this chance to go through this presentation and explain to you why we do believe that the best use for this site is residential. You also may be wondering what the home price, that's always a question. Well, what are you gonna be selling your homes for? Well, I would fully recommend you go to our website and you can look at all the different homes you can see on the maps and where we're currently building within the Charlotte region. We're just to the west in Catawba, just the east in Salisbury. We're down in Charlotte. We're selling homes starting at $249,000. These are market rate. These are for people that need to afford homes. it's not affordable housing we're not asking for anyone to bring more money in from the government these are just hard-working folks and that's all they can afford on a fifty thousand dollar salary or less uh so really do appreciate the time this evening i'm going to turn it over to logan uh and he's going to go through a little bit more of the details on on the project and i'll be coming back and forth a few more times but i do appreciate your time this evening

So, you know, what we're really discussing tonight is a land use decision for this property. And I am an urban planner by background. and my degree, and I love looking at historic maps. And so this map is from Statesville in 1998. The yellow star is the location of the property in question tonight. And then off to the right of 77, you can see the industrial corridor of Statesville forming, which is strategically forming along US 70 and the Norfolk's railroad southern line on the eastern side of 77. Since 1998, the primarily development pattern of this area has been overwhelmingly residential. A little more. closer to the area here. And so as Erica mentioned, this is in a tier one growth corridor, public services available to the site. It is primed and it's ready to go. But you know, the issue that we are working through is the fact that the 2045 land use plan and the 2005 land use plan both called for this area to be residential. And the significance of this is really clear. that through two separate long-range planning efforts, which means that council authorized the rewriting of the comprehensive plan, there was a consultant hired, there was an extensive public input process, and then that had to come before council to be adopted. And consistently, Statesville has envisioned this area to be residential. for over two generations. 2005, I was a freshman in high school, so I'm 36 now, so, you know, quite a, you know, amount of time with this area being best suited for residential. and so when we look at asking for this rezoning it's not asking for a land use pattern that hasn't been supported through the planning process for the past 20 years this is what the family has you know had as their property this is what the residents in the area have um WANTED AS WELL AND I THINK IT'S APPARENT I'M NOT REALLY SURE IF WE HAVE ANYBODY IN OPPOSITION TONIGHT BUT IN GENERAL FOR 302 UNITS THE PROCESS HAS BEEN PRETTY SMOOTH WITH THE RESIDENTS IN THE AREA AND I THINK THAT'S DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTABLE TO THE FACT THAT AT ONE POINT THEY BELIEVE THAT THEY WERE GOING TO GET AN INDUSTRIAL USE HERE They were not happy about it. They don't care that Wall Street would become a fire access and people can exit out on the Latson Road. They had concerns about noise, light. And this is an impoverished area of Statesville. Your comprehensive land use plan identifies over 40 to 50 percent of the people living in this area living below the poverty line. And so now these people are subject to a potential warehouse because there was a deal that came to the family earlier where they had an opportunity to develop industrial. And so it does not fit with what the people want. It doesn't fit with the comprehensive plan. It does not work with what past leadership for over 20 years has envisioned for this land. And so what we are really asking we're not proposing, you know, we're proposing a residential use that is compatible with the longstanding land use vision for this property, and we're not introducing an incompatible use. And if you look at the zoning map, I mean, The light industrial parcels are what were part of that former deal, which I think the family will expand on, on why it didn't work, but we are in a sea of residential, with Larkin down to the south. We have a new, there is a new subdivision that was approved, Highland Acres, directly to the north. So looking at land use patterns as a planner and staff, I can understand the apprehensiveness to lose an industrial use. That's always something valuable. But looking at the work that has been done by the city over the last 20 odd years, it's directly in conflict with that and that's kind of where i think we are really adamant on why this makes sense for residential use

Touch a little bit again. I think, you know, Iredell EDC has talked about the need for this site to remain as industrial. Well, I think, and they said it was very hard to get anything rezoned to industrial, but just this evening, 481 acres, was rezoned to industrial with no opposition. So that didn't seem very hard. Now in terms of what use should be here, the land use has been proposed as residential. And so again, there's probably 30 plus years of industrial land for you all to work through in the county and through Statesville. There is not the availability of land this close into downtown that can best suit the people to support housing and support your downtown businesses as this location. So if there's a location that wants to be developed for residential, this would be the number one location throughout Statesville. It really should.

And we'll get into giving an overview of the plan. Here's the site plan on Narial at the end of Wall Street. So, key facts about this. We are requesting an R5 MF zoning, which is an extremely high zoning classification. And the reason why we are pursuing that zoning classification is that the duplex product that we have shown on here, they are 51 one-story duplexes around the power easement running through the center of the site kicked us into a higher zoning classification than what we would have typically chosen because R5MF allows 16 dwelling units per acre. We're asking for 2.17, so well shy of that number. The total acreage of the site is 139 acres, 13.95 acres of open space. 200 single-family homes and 51 one-story duplexes. The average lot size, 52 feet by 120. And I know the remoteness has come up, but as a planner myself, you always have to look at this like a puzzle, that while there may be one piece of the puzzle, there now, it will all eventually fill in, and that's the job of staff and with the UDO to ensure that as these puzzle pieces come online that they're working together. And so there was an approved residential subdivision, Highland Acres, directly to the north of us, And when that is constructed, there will be another point of egress through that neighborhood and out to Highway 70. So they are ahead of us. I haven't heard anything lately on their development, but that is coming. and as shown from the staff presentation several stubs to other locations so we have to kind of look at it holistically we can't get connectivity without kind of starting to fill in these other places and when we first got this site underneath contract obviously the remoteness was one of you know, concern of me that that popped out as well. And so we reached out to the Iredell County fire marshal. The assistant fire marshal responded in September of 2025 that they had absolutely no concern with this layout in terms of response times or anything like that. And so as you know, the main cop for fire in Statesville, I think it's important to listen to people that, you know, do this for a living and are meant to protect the general public. The other benefit of this is there's a 12 inch water line on Wall Street that stops and we would be extending water down to the site. So that is almost 2,570 feet of 12 inch ductile iron pipe and enhance actually fire protection down through this area because the people along the Southern portion of Wall Street They have a hydrant almost like a quarter of a mile up the road from them, and they're in unincorporated Statesville as well. So I'm not really sure what that means for their fire protection. But we are, in a sense, enhancing fire protection in this area by extending the water line. The other important thing to note is that we have utilities on the site and a really extensive sewer network, which, you know, this is through a very rural area of Statesville. I don't know the number, I was not around for this, but this represents a very significant investment from the city for growth in this area. And so kind of similar to what Erica stated, the site is really ready and primed for development.

I'm actually gonna go back one slide as well. Just wanted to point out too, in terms of the demand for industrial on this side of 77, we were actually approached by the property owner to the north of us asking if we would buy their property for residential because they've had zero interest for any industrial over the course of the last four plus years. So again, I just wanted to point that out, that there is no demand for that in this location. But however, I've been on this side of the project where the residential was built first, and you're gonna have another project at Highland Acres, just to the northwest. All of a sudden, that pod becomes very desirable for some local shopping, and maybe that food desert on the south side might be able to go away when you have enough rooftops. So again, I just wanted to keep that in mind too.

Lack of grocery store in this area is concerning and that's directly attributable to rooftops and the poverty rate for the area. And this represents a significant investment into the Wall Street corridor that I think could really kind of change this area in Ward 6.

And the way that we operate, we're gonna be here for six plus years. So we're the ones doing this rezoning. We're getting the approvals. We're the ones that are gonna be developing the horizontal onsite, offsite improvements. We're the ones that are gonna be constructing our homes. We're gonna sell our homes. We're gonna warranty our homes. we're gonna be there through the whole process with our home buyers, with all of our trades, with the municipality. So we're here for the long run. We're not someone trying to flip a deal to get it approved and it's never gonna get constructed. This is one that once it's approved, we're gonna go straight to CDs and we're gonna be probably the first project up and out across the five or 6,000 paper lots that have been approved the last three, four plus years. On the screen, this just gives you a representation of what our elevations look like. So it doesn't matter what price point the area is at for our homes. The streetscape, the elevations, they're all attractive. We don't have flat facing boxes. They all have architectural elements to them. We have a monotony rule, so we don't have the same house, the same color next to each other as well. All built into what we do to do the right thing. Also giving you an idea, on the screen you've got one floor plan. I'm only showing four of the 11 different elevation choices. We typically offer at least four choices, but a home buyer could select this floor plan and say, but I like elevation C, and then they can pick all their colors. So they want more brick, less brick, can't afford the brick, can't afford the stone. They can afford what they can afford, and they're gonna get an attractive looking house and a streetscape in the community. So we're proud of our product and the quality that we build. Again, this community focus, we're not a spec builder. We're not going to come in here and build 40, 50 homes and all of a sudden you just have a bunch of houses sitting there and you don't know who's buying them. We've got home buyers that we pre-sell to. They're the ones selecting the options. We don't want to be spec'ing. That's not what we want to do. We want to build semi-customal homes for them to live in, make them their own. that's what we do we're not gonna we're not built to rent we're not here to flip the deal we're here to be an investment and investor in this whole community within statesville within the whole region you know home buyers have an interactive ability to design their house they go in with our sales team they can pick the square footage that meets their needs you know we've got a lot of projects in statesville unfortunately that have been approved in the last five plus years that don't meet the demand of the buyer up here whether it's price point, whether it's product type, lots are too small, you can't get single story living, that owner down, you can't provide that, that project is not gonna move ahead. So we offer those options a la carte, customizations, and as I already mentioned, we're gonna be involved through the entire process on this project. Hopeful that we're gonna find another project that you all want us to work on with you as well in Statesville.

Now, jumping to the traffic, we had completed a scoping study. Too much time has passed from the point where we did this. We're going to have to restart the scoping process over again. But I imagine the intersections to be studied are very similar to what is on the screen. Obviously, looking at US 70 and US 21, the entry and exit off of Wall Street, the on and off exits at 77, and then Opal Street as well for it being a cut through road, get into town. And then from discussions with staff An additional intersection that we commit to studying would be the Wall Street and Monroe Street intersection. I think staff had actually brought up maybe looking at it and we backed off of it, but then obviously it was a concern. from someone on council, so we're adding that back in. If we are approved, we would start the scoping process over again with staff. We have our traffic engineer here, so finally get her kicked off and move forward with that process and as Erica mentioned, one of our conditions, whatever the TIA comes back with, we fully commit to doing the traffic improvements that staff, the NCDOT and city engineering decide. Assigned school capacity, I got to cover everything. I emailed Mark with S, I'm not going to say the last name, I can't pronounce it. Back in January of this year, he's the Chief Operating Officer of Iredell County Schools. These students would be going to East Iredell Elementary, East Iredell Middle School, and Statesville High School. East Iredell Elementary is at 94.6% capacity, so it is getting close. There's capacity at East Iredell Middle School, and Statesville High School is also filling up as well, but they still have about 300 spots left for students. We are proposing amenities on this. We're proposing almost a 3,000 linear feet of greenway expansion. This would be paved. This, I was looking at the path of the greenway. It takes you, almost all the way through like the Greenbrier up to, I can't remember the name of that public park. So while it's just a piece of the puzzle, again, other people will come, they will build a Greenway and one day it will connect. We will be proposing a pool and cabana in this neighborhood, as well as integrated walking paths through the neighborhood to help get down to the Greenway for residents.

So as I mentioned, we've been trying to get into Statesville for quite some time. We've looked at every opportunity that's been approved in the last several years at least three or four times each. We've looked at it continually. The numbers don't work for any of those deals. So if we can't make it work, there's not many other folks that can make a deal work when the costs and the design and the marketability were not designed to what the buyer's real needs are. So that's where there's a misalignment with median household incomes, with demand, with the product types and sizes. And maybe there's a desire in certain areas to create those niche communities, neo-traditional, alley-loaded. Yeah, I get it. In certain locations, you can make that work. one out of every so many projects, and then some can have a small component of it, what I call lipstick, just to make it look the part, but the cost doesn't work with what the median income is for the area. That's not gonna change overnight. We're talking not even decades to get that median income to adjust. And quite honestly, we're probably at the point we're seeing homes are selling at the same price they did in 2021 and 2022 right now. So again, I think there's a misalignment with what people's expectations are for what people think people should make and afford. We're telling you what we're going to be able to do, and we can do this project here with your help and your support. We're going to be able to help 302 families with their first house or their moved down house, something that they're unable to do right now. We're very fortunate to be able to see people buy their first house when they're 50, 60, 70 years old, they're buying their first house from Smith Douglas Homes. And it's an amazing thing that I have to be careful where I am when I see that email come in, but it makes me very emotional to see this situation that people are in that we've made for ourselves all over the region with expectations. So I'm just asking you all to give this its fair shot and consideration for what we're telling you we're able to do for all the people in the community, employees within the city of Statesville, governments, teachers, firefighters, blue collar workers. We all deserve the opportunity and that's what we love to do, is provide that opportunity with choice. So we're asking for you to give that the proper consideration if you can do that for us. We do have some folks here that may want to speak in support. Before us ending, I did want to ask anybody that is here in support to stand up. I'd appreciate it. I don't know how many people are here. I'd like to see how many that might be. Appreciate that. Thank you very much.

Okay. Are there any questions for the applicants?

Mayor, I have a few questions, if I may. Please. You had mentioned that you're not building anything to rent. Can you explain how your duplexes are gonna operate?

So the duplexes, they're two units, and let me see if I can go back to one of those. So in the top left, you'll see an image. That's what a duplex would look like. We've got two different versions. One's a little bit bigger, one's a little bit smaller. It's two units side by side. Those were gonna have the ability to be maintained as part of the HOA. So those will be maintained part of their monthly fee. The single family detached will not be maintained through the HOA. So there's a little bit added cost for that full maintenance, but those will be maintained. I don't know if that answers your question.

Are they going to be fee simple?

Yes, they're fee simple. It's all fee simple. We are not in the business to create opportunities for Wall Street and investors. Now, occasionally people are going to want to rent their house. They have a situation that they need to rent. They had to move. We're not going to restrict that, but we do generally put some restrictions as well. So we do cap the communities to a certain degree. Can you explain how the HOA is going to manage that briefly? They've got to submit anytime there's a rental. They have to submit that to the HOA. So the HOA is going to property manage the duplexes? They don't manage the duplexes. They manage the quantity of those if there's a cap put in place.

Covenants and restrictions, I think our blanket is 10% maximum rental units. And so whenever somebody wants to rent, they have to submit that application to the HOA. If the 10% cap of rental units in the neighborhood has been met, that person will not be able to rent their home.

So what percentage is the duplexes of the overall development?

It was 52 duplexes, 150.

So 52, that's the lots, so times two. What percentage? I mean, what's the percentage? That's 30%. 30%? 30% are duplex units. So on a duplex lot, you've got two units.

Right. So the overall concern would be if the HOA is going to manage that and you're already 32% rental.

No, those are not rentals. rentals are only if if our goal is not to be selling for rentals our goal is to be selling to home ownership home buyers people that want to be living there they're usually people that are on a limited income they're moving from a certain area they've sold their house or it's an individual it could be they could have ptsd former military and you don't need a big house

right so it's our goal is home ownership it's not for rental ships so the duplexes will be sold as fee simple be simple be simple 10 cap on rental in the entire neighborhood i understand can you maintain their landscaping since they're kind of multi-family which is why we're in the zoning classification okay i understand can you put up your um site plan as it reflects go back one as it reflects the uh development to your north Oh, the proposed. Which one was that?

That was the fire egress one. Did I miss it? Yeah. This one.

That one. Can you walk me through your vision of the Greenway as it's going to connect to other developments with this?

So we do have a connection to them. It's down near the bottom. They they kind of I don't think they're on the official master plan. I think they have their own just internal trail network that we are tying into right at the property line near the BMP.

And then also through the south, to the south.

And then that is just going to be a stub for now.

Can you talk about the timing of the pool and when that would be developed?

Typically, we try and develop it in the first phase. It attracts buyers and it sets a faster sales phase. You know, as much of the community as we can have done and presentable when people are coming to look at homes ultimately helps us. So we typically will have it done kind of in the middle of the first phase. Obviously, it's a huge expenditure. We'd like to make a little bit from the initial investment for the land, and definitely by the second phase, it would be complete. And can you define the phases? We haven't technically got into any design phase yet for this project. I think we've kind of toyed with it a little bit, but that will be driven by utilities, how the phasing plan would work internally.

You talked about traffic scoping. You also talked a little bit about TIA. Would you be willing to complete the TIA and required improvements prior to construction?

Yes.

Well, we typically do it during the land development portion.

because we would have our contractors mobilize, the asphalt company already mobilize to do work, and they would simultaneously be working on the road improvements.

Before we go vertical, all those things usually get done.

Yeah, I think, yeah, I think to your point, I think we can make the condition that, I mean, prior to going vertical, yes, these traffic improvements will be put in place. Mayor, thank you. That's all the questions I have.

Okay. Any further questions?

Yes, I have some questions.

Go ahead, please.

So I'm looking at your website. So is it fair to say that your homes will range between $259,000 to $317,000? Is that about the price point, give or take?

Probably. It could be a little less. It could be a little bit more. Okay. Depending on the home sizes, square footages, but yes.

Okay. And I ask that question because you keep, It resonates in my brain about you keep talking about this impoverished neighborhood. That's my ward. I'm going to let you know it bothered me, but I'm going to let you live on that one. Yeah, because the people that stood up, no offense, but I've been on Wall Street and never seen you, okay? So just to my point, I know that area and the Highland Acres area, I can tell you, when I first came on to council, we approved that project. That project is stalled, okay? for whatever reason, the economy sucks right now. And if you're buying a house, you're paying an astronomical amount of money. So I guess that's one of my concerns. My next concern is that after we had a meeting on Thursday, I did call NCDOT. Anybody knows anything about this? They are at least five to 10 years behind on fixing that street, even getting to start to pave. So, of course, the accessibility is going to be an issue with me because I just don't feel comfortable with you having a neighborhood that big and you only have one way to get in and out. And Highland Acres Project is off the table because that could have been an access point, possibly. even with industrial, and they will tell you I have issues with that just because of the nature of that neighborhood. So don't be offended, I'm just kind of in between both. But I guess another thing that I'm noticing is that if you have a neighborhood and you're having all these families, you got a pool, you got a cabana, you have all this open space, what about a playground?

It's usually one of the amenities that we we haven't detailed out what those open spaces will be, but it usually gets flushed out and it usually will include the playground.

Back to David's point about the Greenway. So is the Greenway, I guess, is it going to be a northern portion of Wall Street? Common space, is it going to loop? Is it going to be pavement? Is it going to be an actual greenway? Is it going to be pavement? Is it going to be a combination of both?

The Red Trail is a natural surface path, and that's throughout the Carolinas. Is that a reason?

So that's one you're talking about. It's going to connect.

I'm just asking for what the type of trail is. Some of that hasn't been detailed out as well just yet. Again, we're showing it on the plan in two dimensions. We've got to get into three dimensions. That's a whole other thing that no one is looking at for industrial. You need a flat site or you're going to have very tall retaining walls. This site has a lot of topography. You're going to have a lot of retaining walls to make something work on a site. So in terms of the trails, the trails have not been detailed out yet. We do have multiple connectivity points that will loop. The sidewalks are part of the connectivity. So in theory, there are thousands and thousands of linear feet of trails and walking areas throughout our community.

it going to connect to anything from here to downtown we can't control that oh no that's not what i'm talking about oh i understand it about don't get me wrong i understand what you're talking about i'm specifically erica help me out i'm speaking of greenways correct that was one of the things that was one of my questions i'm talking about the greenway so in order for i guess my question is you know He's talking about, is it going to connect to another greenway? Is it going to? Because I'm trying to visualize it in my mind about Wall Street, Gardner-Bengal, Monroe Street. How is that possible?

So we do have a large greenway plan in which multiple tracks connect. But as it sits today, there's no connections. And the Highlands Project, which they reference connecting to, their conditions specifically state they will not build any bridges. So even if there's a greenway on the other side, they have said that they're not committing to actually make that connection.

Okay. Thank you. That was my clarification. Okay. Thank you.

I have a statement, a question. When you're doing Wall Street and you're coming past Wicca Street and the original Wall Street that I am familiar with in that community, right there with a micro hotel, okay? That residence down there, it's just like they're obsolete. And how is this new way of building homes going to affect the streets and everything that's connected with the old community?

Based on our community meeting where we showed this plan, none of them cared because they don't want an industrial warehouse coming at the end of Wall Street. So we can speculate what we think, but based on the lack of public outcry, I think it's pretty apparent from the residents in Wall Street that this is what they support.

I mean, I'll add to that what we usually see when you add more residential near existing older neighborhoods is some of those people do wanna move to a lower maintenance house and that opens up some of the existing housing stock at a lower price and or the ability for that to be renovated and all of a sudden now those homes start to get improved. So that's the real path is those houses that are down Wall Street and down some of the other side streets will start to be resold, they will be renovated, they will have a updated streetscape at some point. That's typically what we do see.

Wall Street, Hope Street, Hull Street, and all the way down to Sherrill's. I used to live there. So seeing that community as a child and seeing it as an adult, it's just like it's a community that's stuck in time. And I was concerned about your new growth, how it would affect the old existing, because some of the people that's down there, they are homeowners. I can't tell you how many are rental property, but I did not want to see the fact that the new development, if it does come, you know, they're already in a struggle because it is probably until you get down to the Purdue family down in the way down to end of Wall Street and you on another whole whole section of people. So I just wanted to see how all this was gonna come together as one community. If you all are planning on doing what you're doing and get passed, I didn't wanna see this community left out because you will be taking, I mean, people sell their homes or whatever it may be. I don't know how many rental parks, I don't know how many people would sell. But I do know the fact that they're gonna be concerned too about the, everything that's surrounding them and including their ins and outs. And you said you talked to them. You talked to the people there or you talked to the group that's here now.

Did you talk to the families that's over- I went beyond state statute and sent out a 300 radius on GIS and got people over on McLaughlin, AME Church. I got everybody that's not even directly off of Wall Street, the entire Wall Street community all the way up there invited to the community meeting. A lot of them couldn't make it. It was back when we had the snowstorm back in January, but a lot of them called me. And I had a lot of personal conversations with them online. Obviously, they did have similar concerns with Wall Street being narrow, the condition of it. But ultimately, like I said, we're the pitchforks and the torches here tonight for a 302 unit residential development if the people on Wall Street were against it.

Our hope is that there will be existing residents that will see this as an opportunity for them to take a different step. And that's the part of the homeownership experience that we really cherish, is seeing them take that step, find that opportunity. They might be renting, they may own that house, but it may cost them more to have maintenance on that for electric and heating and cooling, or maybe they didn't have air conditioning. and now they get a house that's super efficient. I mean, that's, we see a lot of that. And again, my only hope is that they have that opportunity and then someone else has an opportunity to afford their house and make it their own or it becomes renovated or it might need to be replaced and built into a new home on that lot.

The concern I have is that most of those, the majority of the homeowners over there are seniors. And a lot of the people over there, I'm not saying that they understand everything. I'm not saying anything. You said you talk with them. But I can drive by there. And they probably would say they don't even know anything about it. The people are on McLaughlin Street. I can ask them, they're getting information and they said, I don't know anything about it. We just see, we just hear. So yes, I am concerned about whether the people really understand what's actually going on with this project because it is the only livelihood that they have. And for being in their age, they are not 20, 30, 40 year old family members. These are seniors. and most of them have disabilities, and I have a concern for their welfare as well.

Yeah, my mother-in-law is disabled. She can't walk. I have concern for her. We're not in the business to have people relocated from their house in the existing communities. We're not forcing anyone out. The goal is that they're not going to be... I don't know if that's the questioning here, if we're going to be forcing people out of their existing homes. That's not what this is about. This is about opportunity for homeownership and the ability to choose and have choice. It's not about displacing existing residents that are unlimited and fixed incomes. That's not the business that any of us are in. Not anyone sitting at this table, not anyone in this audience, not any of us standing here. That's not our goal. And so I hope that we're letting you know how we feel. That is not our goal. We don't expect that to be an issue. We've not seen that be a situation in any of the projects we've done. We've done thousands of projects across the southeast. We don't have that sort of an issue that pops up. So I do understand your concern. And to the degree that we can help address that, we will. But our goal is not to make people have to move. That typically does not happen.

Thank you on the experience around this table because we have many people, several people around here that is in the real estate and they understand the concept of the language, you know, a little bit, maybe a little bit better than I do. So I really wanted to know the total impact that it's going to have on the residents and the good that comes out of this plan and i hope that we be transparent in our decision making what we're talking about because we are talking about changing the old community with this new development thank you i have a question for either adam or logan or possibly miss martin when we when when council

I wouldn't hear at the time, but when Council annexed this property into the city, was it done as a satellite annexation? And are there properties on Wall Street between Gardner-Bagnall and this property that are not part of the city right now?

It was annexed well before my time, but everywhere in the dark orange is essentially inside the city limits. So, I mean, if there's a little pocket of ETJ, I guess there's a little pocket of ETJ with some of those houses, but I don't know the time as to when the site was annexed.

No, that kind of, I'm somewhat familiar because I had some banking deals down there and I just wondered because that, um during this time might enable those people to tie into with aging septics and whales and whatever might be able to tie in okay thank you thank you so much are there additional questions for the applicants go ahead christy

So with the property to the south of you still being zoned, light industrial, to the property south of you still being rezoned, or still being zoned light industrial, if we were to move forward and rezone you residential, I look at your subdivision layout there, and I do not see an access point. I do see an access point to the south, but I don't see a clear access to where if that property did develop into light industrial. We've got 250 residential units here, which is, let's just say 500 cars, two cars per resident. 500 cars twice a day. So we've got quite a bit of traffic on Wall Street. But now on top of that, if this property to the south of you develops into a light industrial, then those trucks, because there is no access, those trucks are gonna have to go through your subdivision to get to that light industrial property.

They'll be back here. No one will buy that property, industrial.

So in essence, we would be isolating that landowner.

They've already reached out to us and they're working with different development groups that are interested in residential housing as well. They're waiting to see how this goes.

That's my concern.

Any further questions?

I guess, you know, to follow up, Councilwoman Allison, so if, you know, you feel like the people along that street have not been notified, what would be effective? Would it be effective for me to go door to door?

and talk to these people with the land, do what you have to do to get there. I really want them to say they have been represented. And when you come back and talk to me or you talk to the county, I mean, council body.

Yeah.

Then if you say I'm knocked on 150 doors, which I know is probably about 40 houses there, you know, on each street, it might be two or three houses on down the road. So it wouldn't take you all day to do it. No, but I appreciate you doing it. I mean, for us, I'm concerned because I then I feel like that we're getting the right answer for the people.

Okay, we have several folks that have signed up to participate in the public hearing. Thank you, gentlemen. You may be called upon.

Thank you all.

First is Patty Ralston. And after Patty speaks, Mr. Neil Pardue and then Boyce Sherrill and Jason Smith.

Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Patty Ralston, and I'm here tonight on behalf of my mother, Evelyn Cheryl, who's right back there, and our family, Bill Stand, Mama's family. Mom's home property is also included in the rezoning request. Mom, who we lovingly call Memo, will turn 94 next week. For her, the property is not simply a piece of land on a map or a parcel number on an application. It is the family farm, and it represents a lifetime of memories, hard work, and sacrifice. At 94, Memo has one simple wish. She wants to see the farm sold during her lifetime. We currently have the property under contract, but for that sale to move forward, the property needs to be rezoned for residential use. This has already been a difficult process for our family. A previous potential buyer left us feeling as though we had been duped. And after going through that experience, we are incredibly grateful to have another opportunity to sell the property. There is also a very practical concern. When the farm was annexed, it lost the farm tax credit. Unfortunately, mom's property was included in the annexation. As a result, the tax burden on mom has increased significantly. This has become a heavy burden to carry, particularly on the property she is actively trying to sell. We understand that council must consider zoning decisions carefully and think about the future of the community. We respect that responsibility. But we also ask you to consider the person behind this request. For her, there may not be another 5 or 10 years to wait for the right circumstances. At 94, time has a different meaning. Approving this rezoning would allow Evelyn to see something that matters deeply to her finally resolved. It would give her the peace of knowing that the farm has been sold and this chapter of her life has been settled while she's still here to see it. On behalf of our mother, Evelyn Sherrill, we respectfully ask you to approve the rezoning request. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you, Ms. Robinson. Mr. Pardue.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Council. My name is Neil Pardue. I'm representing the William R. Pardue property, which is part of the Sherrill Air Estate. My dad's property is landlocked within the farm, so an individual sale is just about impossible. After many years of negotiation with several potential buyers, we have an offer to sell the entire property, the farm, and two homes. On a more personal note, it was my parents' wish to see this property sold, since the farm cannot be divided equally. As a lifelong member of Stateville and owner of a local well drilling company, I've seen many changes in Stateville, as I'm sure all of you have, especially in the housing. Housing is needed. There is quite a bit, I forget, I heard over 200,000 square feet of industrial property that is vacant. The need is not there. Housing is. The availability of potential residential properties is still one of the building contractors' major hurdles. There is no property for housing to go. The need for housing is definitely there. That being said, I respectfully ask the council to approve the request for the rezoning. Thank you for your time and your consideration. Have a good evening.

Thank you, Mr. Pardue. Boyd Sherrill.

Mr. Mayor, City Council, my name is Boyce Sherrill. I'm an Allen State resident, but I believe in Iredell County. Grew up here. I'm a landowner in Iredell County, and I'm representing the J.N. Sherrill heirs in this proposition. I'm an engineer. And I so wanted to get involved in the back and forth on the history of this a little bit ago that I just had to pull myself down. But our family was involved in a contract initiated in 2021, signed in 2022, when the prospective buyer was trying to buy land from Garner-Bagnall all the way to Third Creek. As a condition of that purchase, as a condition of the contract, they requested that land, which was listed as agriculture at the time, to be rezoned to light industrial and be annexed in the city. So that's how we got annexed. It was the whole group, literally from Garner-Bagnall to Third Creek. So with... with excess vacant industrial capacity in Statesville. My cousin, I think, mentioned a couple hundred thousand. I think there are several million square feet of vacant warehousing in Statesville and Iredell County. And this area topographically would be a nightmare for a grading for industrial site. The rolling hills would be more conducive to residential, which is, fits your future land use plan. Now, our family is not at all interested in disrupting the neighbors of Wall Street, okay? And this community, which is on land beyond those existing homes, I think it's an opportunity for the council to get involved in helping improve that. Okay, if that's a concern, if there's stuff that, other things that maybe could be done to improve the residents' life in Wall Street, I think that would be something we would be supportive of as well. We stand here today, we have revenue from billboards, we have revenue for farming, to stay afloat. Somebody has to write a personal check every year until the next check comes in for us. So we are underwater, essentially, as an operation. And as our family continues to grow and spread out, Neil mentioned, there's no way that we can divide our property amongst the heirs of our family. So we strongly support this project. Smith Douglas, I think, has made a really nice job in how they've laid out this property with connections to adjacent property owners. That was a consideration, but we really support this project. We respectfully request your support of this rezoning and approval of the Smith Douglas project as well. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Sherrill.

Mr. Mayor.

Is Jason Smith still here?

Oh, I'm sorry.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name's Jason Smith. My address is 366 Wild Fern Lane, Reedville, North Carolina. Excuse me, I'm a commercial real estate broker with NAI Piedmont Triad, and I'm here on behalf of my clients who, when you look in the image in the very far southeast corner, that stub would go to my client's land who owned about 42 acres of that front 77. And when I got involved, my firm's specialty is industrial real estate. And when my client told me the history of the track and the other five parcels, my focus for the past year has been on industrial development. And if I'm being honest with you, to my knowledge for the past year, I've had zero phone calls for this parcel, for not necessarily the Sherrill's parcel, but for my parcel as far as bringing back life to these six parcels for the industrial track. and trying to sell that to an industrial developer. Excuse me, when I was struggling in my efforts for marketing it to industrial developers, I also reached out to Iredell Economic Development and I asked them for help and their support in bringing the industrial back to life. And I was told that they have too many projects that are ahead of this one. And so they were not able to support me in bringing industrial back to this property. So I'm here on behalf of my clients in support of the rezoning, as well as our 42 acres, it actually is under contract. And so we would also need this to be rezoned for the infrastructure to bring infrastructure and transportation down to our track, which would allow development to our track. And I can only imagine that if the rezoning doesn't go through, my buyers probably would cancel just given the lack of interest in industrial. And if it's not gonna get rezoned to residential, then I don't see any timeline of actual infrastructure coming to our track. So we're here in support of the rezoning. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you everyone for speaking tonight. I will call us out of public hearing. Okay, folks.

Yes, you may. Can I say one thing? I'm all about people being able to sell their property how they want to. I think, and this is probably to you guys, Smith Douglas Homes, I guess my question, and I guess to planning as well, I think everybody's main issue, well, I don't speak for everybody, but the main issue is accessibility, the in and out of that street. And I feel like 302 lots, that's a lot for that little, that main fairway. And I think the issue is the damage it's gonna do to the road and the time the state is gonna be able to come in to fix the road. So I guess my question to you guys, would you guys be willing to, I guess, work with planning to, I guess, work on some of the accessibility until they are able to get that street up to where you can have a in and out two-way access?

Go ahead, David.

Lisa, maybe we could direct that question to the planning department of how they envision that working with the TIA. Thank you.

I think part of the issue is that there's the floodplain, so unless a developer is willing to cross the floodplain, this will end up being a cul-de-sac or one entry only situation.

Could Wall Street be improved?

Sure, it could be improved.

That's not part of this plan though. And to make it worse, we now know that the property owner to the south of it also wants to put a 40 some acre development down there, which if we just use the same density calculation, we're talking another 80 homes, another 160 plus trips a day. in addition to the 302 units in this neighborhood, and while it's dormant now, in addition to the other 294 units that are authorized in that other development. I know y'all have all driven down Wall Street, same as I have, and we know that that road is not capable of sustaining this. And these developers are not going to repave the entirety of Wall Street, and all of that traffic will go out through that one intersection at Wall Street and Garner-Bagnall. I know that y'all also get a fair bit of concern from the citizens talking about traffic and how we don't plan out how these developments are done in accordance with the capabilities of the road. This is a textbook example, y'all, of us putting too much stuff down a road that can't handle it. So set aside the conversation of whether we prefer this to be an industrial area that provides jobs or a residential area. This is just not capable of handling this volume of traffic. And when eventually these get built and these get approved, we will be the ones catching phone calls from everybody who lives down that street talking about how they are just unable to negotiate that road and the people who have lived there their entire life will be the ones that suffer the most for it because they're going to be swamped and inundated with all this traffic and you know to go on your comment their homes will be worth pieces and parts so that flippers can pick them up at the end of the day and auction them off to the lowest bidder so do we want to do that to wall street i don't think the answer is yes

My concerns with that is if you put a light industrial there, you're going to have traffic regardless. You're going to have traffic with the trucks coming in and out. They got to deal with that. So you're playing one with the other, and they both can be congested. They both can be a controversy. And the families can call you about that. There's a truck in here, and I can't sleep. Well, the roads need to be fixed. And then we have to try to find somebody who fixed the roads. I think that if we're going to do this, we need to look at the whole issue and not just leave the industrial what what weight they would have in the neighborhood what weight they would carry with the with the families and the elderly and everybody wants to get in and out You know, so I'm concerned about that too. So I don't want to look like a house because like you said before, we done made a lot of decisions about zoning and we still ain't got the roads fixed. All these other people can come back on us. You just got here. We don't want that fight like that because they can come back and say, look what you did for this one. But look at what we're going through. We're still having problems. So help me understand the weight that we're talking about here with the light industrial and then residential. People need a place to stay. People need to look out their window and they can feel comfortable. They are the ones paying the taxes. They're the ones that are concerned. And when this gentleman said that you are looking and you said you would not leave out the people that's been a family member there for all these years and that you will work with them now is that still the table that you would talk work with them and you will go see them and give them some type of insight you think an industry is going to do that you think they're going to go in there and tell this uh supervisor go out there and come to the people and see and see how they feel see what we can do for them they're not going to do that but we have an opportunity to do something that's greater than that and that's what i'm concerned about

Mr. Mayor.

If I'm not making sense, it's okay, because you're not making sense to me either.

I've got a question for Ms. Martin, if I may. So when the developer applies for his driveway permit, he'll deal with the regulator at the state level, which will be NCDOT, is that right?

For the, on Wall Street, the internal roads would probably be city streets.

But to get his driveway permit, isn't Wall Street an NCDOT street?

It is, but before that would be the TIA with the Mitigations Measure Agreement, and that's where the DOT and the city would work through what construction elements are required.

And can you talk to some of those construction elements to us once the TIA is complete, what that would look like?

Yeah, so we don't have it yet. As I said, they're just in scoping. So it would come back and it would say things like they need to put in a left turn lane at this intersection or the intersection needs to be upgraded to include a signal. And then the mitigations would tie a timing trigger to each improvement.

So when the developer goes through that process, then those traffic concerns will be identified and the developer will be responsible for making those improvements, as I understand. Is that right?

That's correct. Right now they're saying that they won't install them until they're triggered. Which is fine. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. Mr. Mayor, just to move this along, here we have a landowner and many of his descendants and relative that wants to sell his farm. His farm has been annexed into the city. They've been paying city taxes for years. uh the family is contracted with a developer that's brought us a site plan that's consistent with our city ordinance it's consistent with the city's land development plan it's an infill site with access to city water sewer and electricity it's super close to our new brand new fire station one in downtown and i think a lot of these rooftops will help bring in a grocery store to south side of statesville so for all those reasons mr mayor i support the rezoning, I'd like to make a motion to support it. Thank you. And I second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Mr. Jones?

James, will you read the consistency statement? I don't have it in front of me. Go to page 200.

Yeah, I'd be happy to do that. Thank you.

Thank you, David. I missed that.

Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor, the zoning amendment is hereby approved with the agreed upon conditions is consistent with the city's 2045 land use plan, specifically complete neighborhood two are sites that are predominantly residential neighborhoods in close proximity to commercial centers and services. The rezoning is reasonable and in the public interest because the houses will be

because the houses will provide consent convenient access to i-77 and support existing commercial use in the area thank you thank you okay any further discussion yes i'd just like to make a few comments please i support the request uh this is probably one of the most difficult ones we've had to do in a couple years um And one of the main reasons I do support it is I understand this property was previously under contract and fell out for industrial. I fully respect property owner's rights. And typically I will always vote in favor of property owner rights in in rezoning requests and I understand that our land use plan is a strategic document and it is a starting point for change it is not a perfect document by any shape or means and one that I would like this council to review annually because it's extremely complicated and has mistakes in it as we have seen our planning board was split and and I'm quite sure this council will be split somewhat. However, we have a property owners who have tried to follow the rule and the guidance and that's what the plan is. It provides guidance. It provides guidance to developers and it also provides guidance to property owners. And inside this request is a development that's in our tier one area. The mere fact that it's got shortfalls coming in and out egress-wise is not the property owner's fault. However, a developer is gonna be charged to make mitigating factors that will enhance access to the property. We have, in the past, this council has made zoning for residential in high industrial areas, specifically off Gardner-Bagnall. because it was the property owner's request. And that's what we did. So I, when I vote, when this comes to vote, I support the request

would contradict the member and say that when the planning board saw they really weren't split it was four to one and that's coming from a planning board that has never seen a sprawling subdivision they were willing to say no to even they identified that this was an inappropriate use of this property and an inappropriate location for it you take a 140-acre piece of property next to another 40 acres that are currently zoned light industrial, and you throw that into the wind because at the end of the day, the land use plan is really no more than pretty colors on a hypothetical map. This property is zoned, which is a legal reality to be industrial, and we should stand by that. We know for a fact that all of us value economic development. Very rarely do you have 180 acres put together that are right next to an exit, that are already zoned industrial and are ready with utilities. Despite the hearsay presented by other people tonight, Idle EDC came and spoke to us and told us that they view this property as a strategic industrial site. Just because they don't have somebody lined up yesterday doesn't mean that it's not a valuable piece of property. Not never, just not now. Therefore, in accordance with the people who advise us every day, not who just show up asking for us to approve their project, I think we should side with them. The people we appointed to the planning board to advise us, I think we should side with them. And I think we should side with the previous council vote that said this is an important industrial corridor. So I would urge you to, when we vote on this motion, vote against it. Side with the planning board, side with the planning staffs EARNEST DESIRE, THEY SHOW OPTION ONE BECAUSE IT MEETS CRITERIA, NOT BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE IT TO BE RIGHT. SO SIDE WITH EVERYBODY IN THE ROOM WHO YOU WORK WITH ON A DAILY BASIS, KNOW AND TRUST TO GIVE YOU GOOD ADVICE, AND VOTE AGAINST THIS MOTION.

I'D LIKE TO ADD TO HIS STATEMENT, AND I'M ALSO VOTING FOR THIS ZONE TO PASS, AND I'LL TELL YOU WHY. BEEN ON THIS BOARD FOR GOING ON NINE YEARS, AND I HAVE SEEN THINGS CHANGE AROUND. I have voted and I respect the planning board, but I also voted against the planning board. It was one of the best decisions and it worked out. We are individuals and we have to make that conscious decision. Now what we do tonight is up to each individual, but when someone tells you anybody can make mistakes, we need to listen more and understand the core value of what we're actually doing as a council person. And because I stuck to what I believed in and the right thing to do, it worked out for that benefit. Now, I've listened to both of my counselors, and I have to say the argument that I chose to go with is the argument that shows fact, it shows change, it shows transparency, and it shows that we're not perfect. But I don't think we should start tonight trying to be perfect. I think tonight we need to look at this realistically and hear the voice of the people and know their concerns, because right now we're talking about homes that will be and be supported for the greater good. This is my choice. This is my words. And I vote for this change to be set to be zoned in.

Thank you so much, Doris. Any other discussion? thank you okay any further discussion okay I think obviously this may be split so we'll need to vote by hand please so if you are in favor of James's motion to move forward with allowing the rezoning to residential please raise your hand okay and if you're against the motion please raise your hand i believe that the right thing to do here is to allow this property to be rezoned so i vote in favor of the motion Thank you very much. We have just a little more business to do. Doug and friends, if you want to go ahead and leave, you can or you're welcome to stay to the bitter end. Thank you, folks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hey, Amy. Hi, nice to see you.

Thank you. It's so nice to know you.

Yes, ma'am, congratulations. Thank you. Okay, folks, we still have business to do, please.

Okay folks, we're going to call back in.

Thank you everybody.

We're going to move forward.

Item 12 is conduct a public hearing and consider passing the first reading of rezoning request ZC26-09 Moose Club Road Novel Holdings Subdivision filed by Mr. Shane Siegel of North State Development for approximately 19 acres located along Moose Club Road. I will open the public hearing. Mr. Kirkendall.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council, and good evening. All right, so yes, the request for this rezoning is to rezone the parcel from Troutman and Iredell County to a City of Statesville single-family zoning, which is the R8 conditional. Here is a view of the property from Moose Club Road. It is a conditional request, meaning it will be tied to the concept plan, which is in your packet. We'll see that in a moment. They had a community meeting back at the end of May. Two attendees had expressed their concerns over the landscape buffering requirements and water pressure. Here is the zoning map, and so it is just directly to the west is the Wildwood subdivision, which is City of Statesville R8, and then to the south is the Wakefield development, and then everywhere else is either Troutman RS or County Agricultural. Dr. Vaughn has provided a better water and sewer map for you all. So both water and sewer are available with lines in the adjacent subdivision. If the development through Wakefield goes through, they will have an opportunity to connect to the larger line in the future. When we look at our 2045 land development plan, this area was included to be shown as complete neighborhood two, which indeed includes residential uses. They are looking at annexing the property. So here is the concept plan. You can see the Siegel family lots. They have committed to a walking trail and some open space. Other amenities are still yet to be determined. The technical review committee has reviewed for compliance with the code and it does meet the space. So they actually provided almost seven acres of open space where they required just only two. Part of the conditions of the rezonings, they have agreed to dedicate 40 feet of the right of way from the center line of Moose Club Road, which is in our mobility plan. The concept plan and its submittals will include the conditions as part of the ordinance. Development will include a maximum of 56 homes and a 10% reduction may occur and staff can approve that. And again, the 2045 land development plan is supportive of these parcels being rezoned as it calls for this area to be complete neighborhood two and utilities are available. Therefore, both staff and the planning board recommend option one, which is approval. The applicant is here and does have a presentation.

Wonderful.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. I appreciate your time tonight. I'm Robert Irvin from Irvin Law Group in Cornelius, North Carolina, and I'm here to represent the applicant tonight. That is North State Development. Let's see here. Here we go. So here's our project team. We have North State Development. We have Seaman Whiteside doing the civil engineering and then Irvin Law Group. Matt, thanks for a great job. Appreciate your help and staff doing a good job of giving us feedback and providing us recommendations on how to make this plan fit a little bit better into the surrounding area. And, you know, Matt's covered the site location. It's along Moose Club Road. It's within the planning area, and it is part of that Troutman Statesville annexation agreement along Moose Club Road. So project info. See here, it's the rezoning from from county zoning district into states giving annex in the Statesville. And right now the plan has 45 single lots on it. There has been some changes to the site plan based on some of the buffer issues with some of the stream and then along some of the adjoining neighborhoods and so there has been some uh changes to the project but i think that that has really just made the project better and fits a little fits you know more um compatibly with the area uh here's the area again part of the 2040 plan the first step in this process was to look at the guiding documents and that was the zoning ordinance that was the land use plan that was the you know, even the county's land use plans just to kind of see what would fit here in this area. And like Matt said, it was included in this complete neighborhood to area and in that complete area to area complete neighborhood to area some of the proposed densities are around two to three units. So this project as it sits right now is around 2.4 units per acre. So it fits nicely with the 2040 plan and with the adjacent Wildwood development. And some of those 2040 plan highlights that this plan meets it's, you know, this is a traditional neighborhood with a modified grid network. It has nice pedestrian access that connects the residents. It not only connects and provides the residents of this development with nice you know activated pedestrian areas in open space but it actually connects in with the um wildwood property and allows some of those neighbors to walk come into this property and you know enjoy some of the amenities enjoy some of the walking and enjoy some of the open spaces and that was one of the things that when we went to our community meeting we spoke to there was two attendees and they mentioned that a lot of the residents from wildwood already go into this vacant site over to where the pond is and they use the pond. So what the applicant's gonna do is put in this walking trail and add a soft surface, making it a little more manicured, a little safer, a little easier for people to walk around and use it and enjoy that amenity. Here is that updated site plan. You can see a lot of the green space. There is a big tree save area to the back of the property. And you can see, Some of the improvements were also along Moose Club Road where they enhanced some of that frontage landscaping to provide a better, more inviting access. So it's not just a lot of houses up on the street. It provides a little bit more of a gateway of an entryway into the area. And as you can see the lot sizes, it's not all one lot. The lot sizes will be from around 6,000 square feet to 8,000 square feet. That's just the lot size. The actual home sizes, they're still working on getting exactly what those floor plans will be, but they'll be similar to some of the other residential projects in the area. And like Matt said, we're still working on some of the open space designs, but these are just kind of what you would see in this pond area. You wouldn't necessarily see a concrete impervious surface like that around the pond. It would be more of a soft scape. So that would be more, think like gravel or wood chips or something like that. And that would be maintained by the HOA too as part of this agreement and as part of one of the conditions. So don't want to take up any more of your time, but we are here to answer any questions and go over anything in any more detail that you might have. So thank you very much.

Okay, folks, any questions for Robert or Mr. Kuykendall?

I have two questions.

Please.

What is the lot widths?

The lot widths, let me tell you exactly what those are. They vary, so it's not going to be just one.

Are they 50?

I do believe they are at least 50 and in some cases up to 70, depending on the orientation of some of those like corner lots and things. But I do want to say I will get that number for you right now, but I'm just looking at the plan to see if I can give you a specific number because I don't want to tell you something that's incorrect.

and it may be off the top of your head, you might know this answer. At what point in time does the HOA take over after a certain percentage of the development? Do you know what that percentage is?

I don't know what that certain percentage would be, but it would be a majority of the homes, at least I would think. A lot of times the development would be almost fully developed before the developer turns it over to the, each way in this case, or turns it over to the homeowners, yeah. Thank you.

Further questions? All right. I don't believe anyone signed up to speak. public hearing in this case, so I will call this out of public hearing.

Thank you all very much.

Mayor, I move that the zoning amendment be approved with the agreed upon conditions and is consistent with city's comprehensive land use plan because the 2045 future land use plan calls for this are to be designated as complete neighborhood two, which includes residential uses and city services can be provided.

We have a motion. Do we have a second? We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion?

I thought we were hesitant to approve developments on Moose Club Road due to the proximity of the sewer issue over there. So we've already turned down, what, one or two developments along that because of that possible concern. So not never but perhaps not now would be my ask to the other members of council.

I don't think we turned them down. I think we put them on pause. Am I correct?

Is the other one coming back in October?

That is correct. Yeah. And I think the issue is the connection of water and sewer, if I'm correct. It's the connection. So we are able to connect water and sewer here, right? Because if that's, I'm totally with you because I have some concerns. When you say Moose Club Road, I get, I have, I go into details.

We can. The water and sewer is available in the, basically in the development, either in the street or next door. And I think if I remember right, it was not too dissimilar with the other Moose Club Road proposal. Which one?

The one, the Kingdom Hall.

Yeah, Kingdom Hall. There was a lot of question about, did the developer understand the cost and the timing associated with the Wakefield development? So similar, but maybe not exactly the same.

Mr. Mayor, I do not support the motion, and I'd like to tell you why, if I may. If you look at a map of the city of Statesville, city limits, it looks like birdshot on a paper target, okay? You've got one hole in the middle, but then you've got all these little, pepperings all around. Those have been satellite annexations that we've brought in over the past few years. So this one, unlike the previous one, which was an infill development, this one is miles outside of town. The folks that live there are not going to be coming to Statesville to do their shopping and to fill up their tank of gas for Powell bill money per se. So they're gonna be going to Troutman. And I want the city council, I've harped on this for a long time, but there's a hidden cost associated with these remote satellite annexations. And this is a beautiful development. And to quote my colleague at large from last time, Great development, wrong location. The hidden cost shows up to our citizens. Our citizens pay more for police, fire, sanitation, garbage trucks down there. And is Troutman going to pay for that when those folks go to Troutman with their sales tax and Powell bill money? so folks i i just i think it's a great plan i really do but i just do not i think we need to get away from these remote satellite annexations so that's why i do not support the motion thank you mr mayor thank you mr presley any further discussion

I find myself somewhat thrilled to be on the same side of an argument as Mr. Presley. But yeah, I would like to say that one of the things that was discussed in the Land Use Committee earlier today is we went over a cost of service analysis. And Mr. Presley is 100% right. The cost of service for the entire city goes up when we approve satellite annexations like this. So I remain in the same position where not never but certainly not today. So I would also likewise encourage the other members of council to vote against this motion.

To counterpoint the two council members at large, I respect their points of view. There's this thing called cost averaging, okay? So if you add this development to the one that's right beside it on this picture here. will cost average that services cost?

Not so much cost averaging as it is cost burdening the remainder of the city. So we actively would be grabbing a money losing proposition for the city of Statesville if we were to approve this, as opposed to a cost effective and financially productive development, which I'll admit the last one was at least connected to the city. This is, yes, it's a larger island, but it's still an island. So...

All the development requests that we've already had come up, two of them, along Moose Club Road, are those all islands amongst themselves? I've been consistent. I would say no, that we're going to cost average the services down.

Mr. Mayor, if I may, another point that I've been thinking a lot about recently that I think the council should consider is House Bill 1089. And this is coming through the General Assembly now. This will be a vote on November 3rd that I think is likely to pass, but this will limit local government's ability to levy taxes. So if our revenue... if our property tax revenue is fixed or limited, but our expenses continue to increase, that's just a recipe for disaster. So where I'm coming from is we need to start thinking about ways to save money rather than spending money and make no mistake about it. We spend a lot of money on these satellite annexations and that's all I'll say. Thank you.

want to add to this i see you just bobbing your head going yes and maybe no can you summarize what these gentlemen's talking about and and say what would be somebody summarize it because i just want to gotta keep talking but maybe tomorrow you know but uh can you summarize the pros and cons that maybe we could county understand you know where they all are coming from ron and somebody to give us a little bit more insight

You're welcome to call the whole team up if you want.

So, I think we have, I'm not going to make Matt answer this question. So, no, I mean, I think it's a, there's a philosophical, you know, debate in this. And I don't think any side is right or wrong. The way that I would sum it up, Councilwoman, is that there's a feeling that satellite annexations, which are islands that are not contiguous or next to our city limits, are not a positive. And then from a financial standpoint, that is true. In this case, you already have it. So it's a harder decision, I think, because you already have that island. You can't take it back. And so building on that is going to distribute some of the costs that we're already putting into the development. So there's no right answer. There's pros and cons either way, and it's really where you fall on the argument.

This is one time you can vote and both be right. Yeah, isn't it?

Okay, any further discussion? Okay, would we have someone that would like to make a motion?

We already have a motion on the table. I'm sorry. We have a motion and a second.

Okay, yeah, thank you. So, we better do the hand vote once again. Okay, all in favor of James' motion to, I mean.

Tim, will you please read your motion over again, please? You troublemaker.

I know. Sorry, Tim.

Move that the zoning amendment be approved with agreed upon conditions and is consistent with the city's comprehensive land use plan. The 2045 Future Land Use Plan calls for this park to be designated as Complete Neighborhood 2, which includes residential uses and city services, can be provided.

Okay, we have that motion in a second. All in favor, raise your hand, please. Thanks a lot, guys. So that's four, all opposed? I hope that's four. He's gonna make another decision.

You know the math behind it. Vote the right way.

I really feel that the right thing right now is to not proceed with that development. So I would vote with the nays.

You win one, I win one. It's okay, Doris. We'll talk after this.

All right. So. I'm 14 consider approving amendment one for design services for phases 3 and 4 of the municipal operations center project. Scott are you going to do Mister Harold will do a presentation.

Mayor Hendricks, just a point of clarification, since the rezoning did not pass, then the annexation is gonna be pulled.

Right, okay. I'm sorry, I just assumed that, sorry.

Thank you, Mayor, members of council. So as you read, this is an amendment to the design contract for the mock municipal operations interface three and four just for some background. The initial design contract was for renovation of two buildings, the admin building, the garage, other site work and facilities were to be. constructed at a later time. You can see some interior and exterior photos. Existing facility initially constructed in the 50s, added to, modified and such until most recently the late 70s. As we got into the design project, it is a design build contract. It was determined the two buildings were not really suitable for renovation due to just their age and condition, so we switched to a replacement. And then also, just given the rise of construction costs, selected to go ahead and recommend designing the remainder of the site just to go ahead and get everything at least to a point of being designed. So that includes additional covered parking structures, equipment and material storage, curb and gutter and sidewalk on Winston Avenue, and some outdoor storage areas. So just to summarize the change here, The initial scope was about $1.6 million of design services. The expanded scope is a little over 3.9 for a difference of 2.38. Staff did recommend that it was included in this year's budget, 2.5 million, so more than enough to cover that additional contract. We were anticipating this. Those funds are located in the engineering budget. There will be some cost sharing and distribution among four funds. As you can see, general fund will be responsible for about 43 percent and the three enterprise funds will cover the remainder in proportion to the amount of the site used by those divisions. Right now, the estimated total project cost is in the neighborhood of $42 million. That does include these design funds are part of that. There will be additional costs for furnishings and that sort of thing later. Big picture will be coming to you at your fall planning conversation October 22nd with Davenport to discuss funding options for this. It is a large number. We agree with that. We do anticipate getting a site grading package later this fall within a couple months. And then ultimately, these funds that you have tonight, the additional design funds, what that gets you is the final construction drawings, permitting, and your guaranteed construction price, which we anticipate to have in the spring. overview of where we are site layout the l-shaped building at the left is the the administrative offices and crew rooms for all operational divisions the interior buildings have either covered parking or covered storage for materials and equipment the two blue boxes at the right are the the new garage and i'm sorry the new warehouse and the new public power buildings that you've seen previously One last quick rendering, that's the current render of the entrance to the primary building and you can see the floor layout to the right there, crew spaces and administrative offices. Staff does recommend approving the amendment to the design services contract and I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Okay, any questions for Mr. Harrell?

Can you go back one slide please? Are we opening Winston Avenue? Below this? I see it on the map. It's not open right now, right there. Yeah. Is it? Yeah. Is there? Okay.

It goes all the way to Macomb Steel.

This is oriented the other direction. I'm sorry. I was thinking that was the south side. No, no, no. We all want this one. Okay. Sorry. The map orientation threw me off. My bad. Yeah, it does.

Any further questions for Mr. Harrell? Is there a motion on the amendment one?

Do we have a consistency statement? No consistency. Mr. Mayor, I move to approve the motion as presented. I second Mrs. Allison's motion.

No, there's no consistency. So any more discussion?

Mr. Mayor, I don't oppose the motion and I'm going to be brief here because I know that we're getting long in the tooth here. You know, Mr. Mayor, most of us live and work in old buildings that are now functionally obsolete. And if money weren't an issue, then I'm sure we'd all demolish those buildings and build a new one just as the city proposes here. This project has gone from $15 million now to $42 million all at a time where interest rates are as high as they've been in 20 years. Diesel fuel is higher than it's ever been. And our citizens are getting squeezed from every angle by property taxes and healthcare, housing, gasoline, groceries. so i just think it's out of touch and frank i just think it's it's not necessary uh there's absolutely no reason we can't continue to operate out of the existing building and continue to offer the same exceptional service that we always have so that's where i'm coming from i'm finished good night good night any further discussion i would remind the member opposite that he just approved seven or eight hundred additional homes that will require services which will require vehicles that have to park somewhere

Okay, let's pull it in. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Any opposed?

You said you voted both ways.

Oh, did I?

Yeah. So let's raise your hand. Raise your hand. All in favor, raise your hand. Okay.

Any opposed?

Okay. So 6-1. Motion passes. I mean 7-1, excuse me. Motion passes. All right. Any other business?

Nope.

Mr. Mayor, I move to adjourn.

I beat you.

All in favor say aye. Aye. So moved.